It feels safe to assume that if money were no object, people would always choose to travel business class over economy. After all, who doesn’t want a fast check-in, fancy food and drink choices and more of that sweet, spacious legroom?
However, at anywhere between four to ten times the price of a regular economy ticket, this style of traveling remains a fantasy for many who simply can’t afford it.
Luckily, thanks to one man’s clever travel hack, that fantasy might be more achievable than we realize.
Cameron Stewart, a British photojournalist and camera operator, recently shared how he was able to score business class tickets at a fraction of the price, simply by switching the website language from English to Spanish.
Stewart had booked his flight on LATAM, Latin America’s largest airline company. According to The Mirror, he heard that LATAM’s website sometimes showed different ticket prices depending on which language the browser was set to.
While booking his flight from Santiago to Easter Island, Stewart decided to experiment and switched his computer’s VPN or “virtual private network” to make it seem like he was located in Chile, along with changing the browser’s language.
“I cleared all cookies from my browser, and used private browser mode so there was no way the website would determine I was outside the country,” Stewart told 9News, according to The Mirror.
Using Google translate to navigate the site, Stewart was easily able to book. And it actually turned out “cheaper than economy.”
Stewart shared his story in an Instagram post, along with a photo in his cushy seat, all smiles as he sat next to a generous amount of some kind of orange beverage. Probably made from organic oranges they grow in the plane’s private garden.
Is the trick foolproof? No. But with such a dramatic price difference, it might be worth trying out.
With ever rising inflation costs and constant headlines about an inevitable economic crash, people consider saving money to be more important than ever. Even those who are incredibly wealthy are looking for ways to save. Rather than cutting ourselves off from the things that bring us joy, there are plenty of creative solutions when it comes to living frugally.
That goes for traveling too. Airline tickets might be bonkers, but the need to travel still exists. Perhaps even more so post-pandemic. The good news is that with a little bit of work, you can discover incredible deals to make the trip more feasible—things like finding the optimal times to book, checking sites multiple times a day, and learning how to optimize credit card points, to name a few. Sure, it doesn’t guarantee a hoity-toity business class seat, but it does make adventure that much more attainable.
Excuse me while I change my browser settings to French. Allons y!