Be open to experience, there is a beautiful world out there …
Accommodation is the highest expense when traveling and can take a lot of your time searching. It is obviously very important to have a shelter and a place to sleep at night that’s why we want to share with you how we find places to stay while on the road, the tools we use, and our experience with it. This will help you save time researching and remove accommodation cost, which is one-third of travel costs.
When we started traveling we thought that the only places where we’ll end up sleeping were hostels or hotels but fortunately, there are more options. There are many ways to live for free or with a minimum cost plus you’ll get to live more like a local. There was never a night where we didn’t have a safe place to sleep. It is possible to have free accommodation and travel continuosly. The most important thing: be open to experience.
Here are the tools we use. We always look for the free ones first and if we don’t get lucky with free accommodation, then we also listed down below the tools we use to find really cheap accommodations.
- Couchsurfing: We love Couchsurfing! It is a social platform and community for travelers where you can search for hosts in over 200,000 cities all over the world and request to stay at their homes for free. Aside from it being free, you get to meet a local that can show you unique experiences of the city. We look for hosts via Couchsurfing in every city and country we go to. We get rejected more times than we get accepted for various reasons (e.g. host unavailable or out of town, inactive users, etc.) but just request from multiple hosts and at one point the right host will accept your request. We spend 1 or 2 days just applying to a bunch of Couchsurfing hosts so make sure to allocate some time searching and reading their profiles and apply at least a week ahead to give hosts enough time to respond and coordinate with you. Couchsurfing is fun because you get to meet and live with a local, get a multicultural exchange, and get free accommodation. There are a lot more tips and tricks on how to use Couchsurfing (e.g. safety, creating your profile, getting verified, etc.) but we’ll put it in a separate article soon. For now, feel free to message us if you want more tips and tricks on Couchsurfing.
- House Sitting: This is the perfect option for us when we’re looking for some stability after many months on the road. In exchange for looking after someone’s house and pet(s) while the owner is away, you get free accommodation. And, it’s not just a couch or a bed, you get to stay in a house with the comfort of having a kitchen, living room, and if you’re lucky, your host sometimes will leave their car also with you. There are multiple websites where you can search for house sitting opportunities but what we recommend is Trusted House Sitters because it has the largest community worldwide. Use this link to get a 20% discount on your membership. We did our first house sitting in Alaska and we had free accommodation for 2 months for free! We saved a total of $2,000 on accommodation and car rental.
- Tent: We never camped before in our lives and we never thought that we would until we started this travel lifestyle. We borrowed tents during the first year of our travel then we realized that it’s a really good option so we invested and bought our own tent last Christmas of 2018. For us, it is a great option to be in contact with nature, have some adventures, and to minimize the cost of living. Just a reminder to be aware of camping rules and permits. Some cities like Hawaii require a permit to camp. In our experience, the best option is to camp on private campgrounds or properties with permission from the owner of course. This way you don’t need to go through the hassle of getting a permit plus you get to meet a local, the owner, and share food and stories with them. Our first experience living in a tent was in Siargao Island, Philippines. We lived in a tent for 3 weeks for free, in front of the beach, and met a lovely and very hospitable family. Our second experience living in a tent was in Hawaii. We set up our tent inside a mango farm of a very kind family and then in a private campground by the beach. The tent became our home for a month. Watch this video about this experience. We realized that “house” is not a synonym of “home”.
- Volunteer Work: We all have skills and you can definitely use your skills in exchange for accommodation plus it feels good to help. We were able to get free accommodation in Hawaii by helping out restore a farm and in the Philippines by helping build an eco-hostel and making granola. We found these opportunities via word of mouth but there are multiple sites where you can find free accommodation and sometimes food also in exchange for work. It depends on the host but usually, you’re expected to do volunteer work 4-6 hours per day on specific days with a minimum of a 1-week stay although most of the time the hosts are very flexible with schedule. The famous websites are Work Away and Helpx. We haven’t personally used these sites but we’ve met a lot of travelers who’s done it and had an amazing experience. We’re planning to try this in South America this year so we’ll keep you guys updated and we’ll probably create a video about that experience.
- Friends and Family: It’s always good to connect or re-connect with relatives and friends from different parts of the world so when you’re traveling, always find time to message them and visit them. Remember that what really makes your travel memorable is the simple act of kindness and the connections from people you meet so why not meet your friends and family and make lasting memories with them? Be sincere and contact them with the intention of really connecting with them before asking to host you on your trip. It’s worth it, not because of the free accommodation, but because relationships are important.
- Word of Mouth: We love when this magic happens! We experienced these 3 amazing experiences just from meeting locals. We were able to live for free with a very generous host family in Hawaii and we were able to live for free on two remote islands in the Philippines just by meeting people. This world is a wonderful place if you talk to people, ask, and help in return.
When all the free accommodation options listed above doesn’t work out then we look for the cheapest option and decide based on the purpose of our travel and our budget for that country. Most of the time we only end up having to pay for accommodation because of our own time limitation and schedule. It is important to take note that you have to be more flexible with your schedule to get better options on the free accommodations above. If you are traveling for a long-time or traveling full-time like us, then time wouldn’t be much of a constraint. Take note that traveling slowly is way much better and cheaper than traveling fast, trying to see so many sights, and doing many activities in a short time. But anyway, sometimes we have to set our limits and define specific dates and comfort that we want, so here are the other paid options that we use for accommodations. The good thing is that there are lots of online discount codes that you can use so always look out for that. Check-out some of the links below that you can use for discounted prices:
- Hostels: In cheaper countries like in South East Asia, you can get a really good value for your money on hostels. You can stay in a hostel for $3-$7 and sometimes it includes breakfast. Staying in hostels is a good option for meeting other travelers especially when you’re traveling alone. You get to meet people from different parts of the world, share some tours, activities, and expenses and sometimes you can meet a good travel buddy if you’re both going through the same route. We use Booking.com or Hostel World when booking hostels but from our experience, we get better discounts using Booking.com plus they have good customer service. Use this link to get discounted prices on your next reservation with Booking.com.
- Airbnb: In some expensive countries in North America and Europe or some touristy destinations, Airbnb can be cheaper especially if you’re traveling as a couple like us. For example in Hawaii or in Patagonia, hostels are $20 per night per person which would be $40 per night for the two of us, but you can find accommodations in Airbnb for $28-$35 per night. It ends up cheaper and you’ll have options for a private bedroom and private bathroom. Use this link to get a sign-up discount if it’s your first time using Airbnb.
- Hotel: The last and easiest option is booking a hotel. This is our very last option because we would rather use our money to extend our travel for a longer period of time rather than pay for an expensive hotel. For us, we prioritize traveling and local experience over hotel services so we would only book and pay for a hotel for very specific purposes or special occasions like when we want to treat ourselves with some luxury. The good thing is that you can book hotels for free using credit card reward points, airline miles, or hotel points. We use HiltonHonors, SPG, IHG Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, or American Express Membership Rewards. Using points is a whole new topic for another article so, for now, I’ll redirect you to The Points Guy. That site has lots of resources that helped us to collect and use points for our travels. And if we don’t want to use our points to book a hotel, we simply use Booking.com, it has good discounts, refund options for hotels, and reliable customer service.
We hope this article helps you with your travels and brings you closer to your dream of traveling the world. Please share to your friends and feel free to leave a comment or ask any questions below. Chau!
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