Travel on a shoestring: How to see and do everything on a budget

FROM free museum access to festival tickets — see and do more on your holiday with less. Here are six travel hacks you need to know.

TRAVELLING on limited means? No doubt the cost of exploring a foreign city adds up, but if you’ve already booked your ticket and secured your annual leave then you shouldn’t miss out once you arrive. Avoid the dreaded multi-stop-ticket and still have cash to spend on exploring with these culture-on-a-shoestring tips.

Go Your Own Way: Tour Guide Alternatives

One of the upsides to having extra cash on holidays is the ability to outsource organisation. But if a real, live tour guide or activity-booking service like Viator is out of your price range then access the wealth of resources available online.

If you have some idea of where you want to go, then an audio guide app like TourPal or PocketGuide will help you on your way. The latter covers 100 cities around the world and works by tracking users via their phone’s GPS, explaining the sites as they approach them. Using these apps will save you money and keep the planning to a minimum.

Access All Areas: Free Festival Tickets

Want to score free access to Glastonbury or SXSW? If you’re organised a couple of months in advance then consider volunteering. The type of work varies — it’s luck of the draw whether you get ticketing or post festival clean up — so be prepared to potentially miss your favourite band.

European super festivals like Roskilde and Primavera Sound use a resume submission process but the majority of the big English festivals programs (including Reading, and Glastonbury) are managed through the Oxfam Stewardship Program. Volunteering here means you can score festival access while helping to generate income for the charity.

Bus Around: Discover as you go

The Hop — on, Hop — off buses are a great, if super touristy, way to get the lay of the land in an unfamiliar place, but if the sometimes-exorbitant ticket prices put you off the benefits then snag a map from the ticket booth and find your own way to the sites. That $50 saving will come in handy when you stumble upon that combo karaoke pub.

Neighbourhood Watch

Airbnb’s Neighbourhoods let you investigate a suburb’s cafes, restaurants, bars and shops before you book accommodation but for short-on-time travellers, there are extra benefits. If you’re working with limited layover time or you are just not sure where to go exploring; use the free guides to help plan a complete day trip itinerary.

The Musee du Louvre has free admission on the first Sunday of every month.

Know your Museums: Free Access to the World’s Best Collections

There are stacks of amazing things to see and do for free if you know where to look but if you want to get access to those world-famous (read: costly) spaces like LA’s Getty Museum or the Musee du Louvre it pays to know your stuff.

Most of the bigger galleries and museums have monthly or even weekly free-entry days. MoMA’s UNIQLO Free Friday nights grant entry to all exhibitions that, during the day, will set you back a minimum $20 to see. The first Sunday of every month is free-admission day at The Louvre and dropping by between 5 and 7pm at The Museo del Prado in Madrid means you’ll bypass the $20 entry fee.

Watch Your Data

Don’t come home to a massive phone bill! Maps are one of biggest culprits when it comes to overseas data charges. If your hostel Wi-Fi is limited and you need to get to The Tate stat — use this Google Maps hack to save a map for later.

Before you leave Wi-Fi, select the mapped area you want and type ‘OK Maps’ in the search field. You’ll be prompted to save the map to your phone, and once out, can use your GPS to navigate data-free.

The Google map hack will save you hundreds.