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In this article we are going to use a real life example of a family looking to book their dream holiday online.
Our challenge is to see if you can save money online by using a VPN. So without further ado let’s answer the question and see can a VPN save you money?
Can You Book Cheap Flights Using A VPN?
Using a VPN can provide you with a number of benefits. You may be aware that a VPN can not only hide your location but also prevent unscrupulous people getting hold of your personal data. But did you know that you could also book cheap flights using a VPN? Or that using a VPN could save you money when renting a car?
How can this be possible? You would think that the price of a flight from London to Washington would be the same for everyone no matter where you might be based. After all, you would be booking a single seat on the same flight. Could booking the same flight from a different location affect the price in any way? Well, believe it or not, it most certainly does have an impact upon the price you will pay for your flights. However, before we delve into the details any further it might be useful to consider how and why retailers change their pricing structures depending on where you are based, what you are searching for and even upon where you the customer are based.
The System Is Rigged
The system as it currently stands is rigged against you the consumer. It seems that retailers change their prices regularly in order to extract as much money as possible from the customers. There are a number of methods the industry utilises in order to achieve this, such as where the customer is located, how many seats are still available and how popular the route is for the airline.
What Is Dynamic Pricing?
Dynamic pricing is a technology based tool that retailers use in order to vary prices to different customers. There will be differences between the different models used by each retailer however there is a common theme – maximising profits. The retailing industry will argue that they want to deliver the best value to their customers no matter where they are based. Our investigations to date however, paint a totally different picture. It appears that the price you pay indeed does depend upon where you are based.
Is Dynamic Pricing fair?
The system of using dynamic pricing in setting prices is frustrating and frankly from a customer viewpoint poor practice by airlines. How can it be fair to sell an airline ticket to somebody at a lower price to you purely based upon their location? However, as long as the majority of customers are kept in the dark about the practice and the retailers make large profits then the situation is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Our aim in this article is to show you how to save money using a VPN. We will use a real example of a family looking to book their dream vacation.
The Dream Vacation
Dave and Vanessa both live in London. They have 3 children (aged 14, 12 & 8) and they have for the past couple of years been saving hard for their dream vacation. They are going to bring their kids to see Mickey and Minnie Mouse at Walt Disney World in Florida. They want this to be the best holiday ever and are looking forward to creating magical and long lasting memories. Rather sensibly though, they also want to see if they can save some money on their trip of a lifetime.
We are going to follow Dave and his family as they set about booking and arranging their vacation.
First on the agenda is getting there. They want to fly from London Heathrow to Fort Lauderdale in Florida on the 20th May. They will be returning to the UK on the 31st May – a total of 11 days.
The Holiday Wish List
Their requirements for the holiday can therefore be summarised as follows:
- Passengers: 2 adults and 3 children (14,12 & 8 years old)
- Return flights – London Heathrow to Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Dates – 20th May to 31st May inclusive
- Accommodation – hotel
- Car rental required – Yes standard vehicle (with air con)
Let’s see how Dave and Vanessa get on with booking their holiday.
Step 1 – Booking The Flights
First of all they need to be able to get to Florida. They have no preference as to which airline they use to get to Florida and therefore they will use a flight comparison website – Skyscanner.
Booking a return flight from LHR to FLL
As Dave and Vanessa are based in London, they opened their browser and input their requirements. This was their results (with an IP address based in the UK)
The screenshot above details the results that were returned to them. The cheapest flight available was $328 (US dollars) each. However, the website also provides the best price available to them. This takes into account flight times and number of connections required in order to get to the destination. This is particularly important to Dave as he is travelling with three children. As every parent knows, when travelling long haul with children the shorter the journey time the better.
As a next step Dave then ran the very same search using the very same website. The only difference was that he changed his location using his VPN. He chose to carry out the search as if he were located in Spain.
The results using an IP address in Spain were as follows:
The cheapest price returned for a Spanish customer was $264 US dollars. That’s a saving of $64 dollars each. If we multiply this figure by 5 people then we are looking at a total saving of $320! Dave however is more interested in the best price as although it’s a little more expensive the flight time is almost 9 hours less. That’s nine hours less of travelling and nine hours less of listening to the squabbling over charging cables etc!
The best price came in at $320 each – that would make it a total cost of $1,600 for all of their flights if they booked with a Spanish IP address.
If they booked with a UK IP address then the exact same flights on the very same dates would cost $2,040. Using a Spanish IP address would then provide Dav with an incredible saving of $440! That’s a saving made only by using a VPN to change their geolocation.
Could this type of savings be made when booking the rest of their vacation?
Step 2 – Booking Accomodation
Whilst Dave was booking the flights his wife Vanessa was busy researching the best prices for their accommodation. A friend of hers had recommended a particular resort in Kissimmee, Florida. The resort had two large pools, kids entertainment, a gym and a good restaurant. On top of all that the townhouses themselves were clean, spacious and even had their own private hot tubs. Sounds perfect, right?
Searching for the available dates without using a VPN i.e. based in London, UK the price for the Three Bed Townhouse with the all important private hot tub is $1,479 excluding taxes. With the taxes the actual total comes to $1929.
Vanessa then continued to search for the same accommodation using a number of different VPN servers. She included India, Canada, US, France and Israel as well as a couple of other locations. The results however were not as promising as she had initially hoped.
Every result came back with a more or less identical price no matter where the searching server was located. There were some small differences due to currency fluctuations but these weren’t really worth noting as they were only for a few dollars. Some other results appeared cheaper initially but that was due to them being quoted excluding taxes. Once the relevant taxes were included the prices became nearly identical (no matter what your location).
Perseverance, perseverance…..
Not being one to give up Vanessa persevered and continued with her searches for the rest of the evening. She continued using the same methods and used a number of different comparison websites on various VPN server locations. Eventually Vanessa did find a cheaper price on a price comparison website for the exact same dates. These prices were returned however no matter what the server location. This would indicate that the results had more to do with the websites themselves rather than the location of the search.
This therefore appears to be contrary to the claims made by a number of VPN promoters. No matter what Vanessa did using the VPN it did not provide any real savings on the accommodation she was looking to reserve. Rather it would seem that any savings were obtained from certain websites no matter where you are located.
These results are more than a little disappointing. Dave and Vanessa stayed upbeat however and reminded themselves that they had already saved a few hundred dollars on their flights they were ready to move onto the next stage.
The next step is to investigate if there are any savings to be made booking a rental car.
Step 3 – Renting A Vehicle
The final part of the jigsaw for Dave and Vanessa is organising a car so that they can travel between the attractions in Florida. They will want to visit the Disney parks as well as the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Next on the agenda is getting around Florida. This time Dave sets out to rent a car for the full 11 days of the holiday. Dave knows he can save some money by hiring a normal sized vehicle no need for a more expensive people carrier as there are only 5 of them travelling.
Vehicle Requirements
He logs onto a well known car hire company website and inputs his requirements. His requirements are as follows:
- 5 seater vehicle with air conditioning
- Pick up / drop off point will be Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Rental period of 11 days total – 20/05/2020 until 31/05/2020
- Unlimited mileage
Dave puts the above information into the search bar on the car rental website. The geolocation tools utilised by the website correctly locates Dave in London. Here are his search results:
The cheapest price from the UK for the 5 seater Mercedes with air conditioning comes to $552 dollars for a total of 11 days.
Dave then continues with the exact search using a VPN to change his IP location. First up a search as if he was located in the US itself. He presumes that it may be cheaper to rent a car in the country in which they are based. Here are his search results:
The total for the 11 days is $529, a saving of nearly €23 dollars – not much but it’s a start and at least it’s heading in the right direction.
Changing Location Via VPN
Next Dave changes his IP location using the VPN servers to yet another location – Canada. Here are the Canadian results for the exact same search.
Wow! This time he gets a result and finds a cheaper price for the same vehicle. By changing his IP address to a Canadian location Dave can get a saving of over a €150 dollars. That amount of money will be very useful for their planned shopping trips at the designer discount malls.
Summary
At the outset of this article we posed the question…can you make savings by using a VPN to book your vacation? In order to test this theory we followed a family of five through the process of booking different elements of their vacation – flights,hotels and car rental.
Their results can be summarised as follows:
- Flights – this search yielded the highest savings for the family. By changing their location with a VPN they managed to save $440 dollars.
- Hotels – unfortunately they were unable to obtain any real savings using a VPN. Any savings made was the result of using comparison websites rather than changing their location.
- Car Rental – there were definite savings to be made using a VPN on the car rental websites. Using a VPN they obtained a saving of $150 dollars.
- Total savings of just under $600 dollars is an excellent result for the family. The money saved not only more than covers the cost of the VPN but it will also provide them with much needed additional spending money.
We can further summarise that a VPN is a powerful addition to your toolbox when booking your vacation. The most impressive results were obtained when booking flights with a VPN. Hiring a car with a VPN also proved to be successful as there were some excellent savings made. There may well have been further savings available if they had been changed the type or make of vehicle. In this investigation however we kept the vehicle type exactly the same for all of the searches. This ensured that the results could be fairly compared with one another. The only real disappointment was in relation to booking the hotel accomodation using the VPN. No matter the location used in carrying out the searches there were no real savings to be made. We took the view that a saving of just a few dollars did not warrant any special mention.
What Did We Learn?
What are the take away lessons from our research? In order to achieve the best prices possible it’s highly recommended to approach the task methodically. Here are the steps (in order) that we recommend when searching for flights:
- Write down your search criteria clearly before you start. This way you will be able to input the same search parameters every time. This will ensure that any results may be easily compared.
- Use a flight comparison site first such as skyscanner or kayak.
- Activate your VPN and choose a different server in a different country.
- Open an incognito or private browser.
- Carry out the same search using the same website. Did you achieve any savings?
- Carry out steps 3 – 5 a few more times.
- Once you have identified the cheapest airline go directly to their website.
- Run the same search directly on the airline website. Keep changing your location each time.
Following the above steps should provide you with the best opportunity of making a saving when booking your flights with a VPN.
Please feel free to let us know how you get on in the comments below.
Which VPN Is Best To Book Cheap Flights?
There are a number of VPN providers promoting their use as a means of saving money when booking items online.
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