It’s no big secret that plane flights and hotels are nearly empty Monday through Thursday and become full again Friday through Sunday. Because of this down time airlines, hoteliers, rental car agencies and entertainment venues often offer reduced rates on weekday flights, hotel stays and rentals and for the budget minded travelers it can work out as great savings.

As a basic rule it’s always cheapest if you limit your plane flights to Monday through Thursdays and fly when the crowds are already at their destinations, or have yet to take their upcoming weekend flights. In addition to saving money by flying during weekdays you’ll be saving on your sanity and patience, you’ll be rewarded with better service from less-frazzled airline staff, a wider choice in available seating and more space to breathe. Nearly always, in order to secure the best deal on your flights, you’ll need to spend a Saturday night at your destination. While flying on weekends is an expensive proposition sometimes it’s simply unavoidable, in those cases limiting your weekend take offs or departures will still offer you savings versus flying on Friday or Saturday. In addition to the savings you will get on mid-week travel–don’t forget about the saving available to travelers willing to travel on Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday, New Year’s Day and Christmas morning. The airlines are usually very empty and you can get a great deal on travel on those down days.

Most online search engines will require that you enter specific travel dates in order to search for fares, but also at Travelocity and Orbitz, you can enter just the departure and destination cities and the search engine will run a specialized search tell you which dates have the cheapest fares. In order to use this money saving search tool on Travelocity select the ‘flexible dates‘ option in the main search screen and when using Orbitz use the ‘find low fares for weekends and flexible trips‘ option. The lowest airfare for a range of dates will be displayed on the results screen and from there you can select the best deal for your budget and your calendar.

Hotels also offer greatly reduced rates during weekdays when most hotels are virtually empty, save for the random business traveler and the financially savvy vacationing family. You can look for mid-week hotel deals at sites such as Hotels.com and Price line and Hotwire. Additionally, you can get great deals on mid-week rooms at select Bed & Breakfasts across the United States at Bed & Breakfast Inns Online.com, which allows you to search for weekday Bed & Breakfast specials by State.

You can also get reduced rates on rental cars at nearly every major rental agency by searching on their individual websites for midweek specials. For example, Dollar Rent A Car recently advertised an intermediate car for $34.99 per day or a minivan for $39.99 per day, when you rent the car for 3 days or more and pickup on a Sunday through Wednesday at selected locations. This is only one of many examples of weekday rental discounts available at most of the major car rental firms.

If you are looking to take in a show at your destination, you will also get a great rate on tickets when you purchase tickets to a weekday show. An example recently found on the website of discount Broadway ticket provider, Entertainmentlink was an orchestra ticket to the Wednesday matinee of Les Miserables for only $65, as opposed to $110 for the same seat at Saturday‘s matinee showing.

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