Vacation Freebies, Travel Freebies

This page will list all the information on AF.c that is related to vacation freebies and travel freebies. Some families and individuals save up for the entire year (or years) just to go on vacation. This page has some options for alleviating some expenses on a travel budget.

Completely Free Vacations

Full vacation packages are given away on a regular basis through sweepstakes and contests. The main tips with winning vacation prizes are

1. you should be advised that you have to pay taxes for the fair market value of all winnings, and
2. PAY ATTENTION TO THE RULES! If you don’t follow the rules of the sweeps or contest, you are automatically disqualified, so you don’t win. The rules also tell you about certain conditions, such as specified dates when you have to go, or air fare may only covered when departing from a specific city. If you can’t travel on the date offered, or you can’t afford to get yourself to the city of departure, then do you really want to win the vacation for which you have to pay taxes?

Try to get your travel expenses covered through your job. If you go for any business-related reason your job may cover all or part of your expenses and/or if you own the business you can deduct the expenses from your taxes. See perk freebies and business expenses are free to the personal budget.

See also get paid to travel below.

Free Transportation, Free Car Rides, Bus Fair, Airplane tickets or Train Rides

Some books on travel freebies go into extensive detail about air miles programs. They’re aren’t actually free because you have to spend money to get the air miles, however they’re worth mentioning since they offer a substantial discount. As always, with any rewards program it is recommended to consciously avoid spending more money just to reach the rewards threshold. Spending habits should be the same whether you have the rewards program or not.  Also, do not carry any credit card debt from month to month, otherwise you’ll pay more in interest than you’ll receive with any rewards. See Rewards Programs. See also Frequent Flyer Guide by Webflyer.

Volunteer to get bumped if you have the time (try not to check luggage), you could get a free flight, free hotel and free meal. Get a free flight by getting bumped, read about what airlines are actually required to do when they overbook and bump passengers to other flights. If you get bumped, know your rights.

Get a free ride with someone who happens to be going in your direction. This is essentially hitch hiking online, but it’s called “ride sharing” when pre-arranged instead of standing on the road with a raised thumb. Just make sure you can get a ride coming back, LibreTaxi, Arcade City.

How to Drive Across the Country for Free is an article that explains how to offer a car delivery service to get free road trip transportation. Just make sure you have a way of getting back. The main sites listed for offering this service is AutoDriveAway.com, TorontoDriveAway.com and MoveCars.com.

Not actually free, but deserves honorable mention: Bolt Bus and Megabus offer a graded fare scale where the first few tickets are as low as $1. You have to be quick to buy these tickets and these bus companies aren’t available everywhere.

See also Car Wrap Advertising, Free Car & Free Public Transit.

See also get paid to travel below.

Free Lodging and Accommodations

Sleep on a couch, people in the cities you want to visit may let you sleep on their couch for free: Couchsurfing.com, GlobalFreeLoaders.com, BeWelcome.org, HospitalityClub.org. This option may be more for the individual or couple than the traveling family.

House Swap (or house switching), trade homes with someone in the city that you want to visit and neither one of you have to pay for lodging. Some free services are listed here. Although these sites at least charge a fee for listing, the fee is always less than a hotel stay and it may offer an element of security. People won’t usually pay money to list, search or contact swapping homes members for scams when they have ample free resources such as Craigslist. You can also swap with someone you know or place a classified ad in the newspaper. This idea became more popular after the movie The Holiday.

• HomeExchange.com (free to find offers from other members, charges $9.95/month to list offers)
• Intervacus.com (free 14 trial membership with no credit card requirement, otherwise $100/year)
• Homebase-Hols.com (29 pounds/year for listing and contact privileges)
• HomeLink.org ($119 membership fee/year)

Rent your house while you’re on vacation. Use the funds to cover some of your expenses. Article at Kiplinger.com describes more. Another article here. See also Free Housing for more ideas and resources.

Free camp grounds, Recreation.gov is a centralized site that offers information on government-owned parks and properties where you can camp for free either all year-long or on particular days depending on the property. Also try nps.gov.

Never underestimate the value of a “staycation“, where you stay in your own home and become a tourist in your own city. Some may think it’s not as exciting because they don’t go far from home, but the time you actually try it may be the time where you finally say you don’t need a vacation to recover from your vacation.

See also get paid to travel below.

Free Tourist Information, Free Things to Do

See Free Entertainment for tons of ideas of free things to do.

See Freebies by State to find free things to do.

Check the tourism websites of the cities, counties and states to where you are traveling. They often have tourism packets that they will mail to you for free.

Free Samples: Travel & Vacation.

See also Travel & Vacation Freebies Online for information and review of travel locations.

Find free tours in many major cities: GlobalGreeterNetwork.info

Free entrance days at national parks.

Find free museums at FreeMuseumDay.org.

Get Paid to Travel

I’ve heard that there are agencies that offer to hire live carriers for packages that need to be delivered across the country or in other countries. Once the package is delivered, the person hired is free to tour around. I’m currently researching this to see how valid it is. I’ll post some resources once I find them. If you have any verifiable info on this subject please let us know. The book Freebies for Seniors suggests offering service as an air courier and to check the yellow pages for local “air courier service” companies.

Article from Business Insider: Get Paid to Travel.

Get a job on a cruise ship as a teacher/instructor (for almost any class you can think of if you’re an expert in a field, the term “expert” used loosely).

Get paid to travel with the US Speakers program if you are an expert in any field (the term “expert” NOT used loosely here). Contact the Bureau of International Information.

Get paid to travel with the US Peace Corps, PeaceCorps.gov.

Become a honeymoon tester or tourism ambassador.

Become a Human Billboard.