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I only paid $134.46 for a round-trip plane ticket and $388.54 for a 2-night stay at a 4-star San Francisco boutique hotel. Here’s how.
For Christmas 2015, I decided to givemy boyfriend the present of taking a trip to San Francisco together. We had always discussed flying somewhere, but he was always afraid to be on a plane. I thought of ways to conquer his fear of flying, and then one day it occurred to me thatperhapsa short plane ride would help him overcome that fear.
We live in Southern California, so a flightto San Francisco is only about an hour – something I knew he could definitely handle. We’d both never been to San Francisco, so that became my destination of choice for the surprise!
Although we visited San Franciscofor only 3 days, we experienced a lot more than we expected and didn’t have to stick to a painstakinglytight budget. We ate at pier-side restaurants, buthad great street food too. We usedpublic transportation and ran around in the rain. We indulged in free chocolate-covered strawberries and glasses of wine in luxurious robes inthe balcony of our 4-star boutique hotel.
Do you know how much I paid for this experience? For both ofour transportation and hotel costs, I paid a total of $719.46.For a weekend getawayto San Francisco.
For a seamless flight.
For a private corner balcony with a complete view of San Francisco.
For Japanese-style soaking tubs and plush bathrobes.
For free chocolates and booze.
Getting jealous?Read more to learn how I did it.
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First and foremost: Plan ahead of time
The closer you get to your vacation date, prices onhotel rooms and flights tend to skyrocket. I came up with my San Francisco surprise ideaback in October, althoughthe trip wasn’t until early January. This gave me ample time to conduct research on the airlines and hotels, whilewaiting for promotions and discounts to pop up.
Doing research ahead of time also helped me find restaurants and activities and give a general idea of how much money I should prepare to spend.With so much time before the vacation, I had enough time to save money so that Iwouldn’t have to resort to charging everything to my credit card. This helped my control my stress levels significantly!
Another important thing you should plan before anythingare your departure and arrival dates. Flights tend to be more expensive on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays since that’s end of the work-week, and hotel rooms can sell out ofweekend availability fast. If you’re able to start your vacationmid-week, you could save on airfare and hotel accommodations.
For visual learners like me, using Hipmunkcan make the planning process much easier. Both Hipmunk’sdesktop website and mobile appuse pretty charts and graphs to organize prices on airfare and hotel rates. I definitely suggest using eitherdue to the user-friendliness of both platforms.
RELATED POST –3 DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO: THE BUDGET-FRIENDLY GUIDE
Ask a local or native
I was able to have a great experience because of having friends and family who lived there or around the area. My cousintold me aboutthe best things to do and my colleagues informed me ofthe most efficient ways to travel around. San Francisco is a very touristy city, so a lot of attractions can get extremely pricey. Knowing people native to the area helped me dodge all the tourist traps and find the true gems of the city.
Even though I knew Pier 39 was a total tourist trap, I had to visit Alcatraz…
Findalternate airport locations
After hard research, I discovered that flying directly into San Francisco would cost me well-over $300per person round-trip. The next best alternative: fly into Oakland, and take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to San Francisco. The ride was only about 20 minutes, so it wasn’t a huge sacrifice. Bonus: The airportprovided a complimentary BART trip to the city!
Because we flew into Oakland instead, the round-trip tickets were only $134.46 per person, bringing me to a total of $268.92 for both tickets. This means I got two tickets for less than the price of one to San Francisco. After taxes and fees, I saved a good couple hundred dollars, for which I was able to usetowards food and other expenses.
Southwest Airlines also gave us such a pain-free experience, something completely foreign to me. I also really liked their cancellation and refund policies as well. Thank you Southwest for the great customer service!
Consider third-party companies, but checkairlinestoo
Many third-party companies like Pricelineor Expedia offer discounted flights, but before you book always check the rates with the airlines directly. I used to think that I could always get a better deal through third-partycompanies, but realized that with all theadditional fees sometimes it was more expensive.
Another important thing to remember as well is thatthird-party companies tend to have more strict cancellation policies.
The thing that Idolike about Priceline is thatnon-destination citiescan sometimes be more affordable. I went to Orange County for a work assignment and was able to get a 4-star hotel near the John Wayne airport for roughly $130 a night. I used Priceline’s “Name Your Own Price” program,where I was able tofind a room within my own budget.
Does your ticket include free luggage orcarry-ons?
One of the reasons I decided to fly with Southwest was because they allow 1free luggage and 2 carry-ons. Although I planned to utilize luggage, we wound up packing light for the weekend and only used one carry-onand one backpack for each of us.
Many budget-friendly airlines like Spirit are priced so low because they don’t include fees like luggage. This is one very important factor to consider, especially when things like airplane food, drinks, luggage fees, and other incidental fees canadd up.
RELATED POST – The Millennial’s Guide to Las Vegas
Make a to-do list
Because we only had 3 days, I had to make a list of things to do and places to eat so that we could make the most ofour time and experience everything that was high-priority to us. I mapped out which areas had certainrestaurants or activities so that we could play it by ear and see how we felt.
To figure out where the bars and restaurants were, I used Yelpto checkout popular spots and customer reviews. With Yelp deals, you can get up to 90% off at local businesses. You can also getdiscounts when youcheck-inusing the mobile app. Thisis a must-have for me!
I also used Groupon to find things for us to do, like visit the local spas or attractions at discounted prices(you also can read my Ultimate Groupon Guide to Discounted Treatmentsand learn how to get spa treatments for ultra cheap). If you haven’t signed up with Groupon yet, you can use my referral link here.
Where will you sleep?
I really wanted to try the boutique hotels that San Francisco had to offer instead of settle for a chain hotel, but I was also dreading the boutique prices. I went on TripAdvisorto check out customer reviews and compare hundreds of different hotels.
For a king-size bed at just aboutany hotelit was roughly $200+ a night, and this was even before taxes. This meant I’d be looking at a $400 minimum for 2 nights. I decided to bookmark my top choice hotels, sign up for their mailing lists and wait until I found a promotion or discount. TripAdvisor eventually had a promotion for Cyber Monday, which brought that rate down to $150 a night. After taxes and fees, my total for 2 nights was $345.77, and we even got a free upgrade to a Corner King suite!
We also stayed atHotel Kabuki, which currently has a 4-star rating with over 1,746 customer reviews on TripAdvisor. The hotel was absolutely beautiful, and was definitely worth the money!During our first nightwhen we returned to our room after dinner, there was agorgeous plate of chocolate-covered strawberries and a bottle of wine waiting for us at our coffee table, compliments from the hotel.
Not gonna lie when I say those were probably the best chocolate-covered strawberries I’ve ever had, and not just because they were free.
RELATED POST – Hotel Kabuki: A Japanese-Inspired Getaway
Figure out transportation
If you intend to travel the city, how are you going to get around? Will you be renting a car, walking, or using public transportation?
San Francisco revolves around public transportation and walking. I did some research and found that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency offers a 3-Day Visitor Passport for only $31 per person. This gave us access to ride the metro buses, streetcars, and cable cars withunlimited rides. That definitely beats 3 days worth of car rentals, rental insurance, and gas!
My top 3tips for to save money on the best vacation experience
- Conduct all your Internet research on Private Browsing. Travel websites use thecookies stored on your Internet browser and use this to track your browsing history. Sothe more you search for a specific destination, the rates inflate. You can bypassthis by using your private mode on your browser (I normally use Google Chrome, and you can simply open up a new “Incognito” window). When you do this, your browser does not save cookies during that session, so rates should be unaffected by your extensive searching.
- Save cash and set budgets. My boyfriend and I set a budget of $400 each for the whole trip, and this would cover food and any other purchases. We set a maximum meal budget of $100/day per person. Do the math: if each meal was $20 and weate 3 times each day, that would still only bring us to $60/day. We didn’t hit anywhere near that limit, so we had extra moneyto spend on activities and souvenirs.
- If you can’t afford the whole trip in cash, charge the hotel and flight to your credit card.I know this sounds financially irresponsible, but if you know you are capable of making regular payments, then commit to payingfor your trip in installments. I charged both the hotel and flight tickets to my credit card, which totaled $657.46. I knew I was capable of takingout $150 out of mybi-weekly paychecks, so I paid this off in a little over 2 months. I bought my plane tickets 3 months in advance and reserved thehotel 2 months in advance, so by the time our trip came in January, my credit card balance was already paid off. Bonus: I got reward points with my American Express Everyday Cardand was able to redeem cash back!
Total transportation and hotel total costs: $719.46
- 2-night hotel stay: $169/night + $50.54 taxes = $388.54total
- Round-trip airfare: $134.46/person = $268.92 total
- SFMTA 3-day passes: $31/person = $62 total
I understand for many of you this is still a lot of money, but I want to emphasizehow expensivetraveling to San Francisco can be. We didn’t have to stay at a roach-infestedhotel with thin wallsand grimy bathtubs, and we didn’t have to eat at McDonald’s either. I saved a lot of money but stillmanaged to havea luxuriousexperience at the same time.
Let me also say this:People gave us confused looksin the hotel lobby because we were dressed in jeans and sneakers– not in thebusiness attirethe other guestswore. I know that for the quality of traveling experience we had, I could have paid well over $1,000 for.
What are your best money-saving tactics for booking vacations? Let us know in the comments below!
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