The best reasons to travel in the off season

 

We are like most families in the United States, our vacations revolve around when the kids have time off from school. Like most of you, our kids go to regular school and my husband and I work fairly normal jobs. (My husband is self employed and I am a teacher.)

For the last 12 years we have tried to travel 6 weeks out of every year. That number may seem enormous to the average American, but when you take into account 10 federal holidays, weekend trips, spring break/Easter break, Christmas break and summer break, it is easier to see how we make this happen.

However, it also means that we are often in the position of traveling during the off season.

 

Why Should You Travel in the Off Season?

Most people think of off season travel as visiting a city or country during the freezing cold of winter when nothing is open and there is nothing to do.

Although it may be colder than you like and some things may be closed there are so many benefits to traveling in the shoulder season or off season that you might be willing to deal with a few minor hassles.

Here are the reasons we choose to travel during the off season and why you should consider it too:

 

Ease of pulling the kids out of school

We try to make the most of every single day of school vacation. We always go somewhere during the kids October break, their February Break, Spring Break and long weekends. Sometimes we tack a day or two onto those breaks if my kids feel like they can easily make up the work they will miss.

Last fall we took Columbus Day weekend and drove to Camden, Maine and Acadia. We took off the Friday before the weekend so we had a great 4 day break!

Sometimes we have to pull the kids out despite one of us having a break, so we make the best decisions we can for everyone.

For example:

We decided to visit my brother in Scotland in 2018 but my kids and I are at 4 different schools with 4 completely different spring breaks! So we took the 10 days my oldest was out for Spring Break (and overlapped with my break) and pulled the younger two out of school. But that meant we were traveling to Scotland in March.

Scotland in March is cold and not as green but you really have the place to yourselves! We found so much joy in wandering the Isle Of Skye without another tourist in sight. What we lost in good weather, we made up for in fewer crowds.

 

Everything is cheaper

If you want to travel with family on a budget, this is the best way to do it!

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Flights are cheaper

We have been able to find tickets to Europe for under $300 roundtrip! We flew to Copenhagen in March for $230 a person, to Scotland in March for $290 a person and Savannah in February for $130 a person from NYC.

Off season airfares are unbelievably cheap and often you can upgrade to business for the price of a regular summer fare.

Flights are generally cheapest during the month of January, the first 2 weeks of December and October and March. If you can work out a way to travel during those months you will be rewarded with the lowest of fares.

Accommodations are cheaper

Not only that, but accommodations are generally 30% cheaper than they are in the height of summer.

Here are some examples of great deals in the off season vs. peak season.

The average price for a hotel in Paris changes consistently throughout the year. Here is a great graph from Statista that shows the average fluctuation.

 

Here is a similar graph for hotel rooms in New York City from Free Tours By Foot.

(Prices rise significantly in November and December because there is a big Christmas demand in New York City.)

Check out my printable workbook on affording travel here.

Off-season travel is less crowded

Sites are significantly less crowded during the off season or shoulder season. Instead of waiting to get into a museum you can be through the museum and on to the next thing in record time.

For example:

The CN tower in summer has an average wait time of 30-45 minutes to get to the viewing platform. When we visited Toronto in late November, we had no wait time at all. Because of that, we were able to fit more sightseeing in that day!

Let’s say you want to travel to Venice for a week. Here are the peaks and valleys of tourism from USNews.

 

I hope you will think about off-season travel! For our family it has been a means to be able to afford bigger trips and more frequent trips.

 

If you are looking to save money on travel you may be interested in my ebook.

It will help you save lots of money on vacation rentals and find some hidden gems.

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