How to travel on a budget – four experts share their tips for wallet-friendly wanderlust

Scott Keyes hadn’t given much thought to visiting Taiwan or the Italian city of Milan. But when he found bargain basement deals to each – US$130 to Milan and US$169 to Taiwan, both round trips from the United States – Keyes, who is founder and chief executive of the travel deal site Scott’s Cheap Flights, couldn’t resist booking them. The savings made the trips that much sweeter.

“I felt completely light and airy, like I was playing with house money,” he says. “I ended up having more fun, because I didn’t have all this pressure hanging over my head. I was able to loosen up a little bit, because I knew I’d saved US$600, US$700, US$800 off what the flight would normally be, so what’s another glass of wine or a plate of truffle linguine or something?”

For Keyes and many others, when it comes to travel, the search for savings isn’t just about money. To some, budget travel can present a challenge or a game; it can be a framework to help with planning, a gateway to meeting like-minded adventurers or an adrenaline rush from the pursuit of the deal.

As a freelance photographer and writer specialising in travel, Anna Mazurek spends most of the year on the road, living for weeks or months at a time in different cities and countries. When we talk via Skype, her home base is a US$300-a-month studio flat in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “I’m in Asia, so I don’t like to spend more than $15 a night,” says Mazurek, who wrote the book Good with Money: A Guide to Prioritizing Spending, Maximizing Savings and Traveling More.

Staying in an apartment in a neighbourhood comes with benefits beyond the budget: she’s able to live more like a local, which allows for a deeper appreciation and understanding of the area than she’d get if she were in a luxury hotel in a tourist zone.