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Stop Getting Gouged: All the Extra Fees You Can Avoid When Traveling


Traveling is expensive enough as it is without airlines, hotels, and rental companies surprising you with big fat fees. While the travel industry might enjoy preying on the exhausted, it only takes a little knowledge to avoid these fees altogether.

Save Money on Flights

Airlines love charging fees. While every airline is a little different, there are a few things you can usually skip over or avoid when you’re booking your flight to save a little cash.

Travel Insurance

At a glance, travel insurance seems just like a warranty: something you don’t need to shell out the extra cash for. However, as we’ve pointed out before, it’s worth it when you might need free cancellations, protected personal items, medical insurance, and more.

So if it’s so great, why should you stop paying for travel insurance? Because you might already have it. As The Simple Dollar notes, a bunch of credit cards offer travel insurance when use that card to buy a ticket. The credit card protection isn’t always as good as what you’d pay out of pocket, but it does usually cover the basics like trip interruptions, cancellations, and lost baggage. You’ll need to check with your credit card company to see if yours qualifies (and what the fine print entails), but some that do include most American Express cards, Chase Sapphire, Citibank Aadvantage Signature, and the Capital One Venture Rewards card.

Baggage Fees

Avoiding baggage fees is damn near impossible these days, but how much you pay is still a variable you can tinker with. Many airlines, including Frontier, Sun Country, Spirit, and Vision will cut a little off the checked bag if you pay in advance. Kayak has a breakdown of all these costs here. If you know for sure you’ll need to check a bag, it’s worth going online and paying ahead of time instead of at the airport. Better yet, pack your bags more efficiently so you won’t need to check one at all. (Of course, if you find it more convenient to check your carry-on sized bags, you can often check them for free at the gate.)

Booking Fees

Like baggage fees, getting around booking fees is about knowing what not to do. And that means never booking a ticket over the phone or in person. Airfarewatchdog has a list of what the airlines charge to book tickets over the phone, and most range from $15 to $35. The solution is simple: under no circumstance should you book a ticket over the phone if you want to save money. Always book online to avoid those fees.

Third-Party Itinerary Change Fees

We’ve covered itinerary change fees for the airlines before and the basics are pretty simple: if you plan on potentially changing your flight, book with Southwest when you can. Everyone else charges between $75-$200 in fees to change your flight, and there’s no good way around these fees.

However, there is another extra fee that you can avoid: third-party change fees. For example, Orbitz charges you $30 to change a ticket on top of the airline’s fee. To avoid these, just book your tickets directly through the airline. The best way to do so is to use a flight search engine that’ll direct you to the airline to buy tickets instead of through it’s own system. Kayak, Hipmunk, and Google Flights all do that.

Save Money on Your Hotel

You might not think of a hotel as a place that’s nickel and diming you, but they can if you’re not careful. Hotels add on small fees for cancellations and Wi-Fi, but they’re easy to avoid paying.

Hotel Wi-Fi Fees

After a long day of traveling, it sucks to arrive at a hotel and find out they want you to pay for their terrible Wi-Fi access. Before you do, check for other options.First of all, a lot of hotels might charge for Wi-Fi, but they don’t charge for wired internet access. Look around the room and see if there’s an ethernet cable you can use. If so, turn your laptop into a Wi-Fi hotspot (or just always bring along your own router) and browse the web for free.

If that doesn’t work, you aren’t out of luck. Most hotel lobbies and business centers have free Wi-Fi, so if you only need to get online for a few minutes, that’s an easy way to do it without paying any extra fees. Of course, Wi-Fi is everywhere, too, so if you don’t mind leaving your room, head to the nearest Starbucks and avoid those fees.

Hotel Cancellation Fees

Hotels usually charge you a cancellation fee if you cancel within 24 hours of when you’re supposed to arrive. However, they don’t charge you to change your reservation to a different date. So, as we’ve pointed out before, you can often avoid paying the cancellation fee by calling and changing your reservation to a later date, then calling back later and cancelling it altogether. It’s a little sneaky, but it should work in most cases.

Save Money on Your Rental Car

Rental car companies love asking you confusing questions about your rental when you’re at your worst: just off a plane, exhausted, and desperate to get to a hotel. Because of that, they can get you to pay extra simply by overwhelming you with choices. Here are a couple fees they tag on if you’re not careful.

Car Rental Airport Fees

As USA Today points out, one of the newer travel fees comes in the form of beefed up car rental fees in airports. Oftentimes, you won’t even know these fees are there because they’re tucked into line items on the bill that make no sense. It’s a hefty fee too. For example, from a rental car agency based out of O’Hare, you’ll pay an extra $8/day just because you rented from the airport.

Sadly, the only real way around this is to pick up your rental car from an off-airport agency location. Most rental car agencies have locations downtown, so you should be able to get there by public transit. Some may even offer shuttle services, but make sure the agency is outside of the airport’s tax code before you settle on one of those. Depending on the length of your stay, this will save you a lot of money. Plus, most agencies allow you to return that car to the airport location without the additional rental charge, so you’ll still have an easy trip home.

Similarly, if you already use a service like Zipcar, Car2Go, or Enterprise Car Share, be sure to check and see if they have services in the city you’re visiting before you arrive. You might be able to skip the rental car altogether.

Rental Car Insurance

Most rental car agencies push their insurance plans on you. After all, everyone needs insurance to drive, right? For most of us, those car rental insurance plans are both redundant and a rip-off.

It’s redundant for two reasons. First: if you have car insurance on your personal vehicle, there’s a good chance it covers your rental too. Before you arrive at the rental car counter, call your insurance company to see if you’re covered for rentals. Second, if you book with a credit card, most credit card companies will cover you as well. Basically every single credit card offers insurance on rental cars provided you pay for the rental in full with that card. Of course, policies vary from card to card, so check the fine print before you travel.

Save Money Everywhere Else

It’s not just cars, hotels, and flights, of course. Fees are everywhere. Here are a couple others you’ll want to watch out for.

Cell Phone Roaming Charges

Cell phone companies will charge you an arm and a leg for roaming if you happen to venture overseas and use your phone without telling them. Avoiding these charges is easy.

If you don’t need to use your phone and want to rely on Wi-Fi, that’s very easy to do. Just download everything you need for your trip before you leave (don’t forget the maps) then turn off the cellular data on your phone (or just turn on airplane mode). This’ll prevent your cell phone company from charging you roaming fees on incoming calls or texts, and you’ll still have access to the data you need. There’s no need to call your phone company this way, it’ll just look like your phone is powered off to them.

If you’d prefer to still have access to your phone throughout your trip, we suggest going with a pay-as-you-go SIM card instead of signing up for your carrier’s international plan. When you arrive in a new country, buy a pay-as-you-go SIM, put it in your phone, and you don’t have to worry about additional fees because when you run out of minutes or data, the card will just stop working. The only caveat is that you unlock your phone ahead of time (and this only works with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile, but check with your carrier to be sure, some Sprint and Verizon phones may work as well).

ATM Fees and Conversion Fees

If you’re traveling abroad, you’ll probably need to convert some money. When you do so, your bank will likely charge you, both at the ATM and for every credit card transaction. Most credit cards charge you 3% per transaction and over $5 per ATM withdrawal. Those can add up quickly!

Avoiding these fees requires a little bit of preparation. Your best bet is to find a credit card that doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee. NerdWallet suggests the Chase Sapphire Card, but a variety of other cards work as well, including the BankAmericard Travel Rewards card and the Capital One Venture card.

Of course, we all can’t get approved for every credit card we want. If you have a few different credit cards, it’s worth checking with them to see what their transaction fee is. For example, Chase chsarges me 3% per transaction, but my credit union only charges me 1%.

As for the ATM, your best bet is to find partner banks. Larger banks like Bank of America, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and others usually have international partners where you can take money out of the ATM without paying a fee. Like your credit cards, if you have multiple options, check with your bank ahead of time and use the card that has the lowest fees. Credit unions often won’t charge you ATM fees even when you’re traveling abroad, but it’s always good to check first. With a little preparation, you can save yourself a lot of money and a lot of headaches.

Photos by Hernán Piñera, Kevin Dooley, ian, DJ Judah.