Traveling can pose a unique set of issues; and one of them is that sometimes prices for products and services in one country can be more expensive simply because a person is either based in — or is a citizen of — another country.
Stupid Tip of the Day: Check For Lower Airfares of an Airline From a Different Country
In Latin American countries — such as Chile and Argentina as two examples — the higher prices are notoriously known as the Gringo Tax, which can be significantly more expensive for people from the United States than for local citizens.
I presented an example of this practice in this article pertaining to procuring lower airfares to Easter Island from mainland Chile which I wrote on Wednesday, April 3, 2019. A round trip itinerary between Santiago and Easter Island on a given day may cost $523.00 round trip if you purchased your ticket at the official United States Internet web site of LATAM Airlines Group…
…but booking the ticket with the exact same flights on the exact same day through the official Chile Internet web site of LATAM Airlines Group will cost you only 165,141 Chilean pesos — which converted to the approximate equivalent of $248.00 in United States dollars.
That represents a savings of $275.00 — which means that the Chilean airfare is less than half of the United States airfare.
I had a similar issue when booking a round trip flight — which was operated by Aerolineas Argentinas — from Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls. I had to book the airfare through the official Argentina Internet web site of Aerolineas Argentinas to save a significant amount of money — and I had no issues with that whatsoever.
Summary
One disadvantage of this is that the native language of the main Internet web site of an airline from another country may not have a way to be translated into your primary language. In both of the above examples, Spanish is the primary language — and sometimes choosing a different language could lead you to the Internet web site of another country with which you may not have access to the savings.
Another disadvantage is that you may have to convert the currency to one with which you are familiar.
Fortunately, both of those disadvantages are easy to resolve with free language translation and currency conversion tools which are available via the Internet.
Although I have never encountered a problem, always double check to ensure that the airline — or other entity which offers greater than one set of rates or fares — does not disqualify the eligibility of your purchase simply because you are not from another country.
Taking a few moments to check the Internet web sites of different countries of the same airline can potentially save you a significant amount of money — as well as choosing places to eat and purchase items. Avoiding paying inflated prices is possible if you look and act more like a local person and less like a typical foreign tourist — although that is not guaranteed.
All photographs ©2005 by Brian Cohen.
