How to have a free holiday
It sounds like an impossible dream, but with a bit of planning and forethought, you can have a great holiday abroad, without handing over a penny!
Free flights!
The first step in any holiday is how you get to your location. And if you need to fly, there are ways to get on that plane gratis!
The best way is of course Airmiles. You have two routes that you can go down here really - the official Airmiles scheme, or the British Airways scheme.
Keeping it BA
Let's start with the latter.
The easiest way to build up your BA Miles is to sign up to a special credit card.
The first option is the British Airways American Express Card. With this card, you get 1,000 BA Miles if you spend £500 within the first three months of having the card, with a further mile for every pound you spend thereafter. Best of all, if you spend £20,000 in one year, you’ll receive another ticket for a companion, completely free.
The second card is the British Airways American Express Premium Plus Amex. With this card you get 6,000 BA Miles on your first purchase, with 1.5 miles for each pound you spend (and double that if you spend on a BA flight or holiday).
There are a load of other ways to build up your BA Miles collection, from staying with one of British Airways' hotel partners, to shopping at HMV, John Lewis, eBay and Tesco.
Just remember you do need to pay off your credit card bill in full each month, or the interest you will pay will cost you far more than the airmiles you receive.
The Airmiles option
It's a very similar arrangement with Airmiles.
Again, you can sign up to an affiliated credit card; in fact, you actually get two credit cards - the Lloyds TSB Airmiles Duo American Express Card and the Lloyds TSB Airmiles Duo MasterCard, with 1 mile for every £10 you spend on the former and 1 mile for every £50 you spend on the latter.
If you sign up before 30 June, you can earn one airmile for every £1 you spend on the American Express card for the first three months. That’s certainly an offer worth snapping up!
Related how-to guide
Have a cheap holiday
Find out how to cut the cost of your flights, get discounts, tip correctly, spend wisely, get cashback and most importantly, cut the cost of your holiday.
See the guideThe final way to ramp up your Airmiles, and it's something I really like, is to trade in your old mobile phone. Apparently my old one is worth about 300 miles - much better than trading it in for 30 quid I reckon.
Free accommodation
Once you have built up a decent hunk of airmiles, that's your travel sorted. The next step is getting a place to stay.
Time to go couchsurfing!
If you don't mind staying on someone's sofa, why not try couchsurfing?
The concept is pretty simple, you sign up to a site like Couchsurfing.org, search for the city where you want to stay and get in contact with fellow members from that area. Hopefully you can then arrange to stay in the spare room, or even just sleep on the sofa, of your new friend.
By signing up yourself, you do put your sofa up for grabs, but you aren't obligated to accept any prospective travellers yourself.
It sounds awful to me, but hey, it's free and potentially you get to make some new friends and get an inside-scoop on the city you're staying in.
Personally, however, I prefer this next option...
Holiday swaps
Now this is far more civilised! Sign up to a holiday swap website, and you get to trade your home for somebody else's for the duration of your holiday.
The biggest homeswapping site is Homelink, which boasts more than 13,000 homeswappers, covering 72 countries worldwide.
It works in much the same way as the couchsurfing website - you pick which area you want to look at, and check out the various available properties. And while you live in your new friend's place for a fortnight, they get to stay at your house.
John Fitzsimons looks at some easy ways to keep the cost of your travel insurance to a minimum.
There are also an absolute load of different sites to consider.
If you are sticking to the UK, then your first port of call should be UKHolidaySwapShop, a site which only deals with properties on our shores. But if you're planning an overseas trip, other great sites to consider include Homebase Holidays and Geenee.
The one thing to remember with these sites is that while the homeswapping process itself is cheap, many of them charge an annual fee just for being members of the scheme. Indeed, with Homelink, you will be shelling out £115 a year!
If you want more information on homeswapping, then I would definitely recommend having a read of Go On Holiday - For Free!
Work, rest and play
Once you get to your holiday destination, there are ways to raise a bit of spending money. Good sites to check out for a bit of holiday work include Seasonworkers.com and Jobsabroadbulletin.co.uk.
However, I'm a big fan of the idea of contacting a few travel magazines, and trying to secure a gig writing about your holiday. A friend of mine actually got paid to write about the extreme sports he tried out while on his break - the magazine even paid for his sporting expenses!
Having said that, I reckon that once you've saved a bit of cash on your flights and accommodation, you might as well put some of that cash towards having the holiday of a lifetime - a holiday should be your chance to get away from it all!
More: Five ways to cut the cost of your hotel! | Have a cheap holiday
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