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Spring Break on the CheapMar 22 '00 Write an essay on this topic.For the four years that I was in college I never once paid for a “packaged” spring break. On each of the three spring breaks I went on my friends and I organized our own trip and ended up saving a lot of money in the end. This is even true outside of college! My biggest success was my senior year trip to Key West. Fourteen of us went and ended up spending around $400 a person with most food, housing, and travel included! Here are some tips that I learned from that trip and others. Start looking early This is probably one of the harder things to do. You don’t always know who will be going and how many people to plan for. What I did was basically recruited a good core group of people that I knew would not back out on me and went from there. I kept a spreadsheet that basically split the cost between the amount of people I currently had on board. When time came to send in money for deposits I charged the people who were definitely in. If anyone else jumped in at the end then I charged him or her and gave money back to everyone else who had already paid. I recommend that you start looking at the very least before winter break. Any later than that and you are risking a very expensive trip. If you can, start looking as soon as you get back to school (you will be ahead of most spring breakers). Drive if you can At first I started looking at plane flights for the whole group of us. Very quickly I realized that it was going to get very expensive if we flew, especially with that many of us. So instead I looked into driving. Obviously this is not possible if you are going overseas, at least not all the way. You may notice that an airport 5 hours away has much cheaper fares. Look into renting a van or car to get you to that airport; it could save you lots of cash. On our trip we were lucky enough to borrow a conversion van that one of my friends’ dad owned. This made the 24 hour trip much more bearable. Being able to watch Austin Powers and Star Wars on a long trip definitely helps! If you aren’t lucky enough to have a van like we did then you have some options. One you can rent a van, and it really isn’t that expensive. I looked into it and it wasn’t that bad. Two, you can drive individual cars down. Since there were so many of us going down we needed cars to go along with the van. This is tough though because your car will get a lot of miles on it and it will get trashed, I guarantee it. Utilize your friends’ families resources Chances are you have at least one rich friend in your group that just happens to have a summer cottage someplace cool. Ok, maybe you don’t have that luxury, but still parents can be very valuable. Like my group, we were able to use a conversion van instead of renting one. Perhaps a parent is a travel agent so you can good deals on flights or they can help you out with reservations. Maybe you can stop at a parents’ home on the way to your destination to split up the drive. Just remember that every little bit helps. Use the Internet/ This is how I got our beautiful house in Key West. I started hunting around the web early on and stumbled onto some nice houses. I contacted these places and ended up finding a cherry of a house. It easily slept our group and the other random women that we found during the night (hehe). The person we rented from was cool and it was cheap! The Internet is a vast resource so use it to your advantage. Pack ‘em in! So that house or hotel room says it only sleeps 8? Hogwash! Most places will easily be able to sleep one and a half times the recommended amount…you just have to be sneaky. Hotels are typically a lot more hard-core about this than houses. Use your head and don’t have every check in at once. Write one big check to the hotel or house so as not to arouse suspicion. Make sure people pack sleeping bags because not everyone will get a bed. Also, get over sleeping with another of the same sex in the same bed! At times we had 4 people in the same bed (not all the same sex however). Food This is probably one of the most important tips to follow. GET A PLACE THAT HAS A KITCHEN!!! You will save hundreds of dollars on food this way. Simply pool everyone’s money and designate people as grocery shoppers. Then buy cheap food in bulk, and don’t buy name brand. Then each night can be a certain person’s turn to cook and clean. Overall, you can have a kick butt vacation without spending an arm and a leg. Plan right and don’t get snagged on some package deal that kills your wallet. Good luck, and don’t drink too much.  |
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