For years, so-called “travel bloggers” have been professing how they have “traveled for free” or spent $4.29 for a trip which normally would cost $70,000.00; and they will tell you how they did it and how you can do it, too — especially when they gave up their day job working 20 hours per day and nine days per week to live a life of leisure while moving nomadically from one country to another…
Scoring the Travel Trifecta Is Not Easy To Do.
…but what you just read is typically not possible for most people. The reality is that anyone who spent pennies on the dollar for a trip did not take into account the opportunity cost which is involved in earning enough miles and points to “pay” for those trips, as they can literally spend days of their time investing an abundance of effort to conjure those seemingly impossible results.
The truth of the matter is that few people have the time to spend in achieving similar results. That is because they have to score what I call the “travel trifecta”, which is when one can get a great deal — whether using cash or miles and points — on all three components of a trip: travel via airplane, lodging, and a rental vehicle; and the schedules all align reasonably well…
…and the main reason is simple: because those three components rarely align well. For example, you might find an amazing deal on a room at a hotel property — but the schedule of an airline does not match; or rental cars are scarce.
Final Boarding Call
What are known as mistake fares can be part of the equation of scoring that travel trifecta — but this article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of securing a mistake fare, which has similar issues to those of the travel trifecta.
The travel trifecta is not impossible to achieve — but it can take so much time and effort that it might not be worth the savings of cash or miles and points which you can achieve. Even the best of the best in the business cannot do it on a consistent basis.
I have been fortunate to have achieved it — but it is indeed a rarity.
If you have scored the travel trifecta yourself, please impart your experience in the Comments section below…
Photograph ©2019 by Brian Cohen.
