Gunnar and Kyle kick off the podcast by focusing on the cheapest destinations for a trip in 2025, discussing Chase’s dominance in the airport lounge wars, some bad Southwest news (which was just the tip of the iceberg…), and more!
Gunnar and Kyle kick off the podcast by focusing on the cheapest destinations for a trip in 2025, discussing Chase’s dominance in the airport lounge wars, some bad Southwest news (which was just the tip of the iceberg…), and more!
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(0:00) A few destinations where your dollar goes furthest thanks to the exchange rate.
(4:53) Something hot: Chase Sapphire Lounges are on a roll.
(10:27) Something cold: Southwest did us dirty.
(12:47) The Extra Mile: From Italy to Japan, your best bets for cheap flight deals in 2025 (including Emirates and domestic flights!)
(35:51) A listener wonders how to find cheaper spring break fares.
(39:35) Putting Kyle on the spot about Turkish food.
Credits:
Hosts: Gunnar Olson & Kyle Potter
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Nick Serati
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: All That by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. I'm Gunnar Olson. I'm here with Thrifty Traveler executive editor, Kyle Potter. And Kyle, you've heard me say it a bunch in the office, but I continue to live in the only country that I can afford to eat and drink in. But elsewhere in the world right now, it feels like the US dollar is so strong.
It's easier than ever to travel. What are some of the best places where your US dollar will go further this year? So we we wrote a story about this a couple of weeks ago, and, you know, the ones that really stand out most, one isn't exactly synonymous with cheap, but there's a reason why you're seeing all of your friends on social media going to Japan right now because the exchange rate from the US dollar to the Japanese yen is at a near historic high. I mean, just to put this into perspective, pre pandemic, one dollar would get you a hundred, a hundred and 10 Japanese yen. That's at a hundred and 50 right now.
So that means everything from your Omakase dinner to, you know, amazing cocktails, you know, Asahi and Sapporo beer, ski trip if you're going up in a Hokkaido. I know you're about to, like, jump out of your sea right now and go there. Everything is cheaper right now, which is huge. I just got back from South Africa where, again, you know, the, the South African rand, the the dollar goes further there than ever. We bought bottles of wine for less than a crappy glass.
Glass, not bottle, here. It was just incredible how cheap everything from breakfast to dinners to Uber rides, everything was, in South Africa. Yeah. These things always show up at the table. Right?
It's at a restaurant where you leave and you get your bill and you sign it in the local currency, and then you look at your statement the next day or you get a push alert from Capital One, and it tells you just how little you spent on the meal. It's pretty amazing. Tell me about Turkey though too. Turkey is is a mixed bag, and and I'm coming at this from the privileged perspective of having been there a couple of years ago and having gone back, just a few weeks ago. There's no question that your dollar still goes incredibly far.
And for most people, Turkey is still going to seem incredibly cheap because the dollar to, the lira, it's called the lira, the dollar to the Turkish lira exchange rate is higher than it's ever been. The flip side of that is that if we think inflation is bad here in The States, it's out of control in Turkey. So, you know, the the dishes you know, for example, we bought a delicious bowl of Turkish Monti. It's just Turkish, dumplings. A couple of years ago, we bought it for it was less than $2.
This, this past January when we were there, exact same place, the exchange rate was even better, but that same bowl cost us more than $5. So, it's it's a win lose there, but still, like I said, I think everybody's gonna come home from Turkey saying to themselves, wow. It is incredibly cheap to get around here. Yeah. And I know it's gonna be the same in Canada right now for US travelers.
That's where my where I'm heading next, actually. And, my friends and I did the same trip last year. Couldn't believe how unbelievably inexpensive it is there in the grocery store, even, you know, places where your captive audience, like on the ski hill, where usually in The US, you're gonna get charged $13.14 dollars for a beer, and you're gonna take a a Coke in the outside onto the patio for about $3.50 right now in some places in in Western BC. So I'm really excited to go back. But any any other places that jump to mind?
No. Canada is a great call out because, it's so easy to just look far abroad and look for the pockets of value and look for those really exciting long haul international trips. But, I mean, you can get out to, you know, whether it's Vancouver, go to Banff, go to Montreal, coast to coast within Canada. There's so much to see just like there is here. And, you know, now might be the best time.
And I think especially with some of the, let's just call them political dynamics between The United States and Canada, I'm guessing in the near future there are going to be some seats for airlines to fill. So the upshot is not just that it's cheaper once you get there, but it's probably gonna be cheaper to get there, period, than it has been in a while. Yeah. That that traffic coming from Canada to The US is is really bottoming out right now. So it's pretty cheap, and it especially if you wanna go to some place like Banff this summer, it's gonna be really cheap.
Today on the show, we're gonna talk about Chase Sapphire lounges and some tough news for travelers who like earning and burning Southwest Rapid Rewards. In our featured segment that we call the extra mile, we're gonna talk about some of the destinations you should focus on to get the best flight deal in 2025 as well. We're doing it, Kyle. Welcome to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Let's jump into something hot hot and something cold this week, where we look into the good and the bad news out there for travelers from the last week.
And we're gonna start with something hot, and that's gonna be Chase Sapphire Lounges. Their their Boston lounge opened two years ago now. They've opened six lounges since, plus an international location. The lounge wars, as at one point we called them, are they already over? They're never over.
I mean, this is all part of this broader push that we've seen, not just from airlines, but especially from banks into premium travel. That's what's driving this. And so that means that just because Chase is pulling ahead does not mean that this thing is over. But, man, are they ahead by a country mile right now. So just to put this into perspective, in less than two years, Chase has seven sapphire lounges.
They've got a bunch in The US, and they've got one in Hong Kong as well. In almost four years, Capital One has opened just four, the fourth of which just recently opened in Las Vegas. So that tells you a couple of things. First, it tells you probably primarily just how much money Chase is pouring into this, and that, you know, some of their competitors may not be able to match that or may not just have the will or the money. I don't know which, to match that.
But also, you know, Chase has very rapidly closed the gap with American Centurion lounges, which for, you know, more than a decade was really the gold standard of all airport lounges. I mean, people would go out of their way to visit, you know, a Centurion Lounge. They would go out of their way to connect in Denver or Las Vegas or Dallas or somewhere with one of these lounges. And now it's clearly gotten to the point where, a, there aren't enough of them because, b, these lounges are just way too full. And the quality of, you know, some of the experience in there, whether it's struggling to find a seat or, you know, some of the food at least compared to, you know, what that was like pre pandemic.
It's night and day. So, you know, Chase is not just winning on quantity, though they clearly are at least compared to, you know, their primary competitor in getting started in these airport lounges with Capital One. But they're also, I would say, winning on quantity too. I mean, I've been to the Boston Lounge, and it's fantastic. I've been a couple of times.
And every time, I kinda say to myself, wow. It really can be this good even if you're just using a premium credit card to get into lounges. I mean, what do you think? Yeah. I went to the JFK Lounge, which is a special one that where they've partnered with Etihad because they filled up the old Etihad lounge space there.
I was really impressed. The it's small. It's not massive, but there's service at every seat through a QR code, which is fantastic. I typically like to go sit at the bar when when I go to lounges, but you don't need to. You can sit anywhere and have food and drink brought to you.
You order off QR code, and it was slick. They had a ton of staff there running food to you everywhere. I really enjoyed that part of it. It was also just a nice kinda stylish updated space. They had, you know, little perks like a a fireplace and just lots of different kinds of seating and everything.
So I really enjoyed the Chase Lounge, and it's interesting that, you know, we're tracking this stuff all the time, and we're seeing that Chase and Capital One are bidding on the same spaces oftentimes. There's not that much room in these airports to just pop up a lounge. So it's not like Capital One's not trying. But as you mentioned, Chase must be just really investing heavily in this to continually beat out Capital One for these same spaces over and over. And just imagine what they could have done if they tried to go toe to toe with AmEx a couple years ago before AmEx took up, you know, the best space in almost every single airport in the country, major ones at least.
So it's been a really interesting dynamic. It's I mean, it's a it's a totally different world now where, you know, you have three three banks plus the airlines always competing for whatever precious space they can find inside of these airport lounges. And it's cutthroat. And it's not only cutthroat to, you know, win the the government contracts to be able to start building in that space, but then it's incredibly difficult to actually build out a lounge, and get all of the supplies that you need and all of the permits and approvals that you need in order to do this. I mean, if think of every single time you've you've seen, you know, oh, this airline or this company is going to open an airport lounge and that gets delayed by a year or two.
I mean, this is why. So, again, that, to me, is just testament to just how much Chase is leaning into this that, you know, not only that they've kinda pulled ahead in these airport lounge wars, but that they've done so and really done it with an exclamation mark by opening so many lounges in such a pretty short and impressive period of time. Yeah. If you can get into a Chase lounge, I would recommend doing it. You can get in once per year using priority pass, and you can also access using the Chase Sapphire Reserve card.
So we'd recommend doing it. They're great spaces. I mean, before we move on, let's just point out it is truly incredible to have a la carte dining via QR code or not inside of an airport lounge that you can access using a credit card. I mean, this is something that, you know, Delta One lounges, you know, the first of which opened in JFK, and then they've opened a few more since. That's that is how they raised the standard, but was by offering a la carte meals.
Now I'm not gonna say that this is apples to apples. It's not. I mean, Delta One lounges are another step above, but the fact that that is part of the experience in these Chase Sapphire lounges is really, really impressive. Yeah. Yeah.
It's impressive. It was really nice and became as a huge surprise to me. I I did not know that going into the the JFK club. So take advantage if you can. I think that's enough good news.
Should we move on to a real bummer? Yeah. Let's talk about it. Gunnar, what did Southwest do in this past week? Hi, everyone.
It's Gunnar jumping in here from the future. So you've probably seen and heard the news by now that Southwest made some major changes this week, eliminating free checked bags and even more. Worst of all, they did this right after we finished recording this episode. So not only did Southwest ruin every traveler's week, but they also ruined our first podcast. Rest assured, we'll be discussing it at length next week.
Okay. Back to the show. So Southwest, like seemingly every airline is making it less rewarding to actually fly. What they're doing instead is they're making their top fares, so these business select and anytime fares, the ones where you can actually earn rapid rewards points. But the lowest fares, the ones that I buy and many of you buy out there, those really attractive low fares that still come with two checked bags, you're now only gonna be earning two x points per dollar, on those fares.
So that's a a huge cut, and they cut it by a third. It used to be able to earn six x points per dollar, and now, obviously, coming down to two is a massive step back. It's just another way that another airline is pointing people towards their co branded credit cards. You can still earn plenty of points using those. Those that earning has not gone away.
So, basically, Southwest is saying it's gonna be a little less rewarding for you to fly, even though the way you use your credit card is gonna stay the same. So definitely, terrible news for for really frequent flyers on Southwest, but I guess if you're flying that much anyway, you're probably putting a lot of spend on your card. Or or you're buying those, you know, pricier anytime or business select fares, which I think is, you know, part of the cynical logic that these airlines make, and they all make decisions like this. I mean, it was, you know, what, two and a half years ago that Delta said, if you wanna earn SkyMiles or you wanna earn status, you cannot buy our cheapest basic economy fares because we aren't gonna give you a single SkyMile or a single MQD medallion qualifying dollar for those. This is the same kind of move just, within Southwest ecosystem.
So, you know, while it's definitely negative, it's not a surprise. I mean, every airline across the country, across the world even has done some version of this. Yeah. It's a little more of the rich getting richer here. The the higher fare you buy, the more points you're gonna earn.
It's the number one travel hack. Don't be poor. It's it all comes back to the same thing. We this this podcast is called the Thrifty Traveler podcast. We have to do better than don't be poor.
We well, you know, that's the, the very best advice that I could give, but there are plenty other ways to get around it if you need to. The way I do it, honestly, is just using Chase Ultimate Rewards and transferring them Southwest, points I earn through the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. That's how I do it. I don't I'm not in the Southwest credit card ecosystem, but, if I were to fly Southwest a lot, I might have to consider it now considering these changes. Yeah.
I mean, I'll admit, I've I don't know that I've redeemed a single Southwest rapid rewards point, so I'm not exactly crying about this change. It it is negative. It's going to be negative for, you know, the people who I mean, if you look up and down a Southwest plane, you have to figure and I'm I'm pulling this out of my you know what. You have to figure that 80 plus percent of the people on that plane are booking the cheapest wanna getaway fares, and they're the ones that are gonna be hardest hit by this. And so, you know, even if if even if it's not a person who's earning hundreds of thousands of points a year, this still means that it's gonna take three times as many trips to accumulate the kinds of points that you need in order to take one of those for nearly free.
That's a real bummer. Yeah. Lots of changes ahead for Southwest. Remember, later this year, they're gonna introduce their, signed seating and start selling those fares. I think they said October or November on those when those become available.
So, this is probably step one and a a lot of changes over the next couple months that we'll be tracking, and we'll bring it all to you. I promise. Alright. Let's take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And this week's sponsor of the podcast is us.
And, Gunnar, you would not believe how cheap these advertising rates are. Anyway, let's talk a little bit about Thrifty Traveler Premium. So we might be biased. We are biased, but I think it's the best flight deal service on the market. Thoughts, Gunnar?
And what are you seeing in your inbox recently? I definitely think it's the best flight deal alert service on the market. I'm working with the premium team every single day. So, hopefully, you all agree. And what I'm seeing in my inbox today are some pretty stunning fares.
We have an Inverness Scotland deal that we just sent, all fares in the 5 hundreds, including August for most cities. So that's gonna get you to Scotland for your summer adventure. We're also looking at some Southwest fares to Chicago for $78 round trip, including cities like Minneapolis and Cincinnati and Louisville and Nashville. So those fares can take you quite a long way too. And then we also recently just found some Japan Airlines business class availability, flying from the West Coast from Vancouver to Tokyo for 60,000 American miles each way.
One of our favorite deals when it pops up, and I swear we're searching for it every single day because we know how much you all like it too. And, folks, I'm watching Gunnar scroll through his inbox to to look at this stuff. So we're really doing it live here at Thrifty Traveler. Sign up today for Thrifty Traveler Premium at thriftytraveler.com/premium. As a special treat, our podcast listeners can use the promo code t t pod for $20 off to your first year of flight deal alerts.
That's thriftytraveler.com/premium. Promo code t t pod, five letters, all one word, for $20 off your first year of alerts. Alright. It is time for the featured topic of the week, which we're calling the extra mile, where we're gonna dive deeper into one aspect of cheap travel. So at the top of the show, we talked about the destinations where when you're on the ground traveling, your dollar goes further, during your vacation.
Right? But there are also destinations, you should be looking at to save on airfare. You should start saving on your vacation way before you ever get there. But here's some of the places where you're most likely to find reliably cheap airfare. And Kyle, I think we should each draft a couple of these.
Let's each pick three of these hot spots, and I'll let you go first. Before before I get into it, let's let's kinda set the table for how we came up with these. And I wanna be clear, this is a very subjective list, but it is backed up by the, you know, our flight deal experts running Thrifty Traveler Premium, including Gunnar here who search and look at thousands of fares every single day. And, you know, find the deals that Gunnar just talked about, that make us say, holy crap. And it's the destinations that make us say, holy crap.
That's really cheap. Or, wow. I can't believe we're seeing, you know, this volume of points and miles deals again and again and again. These are the ones that make this list. So we've got, you know, a full story that Gunnar wrote, you know, earlier this year.
We'll link it in the show notes to kinda go a little bit more in-depth on some of the individual deals, but there definitely are a few worth picking out. So I'm gonna start with Italy because I think this one in particular has really caught us by surprise. I think it's caught a lot of people by surprise because, you know, we're now in the midst of jubilee, you know, the once every twenty five year, you know, migration to the Vatican City for Catholics. And, you know, I think everybody rightly expected that that was gonna drive prices sky high. But, you know, airline prices principally are about one thing, supply and demand.
So, yes, demand to Italy is high. It's always high. I mean, who doesn't wanna go to Italy? Right? But what we've seen is that supply of flights has outpaced that.
So, you know, we pulled some numbers from Cerium, the aviation analytics company. There are 2,000 more flights between The United States and Italy in 2025 on the schedule than there were in 2024. That's 400,000 extra seats that weren't flying between The United States and Italy this time last year across the year. My god. That is that is way higher than I even thought.
I know whenever there's a new route announcement, it's it seems like we can barely keep up. It's, you know, who's flying to Naples and who's flying to Milan again this year, but that is a stunning number. I mean, every every summer after summer, we've seen the big players like American, Delta, United, you know, some of their foreign partners adding more service to, you know, both Rome and Milan, but also, you know, a lot of expansion, for nonstop flights into Naples, more routes into Venice. And Delta and United this summer, are adding their first ever nonstop flights, direct to Sicily, which is huge. But, again, you know, when you have that volume of flights, there are is going to be seats to fill, and that's where we start to see some of these deals crop in.
As with all of these destinations, airfare isn't a monolith. Right? Just because we're sitting here talking about, you know, there are a lot of flight deals to Italy doesn't mean that you're gonna search from your home airport, especially on, you know, August 7 or July 27 or whatever and see a price that you really love. But, you know, the vol the volume of cheap flight deals, the stuff that we really care about and we know, you know, travel lovers out there really want is surprising to Italy. So a couple of things that come to mind.
I mean, we're not just seeing cheap round trip fares and economy from the East Coast, you know, from JFK and, Boston and Washington DC, but, you know, round trip flights under $500 round trip from Denver and Dallas, that's pretty incredible. That's stuff that we don't normally see any time of year, let alone in late summer, you know, mid August and onward. Yeah. The the Italy availability has been pretty wild. It's you know, we're not we're not used to seeing flight deals pop up to places like Sicily, like you mentioned, you know, the the White Lotus special.
Maybe they're capitalizing on the last season of the White Lotus craze, but, we're seeing these things now and Don't get on the boat. If we've learned anything from White Lotus, don't get on the boat. Exactly. But get on the plane because it's gonna be super cheap to get there. So it it's been really cool to see all the different kinds of destinations we're seeing as well.
And and it's not just The US carriers that are flying there nonstop. It's now their partners who will connect you in Amsterdam or Paris or London are having to compete as well. So basically, you're getting more options to fly to more places in Italy, and it's not all you know, not every flight's going to Rome or Milan either. You can find some really cool routes and and interesting ways to get there. Yeah.
Speaking of Milan, I think, you know, one of your favorites, one of my favorite as well, you know, booking, Emirates, one of the top airlines in the world who, you know, oddly flies from JFK to Milan every single day on one of their Airbus a three eighties. You know, finding business and first class award availability that you can book with points is it's tough. It's not impossible. You know, we've we found those deals for our premium members, you know, pretty regularly, but one is ironclad. You can find it basically any day of the year, including summer, including for the Winter Olympics, flying Emirates economy round trip from JFK to Milan for 35,000 points, which you can transfer from all the major credit card programs, AmEx, Chase, Capital One, you know, the list goes on, is a is an amazing deal, to find flying a really spacious economy seats.
I mean, those seats on the a three eighties have, you know, more width. They have more legroom than you're gonna find in almost any plane in the sky right now. Yeah. When, I'm sure you get this a lot too, but just being the, quote, unquote, travel guy, everyone's always whenever anybody has a honeymooner in their life, they're sending me their information. And I get a lot of questions, and I just copy paste the same thing.
Go look at this Emirates flight to Milan. If you wanna spend a honeymoon in Italy, as long as you can book far enough out in advance, it costs shockingly few points. And if you wanna do it up front in the stylish cabins, it's also not that bad and pretty easy to book. So I always tell people to make sure they look there. Good.
What's next on your list? Alright. So my my number one pick here is going to be Japan. You know, for years post pandemic, we were seeing fares that were 1,500 plus dollars round trip. Sometimes if you're lucky, depending on what airport you're flying from, that that post pandemic craze is wearing off.
I I still hear from tons of people who are going to Japan, and and I'm still interested. I was one of the you know, I was caught up in the post pandemic craze, and I went last winter. It was unbelievable. I I can't wait to go back, but it seems like enough people have got it out of their system that, fares are coming down. So we're we're seeing nationwide deals to Tokyo in the 7 hundreds and 8 hundreds round trip.
We even saw some stuff from the West Coast from cities like San Francisco and LA in the 5 hundreds. And I'm not talking about budget airlines either. I mean, those are United or Delta or American Fairs. Interestingly, we're also seeing flight deals now to some of these other cities in Japan. So, we found a flight deal from dozens of cities in The US and Canada, flying to Hokkaido, and down to Okinawa and all these other places that would be awesome for you to start or end your journey.
And now you can just book it straight there instead. If you've already done the Tokyo scene and and you're looking for something else, it's also a great option, a great way to go explore Japan. Plus business class is back. It was so hard to book for so long, but Japan Airlines business class has been popping up. We search for it every single day, and, we found most recently from San Diego and Vancouver, some of their West Coast out outposts, using AA miles.
It only costs 60,000 AA miles to book those seats typically. But we also found a deal where you're booking at the very end of the calendar, so you're booking into, you know, spring twenty twenty six almost at this point. But you can use British Airways Avios, Finnair Avios, or Cathay Pacific Asia miles to book those seats as well. So that was one of our most recent, finds, and it it's just such a good way to get to Japan. Those are long flights.
And if you can use your points and miles to book something way out in advance and make sure you have it, it's it's pretty reliably cheap, especially for 2025 so far. You know, it's it's funny because it's it sounds like we contradicted each other. You know, at the top of the show, I mentioned that everybody you know is in Japan. And you're saying that you feel like kind of the Japan craze is waning, but I think both of those things can be true at once. Everyone you know is in Japan, but they booked those flights months ago, almost a year ago at this point.
And so now I think we are kind of getting to the point where, you know, Japan is always going to be popular. It's probably always going to be more popular for, at least, for American tourists whose, you know, dollar goes really far right now, than it was pre pandemic. But, you know, I think we are starting to see things normalized. And this is what we have seen again and again and again in this post pandemic travel boom is, you know, domestic fare went through the roof in the summer of twenty twenty two because that's where people went felt comfortable going. And then, you know, the following year that shifted to Europe and in European fares went through the roof.
And at that time, domestic airfare started to crater. We're starting to see some of that happen with Europe, especially with Italy like we just talked about. So, you know, I think we're kind of entering at least that stage of, you know, what what Transpacific fares to Japan in particular can look like. Yeah. We almost lost track of what kind of our threshold for a good deal was for a while there because we just never saw anything reliably cheap to Japan.
And now we know I mean, if you're if you're gonna book something in the 7 hundreds or 8 hundreds round trip, it's a great deal. If you see anything lower than that, run, don't walk. But it it's all, those are all really affordable Japan fares, and it's so much less than it was, just a year ago. So if if you've been waiting on booking that trip, 2025 or early twenty twenty six might be your best option. So what's another good option for people, Kyle?
What's your second choice here? This is gonna sound like a cop out, but number two on my list is just domestic. Just just that. Just domestic. America.
No. I mean, it feels like for the last two years in a row, really, we've been talking about just how unbelievably cheap domestic airfare is across board. And again, I wanna stress, airfare is not a monolith. This doesn't mean that every single domestic fare that you can book is going to be cheap. But the prevalence of deals out there and not just good deals, but amazing deals like sub $100 round trip deals, is I'm surprised it has lasted this long.
And the reason why I put this at number two on my list is that I just don't think that this can last much longer. You know, the domestic airfare market is really driven in in large part by two things, budget airlines like Spirit and Frontier, which go head to head with, you know, the likes of Delta and United and American and force those major carriers to compete on price. And then then Southwest. Those those two dynamics are just so huge with what when we see deals. I mean, every single time Southwest comes out with one of its, you know, $59 airfare sales, we see every single major airline in the country respond in kind by slashing prices.
And, you know, all of these airlines, some more than others, are on the ropes right now. You know, the the ultra low cost carrier carrier model is in trouble, and Spirit and Frontier are really trying to survive. And it I think it's an open question as to whether they do. But even if they both do survive, the changes that they're making to their business model, the changes that Southwest is making to its business model and its network is going to result in some changes to the broader domestic airfare market. So that means, you know, I don't know if we're going to have it so easy to find those $78 round trip fares to Chicago, Ninety One Dollars round trip to Nashville from across the country, sub $100 round trip fares from to Las Vegas, even if you're starting all the way in New York or Boston.
I mean, we've had it really, really good, but this won't last. Yeah. I think another factor in this is just April and May being what they are for airlines. Especially right now, we're seeing such low fares because April and May is really, from what I've seen, the lowest season for airlines. I'm sure some would say, you know, January, February, but at least there's some north to south, you know, Caribbean and Mexico and Florida traffic for the airlines.
But April and May is really a black hole for them. Everyone's, you know, who's tied to the academic calendar is in the throes of it, and everyone is usually kinda saving up for that summer trip that they're trying to take in in June or July. They've probably just gotten back from spring break or from the beach, and, basically, April and May is is just, you'll you'll see some of the best promos for those fares, especially midweek April and May is when you're gonna see the absolute cheapest domestic fares. And if you can travel that time of year, you definitely should because the weather's getting better everywhere, and it's gonna be incredibly cheap. What do you got next on your list?
I have Iceland next on my list. Iceland is the probably the most reliable, international flight deal. It's almost always there, and that's because of Icelandair. Icelandair is the key here. They have so many US routes.
You might be surprised. You might live in an Icelandair city and not know it, but they're forcing so much competition. This year, they have new service to Halifax. They have new service to Nashville, and they've also added Pittsburgh. So they are not afraid of these kinda secondary markets.
And they're going in and and they're trying to be the ones that take passengers to Iceland and beyond. Their Europe network is huge, and they're offering super low fares to do it. But if you just wanna go to Iceland, I'm talking about round trip fares in the 4 hundreds and 5 hundreds, including peak summer a lot of the time. And what what's happening is because Icelandair is doing this, Delta, who is really the only other competition to Iceland right now from The US, United has a Newark route, but it's they're not, like, seriously competing. Their their fares are just what they are, and they're fine with it.
And American has zero presence at all, up in Iceland. And besides some low cost carriers, it's pretty much just Icelandair and Delta fighting it out. And Delta added a Detroit route to try and, compete a little bit more with Icelandair. The Minneapolis route has been around for a while, and then their JFK route. And what they're doing is they're slashing all the routings into, those kind of feeder routes as well.
So we're getting $300 round trip, $400 round trip fares, even flying Delta. And then the even crazier part is that sometimes Delta just decides out of the blue to make these fares make cabin, even when it doesn't make sense to compete with Icelandair, whose main cabin is also much more expensive. So it's something to watch, whenever we set in premium deals, we're always making sure to to look for it, because sometimes it just pops up out of the blue. Like this week, Detroit flights to to Reykjavik are in in cabin. But, Iceland does not, unfortunately, fall into that category of cheap places to travel in.
No. You need those savings. Yeah. It is the the land of $14 beers. It's an expensive place to drink, so be careful.
My my best tip there is, hit the Costco. It's between the airport and downtown Reykjavik. Go to Costco. Load up on everything you can. Get your booze duty free, and, that's your best way to save money in Iceland.
But it is it's so spectacular. I love it there so much. It's worth every penny when you're on the ground. And if you're just gonna pay $400 round trip to go there for the midnight sun in the middle of summer, it's it's an awesome awesome place to vacation to save some money on flights. Yeah.
I mean, especially when those are the prices that we're occasionally, maybe not regularly, but at least occasionally seeing for a main cabin fare, which means you get a seat assignment. You know, you get you get to earn sky miles if you're flying Delta. You, get to earn your way towards Delta status. All of the things that airlines generally now make us pay for the privilege of, that normally, you know, flying to Europe these days, no matter what airline, you know, the lowest price is is basic account economy. And if you want a main cabin fare, just add 200 to $220 round trip.
It's basically like buying another ticket. So the fact that that's what we're seeing with Delta is is really impressive. I mean, I'll say Iceland felt like it couldn't possibly get more popular in, like, 2018 and 2019, heading into the pandemic to the point where, you know, it's somewhere that I've always really wanted to go and have just kinda put off because I just don't know that that's the environment I want to visit Iceland in where it just feels like you're shoulder to shoulder in parking lots of some of these amazing sights and scenery. And now it's it's really back on my list, in large part because of these kind of flight deals. The fact that you can, you know, reliably book a a main cabin fare.
The prices are good, but it it does feel like as attention has shifted elsewhere. It's not to say Iceland isn't popular. It still definitely is. But I think, you know, this might be the moment. Yeah.
And if if you are worried about the crowds, I mean, the midnight sun, I've heard, is just is really cool, and and it's fun to be there when the sun doesn't set. I think it would also maybe drive me crazy, but I've been in April and October shoulder seasons where it's not that warm, but it's so nice there. And you can pull up to some of these, you know, screensaver spots that you see, all over, and and you can just be the only one there. My my sister and I went in April, and we had many times where we were the only rental car in the lot at some of these, super popular spots. So and one more bump for Iceland.
It's a really short flight. Like, they're flying Icelandair is mostly flying single aisle planes, exclusively flying or I guess the seven sixty seven has two hours, but they're they're flying small planes. It's like from the East Coast, you're looking at maybe six, seven hours max. And from other places, it's it's it's really not that bad. So the Iceland flight is super short.
Icelandair does run a daytime flight from Boston every day too. So you if you really, really hate that red eye overnight, try and get to Boston and and get up there, and, you can go to sleep, the day you land, which is great. I I feel like after that, we need to point out this episode is not sponsored by the Iceland tourism board. That's right. But, hey, we're open to ideas.
Podcast at thriftytraveler.com Iceland tourism board. Hit us up. It's a good list. I think we covered we covered a lot of ground. There's a lot of Europe.
You know, a lot going over The Pacific as well and a lot closer to home too. Yeah. It's a great list, and there there's so many places that you can still fly for for really cheap. If you target the right destination, you can book, several trips for the price of one this year, hopefully. Alright.
It's time for our listener question of the week, and it comes from Nick s who wrote, what do you recommend we do about high airfare over spring break? It seems like everything leaving from our home airport got more and more expensive for a spring break trip this year. Any advice for next year? And, Gunnar, before I turn this over to you, I I think I will say by the time, you know, folks listen to this, spring break twenty twenty five, probably out of the cards for a cheap trip. They'll correct me if I'm wrong.
Spring break twenty twenty six, you know, keeping this advice in mind is gonna be really key. So what do you got? Yeah. And what I've what I've got is that 2026 should be on your radar already. If you saw prices just continually going up and up and up from your home city, for that's that one week of spring break, it's because, someone else set the demand on that route.
Right? I I always say, I mean, you're either driving the market by booking first or you're reacting to the market that someone else has already driven. So if you're trying to get a family of four to Sarasota on the one week of spring break, that flight is gonna be, you know, maybe thousands of dollars because someone, probably multiple families, went in there right away, books the best seats, and now that fare bucket is gone and now it's the price has gone way up. Right? That's that's how InterFair works.
It's they're not tracking you. You know, you're clearing your cookies isn't gonna help. So I would just recommend just be the hammer and not the nail in this case, and just beat people to those for fares when the calendar first loads. So you know exactly when your spring break is next year. Look it up in your school calendar.
And as soon as the calendar flips eleven months out on Google Flights, go book those fares, book the main cabin so they're flexible, and then set a Google Flights tracker on that flight. So if the price goes down, you can rebook for a voucher and get your money back. If the price goes up, you get to be laughing, and you're the one on that flight for the very lowest price. So I would just recommend you book right away when that calendar opens, and then just stay on it. Right?
Keep tracking it. Look for a better option. Look for other options. If something does get cheaper, then you can always book that and dump the old one for a voucher. But you have to be first.
You have to either drive the market or react to it, and the people who are reacting to it never make out well. Be the hammer, not the nail is a much better pull quote for this episode than don't be poor. You know, I'm trying. I'm I'm glad you dropped that pearl. No.
It's it's really good advice. And, you know, I think what we've noticed this year in particular is that there really are two sweet spots for booking spring break flights. There's really early, you know, ten to eleven months out before anybody else is even thinking about about spring break. They're probably not even ready to think about summer trips yet. So using that to your advantage, locking a deal in that you like and then staying flexible and then flexibility is always key.
So what we always see, what we saw again in particular this year was prices really starting to drop, in some destinations two to three months out. So that means, you know, if you're flexible on where you wanna go and you don't have anything on the books yet, you can take advantage of it. You can use a tool like the Google Flights Explore map, which is just invaluable for these kind of situations. Or if you already do have something booked, you know, you might get Google Flights price alert, you know, two to three months before your trip that says, hey. You know, that $600 ticket that you booked is down to 400 now.
That means that as long as you booked a main cabin ticket, you can cancel that ticket, rebook it, and pocket that $200 difference as an e credit with your airline, which is huge to be able to put that towards, you know, a trip that that following summer. Yeah. That's awesome advice and and a really good question from Nick s. Thank you for writing in. We are taking questions every week.
So if you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com, and your question might be featured in next week's show. And our last thing today is something we're gonna do on every episode, and we're gonna put each other on the spot. So, Kyle, this week, I'm putting you on the spot. Are you ready? God.
No. Alright. No. Yeah. You are.
Come on. You're gonna love it. I know you're obsessed with the food in Istanbul, but what was the single best bite of food you had in the city when you were there last month? Just one bite, you have to choose and describe it for us as best you can. PG.
PG though. Keep it PG. What do you think I eat? No. It's actually it's actually a fairly easy, answer.
It's Adana kebap. It's the very specific kind of kebap that they make, in regions of Turkey that you can find at tons of shops and restaurants. It's a it's a little bit spicy. It's basically minced beef that they push on to a spit. I'm I'm failing for words here because it was so delicious, and I can still kind of smell and taste the charred meat from the restaurant that we found, in the Nishantoshi District, whose name I am also forgetting.
But honestly, you can't go wrong. There are places even, you know, around the bazaar, where you can hop in and get an amazing kebab or or turn it into a shawarma, whatever you want. You really can't go wrong. And again, while, you know, I started, you know, this episode talking about that, you know, maybe your dollar doesn't go quite as far as it as it did in Turkey as a few years ago. It's still I mean, you're gonna get out with a with some amazing grilled meats and vegetables and and side salads and a beer or two or a water or whatever for, you know, $30 for two.
It's it's incredible. I just I sound so privileged talking about it, talking about how much better I had it back in the day. Well, you might sound privileged, but I was the one who told our listeners to stop being poor earlier. So we're off to a good start. You win this episode, Gunnar.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for listening to the first ever Thrifty Traveler podcast. It would mean a lot to us if you would rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice, and like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. All that stuff helps others find the show. Send it around.
Send the show to somebody who you know needs a vacation. And if you have some feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would really love to hear from you. We're just getting started in this. So if, there's something you don't like about my face, nothing we can do there.
But if there's something you don't like about the show, let me know, and give us some feedback. We'd love to hear what everybody wants to hear out of us. I'll see you later, Kyle. This episode was produced by our cofounder Nick Serati and your favorite podcast host, Gunnar Olson, and it was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot.
See you next week, Gunnar. See you.