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Traveling Tips

Preparing your Home for Holiday Travel

While you are likely, very excited about your upcoming plans to travel for your holiday, you need to make sure to take the time to prepare your home as well. Criminals are very aware that people travel for holiday and they look for homes to target during that period and there may be a lower risk of getting caught if people are not paying attention to your property.

Make sure you carefully check all the doors and the windows before you leave for your vacation. They should all be securely locked to prevent someone from slipping into them undetected. If you have an alarm system you want to make sure you set it, before you head out. Put fresh batteries in motion lights and outdoor video equipment that you may have installed. Don’t leave extra keys under the mat or other common locations where criminals can easily find them and walk right into your home. 

You don’t want your home to appear to be empty when you travel. If possible have a friend or neighbor stop by daily. Most criminals stake out homes, so if they see different lights on, or they see fresh footprints in the snow, they will be less likely to target your home. 

Either have someone collect your mail and newspapers daily, or put them on hold until you return from your holiday travel. Not only is this a dead give away that you are out of town, but it can also lead to identity theft. All it takes is for a criminal to get their hands on your bank statement or a credit card statement and they could wipe out your account and charge items that you will have against your credit card.

If you are traveling during the colder part of the year, have someone shovel your driveway and sidewalks. This definitely gives the impression that you are home or at least that someone is keeping a very close eye on your home. You also want to set your thermostat at a decent temperature while you are away. The added expense of the heating bill will be nothing compared to the damage from broken pipes that may have frozen due to the drop in temperatures while you were traveling. 

Make sure a friend or a neighbor has a way to contact you in the event of an emergency involving your home. Hopefully, they won’t need to contact you but having such measures in place can be very beneficial if an issue does arise. They may be able to take care of low priority issues for you, such as the sprinkler system not turning off or someone hitting your mailbox with their vehicle due to sliding on icy roads. 

It can be a very nice feeling to get away for a while, but do all you can to ensure your home will be protected while you are away. You don’t want to come home and find that it has been burglarized or later that your personal information has been compromised. Doing some planning before you travel will help to ensure everything is safe and sound when you return.


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Tips for Finding the Best Holiday  Offers Online


The internet gives us the ability to access just about anything we can imagine. This includes finding flights, trains, buses, hotel rooms, and rental cars that we can use to travel for our holiday. While most of these entities are more costly when you travel over the holidays due to the demand, you can still find some good deals if you take the time to look. 

You will generally find that you can save the most money on holiday travel if you purchase a full package deal. This is less expensive than buying everything individually. It also provides you with only one confirmation number that you need to keep track of, instead of several different ones. 

There are literally hundreds of sites online where you can look for holiday travel deals. You can search by your destination in a search engine or choose the various sites you have heard about. It is a good idea to keep a list of the sites you visit and the prices you are coming across. This way you can compare prices and easily remember where you want to go back to.

Most of the time fares will be cheaper on the web than by contacting the place directly because it saves their business time of having to set up the travel arrangements for you. Make sure you carefully read all information through because some travel deals have hidden fees that you don’t want to be held accountable for. You also need to check into the cancellation policies and about rescheduling your trip. 

Some online travel deals don’t offer any refunds at all so if a family member dies or you have an unexpected illness you won’t be able to get your money back. Even if you show up late for your flight because you got caught up at security, they won’t honor your purchase. This can be extremely risky because there are too many variables that could affect holiday travel. 

Make sure that you also pay close attention to the amount of time that you will be in the process of getting to your destination. You may find a very competitive price, but it isn’t going to be worth it if you have several connecting flights and layovers along the way. Look for direct methods to get to your destination whenever it is possible. There are simply too many delays during holiday travel to ensure you can reach those connections on time. 

Many of the sites you visit online will allow you to sign up for special offers and promotions. You should take advantage of these offers so that you don’t have to continually return to their site to check changes in prices. Some of them even allow you to enter a price so that you can be notified if the price of the trip you want drops to that price. For those that can only afford holiday travel if it fits a specific budget, this is a valuable feature. 

During your search online for holiday travel, be flexible with your dates. You will be able to save hundreds of dollars just by being willing to leave a day earlier or leaving in the evening instead of the afternoon. Those that want a specific travel arrangement will find this tie them into more expensive offers. Even if you travel a day earlier and must pay for a hotel room that additional night you could save hundreds of dollars. 

It does take some initial planning of where you want to travel and how you are going to get there to find the best travel deals. Invest a few hours of your time in getting the best price though it is well worth the savings you will get from it. Millions of people travel each year over the holidays but some of them pay more for the same trip because they didn’t search holiday travel deals online.

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