Welcome back, Fellow Travelers!

Let’s face it—flights, hotels, and car rentals are usually the three biggest expenses when planning a trip. And while we love a good adventure, we don’t exactly love watching our budget vanish before the trip even begins.
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So, while planning our upcoming return to South Africa, we pulled out 2 of our go-to money-saving hacks and instantly shaved about $150 off our car rental and nearly $50 off our hotel. Not bad for a few minutes of extra planning, right?
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We figured—why keep these little wins to ourselves when we can share them with our travel-loving community? If you’re looking to cut costs without cutting corners, these tips might just come in handy for your next trip.

1) 📱 Mobile-Only Pricing

Okay, so 90% of our travel planning happens on a laptop. Big screen, full keyboard—what’s not to love?

But when it comes time to actually book the hotel or car rental, we always check the mobile app before hitting “confirm.”

We usually use Booking.com for hotels, and here’s the thing: more often than not, the mobile app sneaks in a “mobile-only” price that’s lower than what you see on the desktop.

For example, when we were booking Wildebraam Berry Estate in South Africa, the price on our laptop was $422 for a week—then boom, on the app it was $379 for the exact same stay. That’s a 43$ of savings just by taking 10 extra seconds before booking!

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It doesn’t work every single time (maybe 65% of the time, if we had to guess), but when it does, it’s such an easy win.

Try it out yourself—look up that hotel on your laptop, then pull it up again on your phone using the Booking.com app. The savings might surprise you!

2) 🗓️ Book your Car Rental early… and Recheck!

This next little trick just saved us over $150 on our car rental—and it’s almost too easy. We almost always book with DiscoverCars. They’re reliable, have some of the best rates out there, and the interface is super easy to navigate.

So, being the eager travel planners that we are, we booked our 2-week South Africa car rental months in advance. It cost us $648 (a bit pricier than usual since we were doing a one-way drop-off). Done, one less thing to worry about!

But here’s where the magic happens:
a few months later, I randomly decided to recheck the price for the same car and dates… and bam, it had dropped to $579. Thanks to DiscoverCars’ free cancellation policy, it took me about two minutes to modify our booking and grab the better deal.

Then just yesterday, curiosity struck again—and what do you know? The price had dropped again to $495. Another quick edit, and boom: we were now saving $153 compared to our original booking.

Moral of the story? Book early to lock something in, but don’t be afraid to check back in once in a while.

Oh, and pro tip: just like with hotels, the DiscoverCars app sometimes shows slightly better rates than desktop—though not quite as dramatic as hotel savings.

With just a few extra minutes and these two simple hacks, we ended up saving over $200—no spreadsheets, no coupon codes, just smart timing and a couple of clicks.

Give it a try, and if it helps you save too, let us know—we’ll totally celebrate with a virtual high five! 🎊

That's it for now!

Looking forward to bringing you new joy, inspiration, and adventures!

Ryan & Nan

WaylessTravelers