Five super handy tips for an unforgettable low-budget summer holiday

Holidays. Holidays. And again: vacation. It’s the topic of the hour. Every day someone from your own environment tells you where the next journey will take you or where you just came from.

And even those with few friends are constantly confronted on social media with the fact that it’s that time of year again to treat yourself to a little – or depending on your budget, longer – break from everyday life.

But holidays far away from the Swiss border are not possible for everyone: middle earners and people with low incomes will experience additional financial pressure in 2023 due to rising prices in various areas of life. Holidays? ideal scenario. It doesn’t have to stay that way: here are five tips to make your summer vacation unforgettable despite the low budget.

How you book your holiday online plays a big part in the price you pay. It therefore depends on the device with which you book your trip. According to the consumer magazine “Saldo”, there are cheaper prices for hotels and flights if you open the booking portals with your mobile phone or tablet instead of your computer.

The magazine has tested this with several holiday providers, including “Booking.com”, “Expedia.ch” and “Opodo.ch”. So you don’t book last-minute vacations at work with your computer, but with your smartphone during breaks.

It also plays a role from which country you book the trip. This is shown by a study by the German Ruhr University Bochum on the platform “Booking.com”. A check by the magazine “Saldo” confirms this: of the 18 hotels and flights tested, 14 were cheaper when booked from abroad using a VPN service.

VPN are private networks that use internet servers from other countries that you can choose freely. In this way, users can change their location so that the websites no longer know where the access is really coming from. There are several free VPN apps in the app stores.

According to “Balance”, this trick can save you hundreds of francs, depending on your destination. For example, in Hurghada, Egypt: a week in a triple room in the four-star hotel “Meraki Resort” costs 2,042 francs if you book it from Switzerland. With a VPN from Cyprus or Germany you only pay about 1637 francs – and therefore 405 francs less.

Travel providers and airlines use dynamic pricing for their offers. This means that a trip can become more expensive the more you search for it. It is therefore advisable to regularly empty the cache when looking for cheap summer holidays.

At the same time, clearing the cache is also good for your mobile device: it can free up storage space, solve battery problems and improve the speed and security of the smartphone.

Spain, Greece and Italy are popular destinations for summer holidays. These places are better avoided if you are traveling on a low budget.

According to travel providers Kuoni and Holidaycheck, Turkey, Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria are holiday destinations where you can have a lot on a small budget. There are also always last minute offers to Tunisia and Egypt that can be worthwhile.

If you are flexible with your travel time, you will find various offers on last minute websites for a week’s holiday in a 4-star hotel including flights from CHF 400 per person.

There are many ways to make an unforgettable summer vacation. Since flight prices have become increasingly expensive in recent weeks and months, traveling by train is recommended. The journey to the Swiss border is very expensive – after that it gets cheaper. Holders of an SBB GA travel card have an advantage. It would also be possible to buy a day ticket in your own municipality, which is valid throughout Switzerland and costs around CHF 30 depending on the location.

This will benefit those who definitely want to spend their summer holidays in Italy. The cheapest return trip from Chiasso to the Cinque Terre, the picturesque fishing villages below Genoa, costs about 84 francs for people between the ages of 26 and 59. If you are still looking for an affordable hotel there at short notice, it is worth contacting the hotel directly. However, this takes a lot of effort, but there are often remaining rooms that can no longer be found online.

And for those who want to have a nice holiday in Switzerland – without spending a lot of money – Watson editor Reto Fehr has many exciting insider tips for beautiful places and hiking tours.