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1. Advise your travel agent at the initial enquiry stage if you want more than just an airfare. Some airfares are cheaper if you purchase land arrangements such as accommodation, tours or rental cars.

2. Purchase as many add-ons (e.g.: transport, tours, accommodation) to your airfare as possible before you leave. Many products cannot be bought in the country of use or may be more expensive. E.g.: Eurail tickets can only be purchased at a limited number of Eurail offices and prices are generally 20 percent higher than outside Europe.

3. Purchase travel insurance as part of your holiday package. If your travel agent does not mention it in their quote ask for it to be included in the price. Travel insurance is a necessary part of your travel expenditure that you need to budget for and should not an afterthought!

If you are a business traveller companies such as ‘Mike Henry Insurance’ offer yearly policies which can save you time and money as the forms don’t need to be completed each time you travel and the one-off fee can sometimes work out cheaper if you travel regularly.

4. Ask your travel agent to include all taxes including your departure tax from New Zealand, this allows you to budget without any nasty shocks! Depending on the airline sectors you fly taxes can sometimes add up to hundreds of dollars on top of your airfare. Whilst taxes can only be accurately advised at the time of ticketing due to changes in currency fluctuations and rates of exchange the travel agent can at least give a ‘ball-park’ figure.

5. If you are travelling on a coach tour that visits many countries enquire if the coach tour company offers a currency pack. This gives you a small amount of foreign currency for each country to be visited and can be used for initial purchases until you get to a bank.

6. Obtain a “Telecom Calling Card” (or something similar depending on your phone company) before you leave home. Almost all hotels add a service charge to the cost of any phone calls you make from your room. This charge can be high, especially for international calls. It is always cheaper to use public telephones (pay phones) or an international calling service such as the “Telecom Calling Card”. A calling card allows you to make calls from almost any touch-tone phone in the world and automatically charges the cost to your telecom account back home. This also leaves more money for you to spend on your credit card whilst away. Just remember you will have to pay you phone bill when you get home but it will be cheaper!

7. Even if you don’t have a credit card it really is a must for travelling – even if you just use it for emergencies. Sometimes things beyond your control happen and having that extra ‘credit’ gives you that extra ‘peace-of-mind’. Plus, if you want to rent a car most of the large companies will not hire to you if you don’t give them a credit card imprint. Remember too that if you lose your credit card all the companies have 24 hour customer service centres where you can report your card lost/stolen and it can be stopped immediately – it really is safer than carry large amounts of cash.