Why Old Travel Cost-Saving Tricks Might Not Work This Year
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Here's your money briefing for Monday, May 16th. I'm Trenana Reid for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whelan. If you're looking to travel this summer, buyer beware. Your trip may cost you a lot more this year. Prices are up for just about everything. Flights, lodging, and car rentals. What's worse, there may be fewer ways than usual to get around it.
It used to be that you could find these really amazing offers where it was like, you know, 25,000 miles would pay for a $1,000 round trip, you know, flights to somewhere. Those deals are harder to come by.
On today's show, our travel reporter Jacob Passy breaks down why previous hacks that travelers relied on to save money might not work this year. That's after the break.
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More people are eager to get out and travel this year, and that demand is driving up prices. According to the latest data from the Consumer Price Index, airline fares rose about 18% between March and April.
Why are summer travel prices rising so much this year?
Now, frequent travelers have always relied on certain tactics to keep their travel expenses down. But those common cost-saving tricks may not cut it this year. Here to explain why is WSJ travel reporter Jacob Passy. Hi, Jacob. Thanks for joining me.
Glad to be here.
Jacob, we've talked about the ups and downs of travel throughout the pandemic on the show. But how are airlines dealing with the current increased demand?
They are jacking up prices. I mean, it's pretty cut and dry there. And they're facing a lot of challenges on the operational side of things. Jet fuel prices are also going up quite a bit. They're still dealing with labor shortages for pilots, ground crews, etc. So they also have a bit of a capacity issue there where they are not able to operate as many flights per day as they might otherwise like to. And And so the combination of high demand with everyone looking to get out after years cooped up at home with COVID and those operational challenges affecting the supply, it's a recipe for much higher prices.
All right. Well, let's talk about some of the common ways travelers might try to deal with those high prices. In the earlier months of the pandemic, we talked on the show about what travelers could do with unused flight credits and vouchers. Are those still helpful to ease these high prices?
They certainly are if you have them. And if you have them right now, it's important to check what the expiration date is. For some folks, those expiration dates are going to be coming up this year. And we're not really hearing from airlines like we did last year that they're extending those vouchers. So you'll want to use them. The problem now, though, is a Flight you booked in 2020 or 2021 that you had to cancel and get a voucher for, you're not going to necessarily be able to find a flight for that same price today. And so travel experts I spoke with said it's not going to be uncommon that you'll have that voucher, but it's not going to cover the full price of whatever new ticket you buy if you're doing the exact same destination.
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