I’m Gilbert Ott, frequent flyer and travel website founder godsavethepoints.comand I have 10 top tips to make your next trip more luxurious.
Follow my advice and you can snag a lie-flat bed on a plane for around £1,300 ($1,999), get a refund if the weather turns bad and avoid wasting time trying TikTok hacks that just don’t work.
My list also includes ways to avoid the crowds in popular tourist destinations and why going back in time and picking up the phone to speak to a travel agent can pay dividends.
Read on for more and let me know what you think in the comments.
Book early and forget to be flexible
Long-haul flatbeds in business class for around £1,300 ($1,999) round trip? You bet. Usually you will just need to be sure about the trip. Yes – most airlines now offer their best discounts and prices for the earliest bookings and the least flexibility.
If you’re stuck with a wedding or set dates and want the best experience for the least money, get in the habit of checking and booking earlier. For example, book for January 2026 in January 2025 if a big sale comes up.
Another hot tip? Book flight and hotel packages directly with airlines, as they will often lower prices if you secure accommodation through them.
Gilbert Ott, frequent flier and founder of travel website godsavethepoints.com, has 10 top tips to level up your luxury on your next trip
There are real occasions where ‘flight + hotel’ can be cheaper than flight alone.
Go back in time and pick up the phone
For some of the smartest hotel deals—those that include a free daily breakfast and upgrade—pick up the phone and talk to a travel agent.
Travel agents are back at the center of travel planning and have special hotel perks that you usually can’t get anywhere else, and often for the same price you’d pay online without the perks.
Just don’t waste their time by casually watching.
Good weather or your money back
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there are some startups in travel that will guarantee good weather, or your money back – for a price, of course.
Sensible and Weather promise are two companies leading the way in travel satisfaction. They offer insurance-style products that allow you to buy guarantees for your trip, like sun for a beach holiday, and you can be fully compensated for every day the weather doesn’t deliver.
Investigate subscription discounts
Pay £93 ($118) and you can save thousands instantly. It sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t. This is the membership fee for ‘Disloyalty‘, the rather brilliant new ‘loyalty’ program from Ennismore, a brand behind Hoxton, SLS, Mondrian and SO/ hotels worldwide.
For some of the smartest hotel deals—those that include a free daily breakfast and upgrade—pick up the phone and talk to a travel agent, says Gilbert
The membership gets you a free coffee at any of its hotels every day of the year (and that can pay your fee alone), but the gem is that all newly opened hotels are 50 percent off and you get a real 20 percent discount your first time at any hotel, new or not.
Crazy – and true.
I booked SLS Playa Mujeres in Mexico and saved $2,800 (£2,284), taking $750 room nights down to $375.
Consider “nearby” airports for big savings with ease
Google Flights lets you enter up to five — yes five — departure and destination cities at once, meaning you can instantly compare how much it might cost to go to multiple places in one search. You can use it in two ways. Say you want to go to Buenos Aires, but prices are expensive from London.
You can enter cities you would consider flying, driving or training in, such as Amsterdam, Paris and others, and see if there are significant enough savings if you depart from one of those.
It can also be a gem to choose a destination, where for example you want to go to South America, but open to Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago or Bogota. Type everything in the search box for destination and the cheapest option will appear.
Dive in points
Points used to be called frequent flyer miles and that was a terrible misnomer. In today’s world, they are less about frequent flyers and more about frequent shoppers.
You can earn points from daily activities with or without a credit card.
At the very least points can be a discount on a flight and at best they can be first class somewhere far away and exotic for next to nothing.
Finding out your preferred airline and looking at their ‘deserving partners’ is a good way to start. When it comes to hotspots, use dot.mywhich simplifies how you find flights.
Find the next hot travel spot
The more difficult a destination is to reach, the more likely other people are not to bother trying to get there, notes Gilbert
If you want to improve your travel in 2025, be open to new and perhaps more exotic destinations, or those that require an extra boat, train or flight.
The more difficult a destination is to reach, the more likely other people won’t bother trying to get there – and that’s often where you’ll find better savings and better trips.
For example, while Mykonos can feel like a special form of crazy, other islands just a ferry ride away are still relatively idyllic.
Stop messing around with silly ‘hacks’
TikTok can show you a lot of great things, from recipes to new dance moves, but most of the travel hacks aren’t going to help.
Save yourself money by not wasting your precious time trying things that don’t add up.
The days when you can change the website country or currency to save on hotels or flights are really limited and there are only rare exceptions where there are significant savings.
If you spend five hours trying, just to save $10, something tells me you actually lost on that deal.
Take advantage of members-only pricing online
Due to hotel pricing rules, you often have to be a ‘member’ of a website – which can be as simple as sharing your email address – to see their ‘special’ prices.
By grabbing your email, booking sites and hotels themselves can undercut publicly available prices as it is perfectly legal and fine for them to show ‘closed environment’ discounts.
Try the new travel apps
From Turo, which is basically the Airbnb of car rentals (and even has fancy cars) to Resort Passwhere you can simply buy a day pass to a hotel pool, and Wandera vacation home company that guarantees fast Wi-Fi and dedicated workspaces, there are so many ‘new’ ways to experience travel.
Do your research, not all of these platforms will be right for everyone, but they are a great tool to add to the arsenal as you search for savings.
I was able to rent a Tesla Model Y in California through Teach for less than a basic car from a leading rental company – and the host picked up and dropped off the car.
