A Cheap Place to Stay in NYC

by Josh Lew on

Unless you know someone in New York City well enough to crash on their sofa, chances are a huge portion of your Big Apple travel budget will go towards a hotel room. That is unless you don’t mind sleeping with three strangers.

Manhattan’s Broadway Hostel offers a bed in a dorm-style room for under $40 per night. Booking before October 1st will earn you a $38 per night bill and a free cocktail. With gas prices still so high these days, that’s actually cheaper than coming to New York and sleeping in your car.

“Hostel” is akin to a swear word amongst non-budget travelers and anyone over 23. Sure, sharing a room with strangers is not what many people would consider comfortable. (Sharing a bathroom is not what many people would consider sanitary.) But the Broadway is ever bit the hip haunt its upper west side location suggests. The rooms are tastefully decorated with furniture that was designed after the Ford presidency (after the Clinton presidency even) and there are regular hotel room extras like shampoo and soap in the bathroom. Anyway you cut it, that’s a pretty swell deal.

Vegas Building Boom Means Cheap Rooms

by Josh Lew on

Las Vegas is feeling the pinch of slumping travel numbers. The amount of visitors who enter Sin City has dropped by nearly 5%, but the construction of new hotels has led to an increase in rooms. Who to fill them?

Once they get over criticizing themselves for lacking foresight, hotel execs have to find a way to hawk all those empty beds.

The obvious strategy, at least for the short term, is to lower prices until they reach a point where visitors won’t mind shelling out a little extra for the flight because they are getting such a ridiculously cheap deal from the hotel.

How cheap is ridiculously cheap? According to MSNBC, over half the casino-owned hotels in the city are offering rates of $50 per night or below. Yes, that type of price is usually reserved for roadside motels where you can also choose to pay by the hour. Even high end, established names like Luxor and MGM Grand have rooms available for under $100 per night.

However, the famous ad campaign tag-line might be true of hotels as well. What happens in Vegas…isn’t happening elsewhere just yet. Rooms in Chicago, New York and other major metro areas are still at full price. International tourists, convention-goers, and business travelers make up the bulk of New York’s hotel customers. They have other bases to rely on as the number of US-based leisure travelers decline. That is not so in Las Vegas.

Source

BoltBus adds Boston to schedule

by Martha Edwards on

Remember last week when I told you about the awesome $1 fare for bus service between NYC and DC aboard BoltBus? Well, the good news just got even better — they’ve added Boston as another one of their cheap-o destinations, starting in April. You won’t find seats for $1, but once they go on sale, they’ll cost you around $7 for a one-way trip. But, like I mentioned before, be sure to book far in advance and expect to see a booking fee on top of that.

Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but once they are available, book quickly as their sure to go fast at that price. As an added incentive, Bolt Buses offer free WiFi and power outlets on their coaches.

(via Cheapskate Travel)

The modern couch potato

by Jerry Guo on

While I was backpacking across Peru the last couple weeks, I kept hearing about couch surfing. (And not the lazy TV-watching kind). Apparently it’s become the rage of late, traveling not hostel to hostel, but couch to couch.

The most established organization–and nonprofit to boot–that connects you to complete strangers who will host you while you’re traveling is the Couch Surfing Project. We introduced it last year, when it was already a couple years old (but still considered in its infancy).

Now it’s hit prime-time. Membership has apparently tripled in each of the three years it’s been up, averaging roughly 5,000 new members each month. The editor of Budget Travel, Erik Torkells, nicely sums up the reasoning behind the phenomenon’s booming popularity. “If I couch surf I could be on some cool ex-pat’s or local’s sofa. I’ve already leapfrogged barriers. It would take weeks under ordinary circumstances to get in someone’s home.”

I think the next time I’m in South America, or anywhere else, I’m going to try being a couch potato.

How to do Europe for (relatively) Cheap: Some Tips

by Martha Edwards on

Ok, I’ll admit — I’m no expert on Europe but I’ve been there a few times and each time, I’ve been on a budget. And while it’s no Thailand price-wise, there are a number of things you can do to make sure you won’t end up having to sell of your belongings one by one to get home. Here are some tips:

  • Know where to go. England, France and Italy are really expensive. And while I know you’ve always dreamt of posing for a picture in front of Buckingham Palace/The Eiffel Tower/The Vatican, sometimes there are better way to spend your money. I found Greece and Spain to be fairly reasonable in comparison, and many parts of Eastern Europe, like Hungary, are a steal compared to these countries.
  • Also, know when to go. It’s no joke — the price of everything goes up in July and August. And by everything, I mean everything — not just accommodation and transportation. Food prices on menus are rarely fixed; this is so they can jack it up in high tourist season. The same goes for souvenirs, admission prices, and just about everything else.
  • Take the bus. I know, it’s not as quick as a plane, or as romantic as a train, but it’s the cheapest way to get around from place to place. If there’s an overnight bus option, take that one because although you’ll end up sleep-deprived, you’ll save a night’s accommodation.
  • Connect. I didn’t have any close relatives in England until I went there with my mom. She did some digging into the old family tree and she discovered many distant cousins scattered throughout Europe and the UK. While it seems a bit cheeky to contact them out of the blue and ask for a place to stay, the worst they can do is say no. In our case, we got to know our distant cousins quite well and now have a place to stay whenever we make our way across the pond. If you don’t have any relatives in Europe, ask around — some of your friends are bound to. Or, try couch-swapping.
  • If you’re staying for a while, rent a place with a kitchen. Eating is expensive. If you can put together your own meals, you’ll save a lot of money.
  • Do some research. There are lots of things you can do for cheap or free, even in the most expensive places in the world. The Tate Modern in London, for instance, is a great way to spend a day … and it’s free!

I could go on and on — there are many ways to save money if you do a bit of brainstorming — but I think you get the idea.