How Slow Travel can Save You Money (and Lead to a More Fulfilling Trip)

For your last trip, how long did you travel? Four days? A week? Did you know that traveling for a longer period of time, also known as slow travel, can have its benefits? The biggest one is saving money. But there are others you should definitely consider.

Save more money

Slow traveling has allowed us to use our money in a better way. We have time to fully enjoy the experience in each destination. Plus, the ROI on big-ticket items is a lot better when we stay in one place for a while.

Lodging

For instance, when we went to Vienna, we decided to stay for five weeks. We stayed in an Airbnb. We received a 20% discount off of the price for staying at least a month. This meant that our cost for lodging in Vienna was comparable to our rent at the time. Instead of lodging being an added expense, it merely took the place of our rent.

Discounts like these for long term stays are quite common. We saw discounts for week-long and monthly stays. If you can meet one of these time frames, you’ll save money.

Flights

Besides lodging, flights tend to be the other biggest expense on a trip. We had been able to earn enough miles for the return trip. However, we still paid a few hundred dollars to actually get to Europe. But, we only had to pay for one flight for a long trip. If you divide the cost of the flight over the total number of days we spent on the trip, the ROI is a lot better.

All the other things

A similar thing happened for many big ticket items. We were able to buy monthly metro passes (which were cheaper per day than weekly ones). We bought SIM cards for our cell phones and were able to buy monthly packages from a discount carrier.

Added flexibility

If you’re planning on traveling for a while, you usually gain a lot of flexibility on your dates. We were able to adjust our initial flight by a day in order to save a few hundred dollars on our flight. Even though we got stuck with a long journey (24 hours), in relation to the rest of the trip, this negligible due to the cost savings.

My dad visited us in Austria for a week. Because he only had so many days to work with, he had fewer options on travel days, routes, and costs. He ended up paying a lot more for his flight because he wanted one that took up less travel time.

It also severely limited the days he was able to do certain activities. It ended up raining and being cold five out of seven days he was there. (We had previously been experiencing comfortable weather.) This left him with only a couple days to choose from for the day trip to Salzburg he wanted. On the other hand,  we didn’t feel nearly as restricted by the weather and other things that were out of our control because we had so much time to work with.

Other benefits of slow travel

Live like a local

Being able to live like a local gives traveling a different feel. It is much more authentic. I love that we were able to do the little things like go grocery shopping. We found some interesting foods and cooked them in the apartment. We were able to try a lot more everyday foods as opposed to just restaurant fare.

Plus, we were able to just experience the everyday things that happen when you get to know an area. We found local fairs when they were happening. We took leisurely trips to the park to hang out.

See and do more

The longer you’re in a destination, the more you are able to see. We took hikes in the local mountains. We took day trips to other cities. We just wandered around neighborhoods just to see what we would find. We saw a ton more in our month there than would have been possible otherwise.

A more relaxed time

While my dad was in Vienna, we had days packed with things every minute. It was awesome but exhausting. On a longer trip, you can be more leisurely about what you see. We got a museum pass that got us into a few different museums. Since it was good for a year, we had the whole month to go back and explore each museum in detail. We could take our time without feeling bad.

Slow travel has helped us save money and see a lot more. We’ve had more authentic experiences that don’t break the bank. Where would you slow travel to if you could? Let us know in the comments!

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash