Do you need to use a VPN to pay less for airline tickets? Here is my personal experience
A question I am often asked when talking about "crazy" fares or particularly discounted tickets is whether I use [...]
A question I am often asked when I talk about "crazy" fares or particularly discounted tickets is Whether I use a VPN to book my tickets. The quick answer is NO, I have never found any convenience in using a VPN to book tickets, on the contrary I use Express VPN for years to protect me when I'm out and about, when I have to connect to a wi-fi I don't know, to a public hot spot, and I don't want to worry about where my data goes.
What is a VPN
In this article:
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service that encrypts the connection and runs it through remote servers, making it difficult for others to monitor online activities and actual geographic location. I have been using Express VPN daily for years, I have been using it since to follow US serial and watch HULU it was necessary to be "physically" in the United States. Of course on the contrary when I am outside Italy I use VPN to locate myself in Milan or Catania, to take advantage of all the services that have geographical security blocks. For example, to access my corporate intranet, the management of some of my publishing projects, and if I am outside Europe, to watch games by taking advantage of my subscriptions to Sky and other streaming services.
Above all, however, I use VPN to protect my browsing when I'm in places where I take advantage of free wifi, when in doubt better to make life difficult for attackers, so using a solution like this helps.
Discount tickets and VPN
Let's start with one thing that is certain and that is. no one will ever disprove: to save money on award tickets, it makes no sense at all to use a VPN. Putting yourself in Botswana at 3 a.m. on a Wednesday with an 8-year-old pc is not going to magically make a Qsuite ticket cost half as many points as it would without all these arrangements.
Moving on to cash tickets, I can say that in 10 years I have never found confirmation of the legend that the VPN helps to unearth certain rates. Or at least it doesn't help much more than being able to research and make reservations from national sites or currencies other than the Euro.
Some examples
The most striking example was the recent error fare of All Nippon Airlines, the one on which we have jumped in thousands and thousands of travelers, an insane rate, so insane that there are those who have booked the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in tickets. I had booked without any technological aids, simply by entering the company's website for the Vietnamese market. Doing so and paying in local currency triggered the crazy fare.
Other times we have talked about interesting, convenient and special rates. Recently we wrote about the possibility of Fly to Bangkok in business class from Milan for less than €1,000, again no need to use a VPN. Airlines and booking websites often use complex pricing strategies based on several factors, including the date of booking, popularity of the flight, season, seat availability, and (perhaps) the geographical location of the passenger.
It is true, however, that some websites might show you different prices based on your geographical location, and in some situations a VPN might seem useful to "hide" your true location, but not being able to know whether the low price is offered to those in Sofia rather than Miami, it becomes a real needle-hunt in the haystack.
How I hunt down low prices
I have already said this several times, I use Google Flights heavily and the possibilities of setting automatic alerts on a myriad of routes where I weave together different airports of outbound and inbound, different dates and classes of travel. That way when I get the right alert I rush to book the ticket. In view of the 2024 summer vacation in the U.S. I would already set up a series of research from easily accessible airports in northern Italy and Nice (I live in the province of Savona) with destination airports in the American West Coast and mid west.
Flexible dates, flexible airports, and Google's algorithm ready to alert me as soon as the price drops/rises above a certain level. Not to mention that some offers, coupons or other promotional initiatives might pop up that the algorithm would not be able to intercept such as newsletters from loyalty programs or special promotional campaigns to launch new routes.
Express VPN
As mentioned I have been using Express VPN for years, a solid, secure and good product at a very competitive price. If you are looking for a product to which you can entrust, with a single subscription, all your devices starting from your home router to cell phones, ipads and laptops you can try it and Take advantage of the promo for TFC readers that provides 3 months free And a discount of almost 50%.
