There are a lot of really inexpensive places to travel to in the world. If you focus only on traditional hot spots for travel such as the Caribbean, western Europe, Polynesia, or basically anywhere in the United States, travel seems to be quite expensive and if that is the only place people look, travel IS really expensive. This is why folks need to look beyond these popular getaways and start to look at places like Central and South America, as well as South East Asia.
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It's appropriate that this image has Thai bath in the coin jar, because that was one of the first countries I traveled to abroad and was one of my first introductions to how inexpensive the "rest of the world" actually is.
There is a way to make these places even cheaper though, if you can imagine that.
For example: In somewhat popular places to travel to such as Costa Rica and Mexico, there is a high season that takes place during the American and Canadian winter. Many people from US and Canada will completely relocate during the harsh winters of their own countries and take up residence in the countries of their tropical neighbors to the south. Even though the prices are still cheap compared to their home countries, these "snow birds" manage to double or even triple the prices that are charged for accommodation during the rest of the year.
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This is particularly true during the Christmas and New Year time of year and friends of mine that are involved in the tourism industry refer to this as "peak season." This is the time of year where all businesses charge as much as they can get away with and those of us that live here the rest of the year kind of groan about how expensive everything has become. The holiday snow birds are maybe unaware that the prices are inflated and I certainly don't begrudge the business owners for charging as much as they can get for the product or service that they offer. Supply and demand dictate the prices of everything all over the world, after all.
If you can manage to get time off during the time of year that people consider to be "low season" the opposite is the case as well. Normally this will be during summer months where North Americans tend to stay in their home areas. However, if you have always wanted to travel to somewhere south of the border, you maybe should be looking at June through September if you want to find the best bargains. During this low season the already inexpensive prices for especially accommodation drops even further to 50% off or more. I have seen certain guesthouses that have an attached restaurant that will offer guests their accommodation for free if they eat 2 meals a day at the restaurant. Of course these are not fancy places but they are smack in the center of the highlights of that particular region.
Flights also tend to be significantly cheaper during this time of year because again, there isn't anywhere near as much demand for them.
Another massive benefit to traveling during low season to a wide variety of countries is the fact that there are going to be far fewer tourists and therefore, you can feel as though you have the place to yourself. During the peak season it can be a bit annoying at touristy places because every single place that you visit is absolutely packed during those 3 weeks or so.
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This is a photo of someone's Christmas holiday vacation in Puerta Vallarta, which is a popular beach in the south of Mexico. Does that look like something that you would enjoy? That mass of people looks like something that you would have to pay me to participate in, not the other way around.
The downside of traveling during any country's low season is going to be mostly weather-oriented. In Mexico, it is going to be brutally hot by a lot of people's standards but of course this depends a great deal on which part of the country you go to. In South East Asia, certain times of year that are really cheap coincide with the rainy or even typhoon season and obviously this is going to have some ramifications on how much outdoors time you can expect to enjoy.
Basically, if you are a budget traveler like I am and you are looking for a really cheap vacation somewhere, just go ahead and plan on going for a long time and taking the weather as it comes. For me, I would much rather be able to live nicely off of $1000 a month and take a rain day here and there than spend 4 times that amount to be somewhere with perfect weather and always be bumping into thousands of other tourists.
Travel doesn't have to be expensive but you do need to be a bit smart about it!
It's really easy to find out what the low season is in any country. All you have to do is type in "low season" and the name of the country and voila! You've got it halfway figured out!