Anyone who has tried to book a holiday post-covid knows that prices have skyrocketed, as companies seemingly try to claw back months of revenue they missed when we were all sitting at home binge watching The Tiger King rather than going out to see the world.
When we started looking for how much it would cost to rent a car for two weeks in Florida we were horrified to be quoted over £3,000 - almost as much as the cost of the villa we had booked for five of us to stay in. After much head scratching and trying to work out why we had got differing deals despite using identical details, we realised that the only difference was her price was being given in dollars. Guessing this might be because her phone somehow was coming up as American when she went to the car hire website, we accessed the site using a VPN - and suddenly we too were being offered exactly the same car for, once you converted the price into pounds, less than half the price.
We are already looking to plan a holiday next summer and have one eye on Black Friday deals to save money doing this. But after our experience, not only we will be looking at deals with UK-based travel companies, but we’ll also be checking international sites while using a VPN to see if we can get better deals that way.
They can also allow you to watch TV that isn’t available in your current location, so if you do end up booking a break abroad this Black Friday you could even use it to log into ITV Hub to keep up with I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here while you’re away.