Did you know that your location or IP address could spike your travel costs? Reportedly, ticketing and travel companies charge you more for airline tickets or even rental cars (even for the same product), depending from where you book the service. Statistics reveal that a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles cost roughly $1500 more when booked from Lithuania ($5,424.08) than from New Zealand ($2929.54), and local car hire in Texas was priced about $400 more when requested from Brazil ($747.49) than from Germany ($310.08). Luckily, you don’t need to move to one of these countries in order to book your trips cheaper. Instead VPN services provide you a way of taking a virtual trip to another country so you can book your next trip from a country for which travel prices are lower.
What Makes You An Easy Target?
The many features on your mobile device or computer – which help with browsing the Internet, navigation and connectivity – are the culprits here. Your IP address (client device) is a definite indicator of your location, and so are the GPS settings. Websites also widely make use of cookies and geo-location tagging API’s to tap the details of visitors, and the company can literally read your location when you access their website. Last but not the least, your Wi-Fi connection can also give away location details.
The very information the firms use to offer location-specific services can prove to be a disadvantage in this case.
How Can You Cover Your Tracks?
There are, of course, a few tried and tested ways to fake another location to avail discounted fares and rentals:
- Make sure to delete cookies each time you get online. Alternatively, you can also disable them.
- Travel companies usually have country- or region-specific websites. Try to access two or more international sites for the same product to check if the deals offered are any cheaper.
- You could also totally fake your location by changing your IP address, by connecting to a VPN server located in a different country. Establishing this connection will automatically assign a new IP address to your device, which will now be traceable to a different location. Accessing the travel website from the new IP address/location will help you avail better deals offered for customers of that region. You can of course browse and compare prices by connecting to different VPN’s and settle for the cheap deal.
Video Tutorial: Saving Money on Car Rentals
For more info and statistics, check Golden Frog's infographic with background information and in-depth research into this matter.
While VPN’s are all about secure access to information on corporate or business data networks, they can today also double up as keys that unlock best discounts on flight tickets or car rentals.
However, changing VPN’s may not be that simple. There are several VPN service providers offering custom out-of-the-box solutions, but you need to evaluate them before settling for the right one. A free 3-day VPN trial is available with VyprVPN that you can try out the next time you plan to travel, with no commitment free trial offers available with other providers in the VPN space as well. You could even get a trial or limited free account just for making the bookings of your next trip without ever having to pay for the service. You’ll definitely be surprised to learn you’ve been taken for a costly ride all this while!
Best VPN Services of 2023
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