It’s July, and your vacation plans are still unmade? Never fear, Frommer’s is here—Pauline Frommer in this case.
I was tasked by Live with Kelly and Mark to come up with the top tips for procrastinators looking to create joyous, affordable summer getaways in 2025. What follows is the advice I gave to that lovely TV power couple, with details and websites thrown in below to make planning easy.
Travel during summer’s low season
Summer is one of the most travel-filled seasons of the year for one simple reason: The kids are out of school, so families can go on trips.
In recent years, though, more and more schools across the United States have moved up the start of the school year to the middle of August, meaning crowds and prices dip around that time—and go even lower in September. If you can put off your summer vacation from July to late August, you are guaranteed savings.
Camp out
Tent accommodations and RVs will always be cheaper than hotel rooms. And though campsite reservations have gotten more competitive in recent years, you can find a spot at the last minute, even in the most popular state and national parks.
You do have to be strategic, however. Click here for my full article on how to find a place to pitch your tent or park your RV this summer.
Book vacation rentals directly through management companies rather than sites like Airbnb and Vrbo
This is a tip I got from a former CEO of a vacation rental company. Click here for all the details on this sneaky strategy.
Use a VPN when booking airfare and other travel
Travel prices are no longer based solely on what the market will bear. Thanks to AI, travel companies can now factor in how much they think residents of different areas will pay, and at what times of day or days of the week, and set prices for hotel rooms and plane tickets and such accordingly.
But you can game the system by hiding your identity and location by using a virtual private network (VPN) when you search for travel products. According to PCWorld, the top VPN is NordVPN, followed by ExpressVPN, Surfshark, and Proton VPN. Each has a monthly subscription cost of $3–$12 per month (Proton even has a free plan).
Want to see how much you can save on airfare? Go to your favorite airline or booking site after clearing your cookies and search history, and enter a test location. If you’re looking for a flight from New York City to Paris, say, do an initial test for pricing from a Parisian IP address. Then see what you get searching from New York City. Then throw another couple of options into the mix—Munich and somewhere in Ohio, for instance.
The differences in prices will probably surprise you. Once you've gotten over the surprise, purchase the ticket from whichever IP address returned the lowest price.
You can do the same for hotel bookings. I’ve seen differences of up to $40 per night on Expedia, depending on where the IP address is set.
Take advantage of summer discounts on Disney vacations
For families with kids ages 3 to 9, one of the best deals this year may well be Florida's Walt Disney World.
The Mouse is offering a 50% discount for multiday admissions and, in some cases, free meals. Click here for details.
Go to hurricane-free islands in the Caribbean
Hurricane season is here, but it doesn’t affect all islands. In fact, the ABC isles of Aruba (pictured at the top of this page), Bonaire, and Curaçao, along with Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are all located in a part of the Caribbean that rarely, if ever, gets hit by hurricanes, making those places relatively safe from severe storms in summer and fall.
But since many travelers don’t know that, prices drop in summer.
For example: I did a search for a weeklong summer trip to Aruba, including airfare from the U.S. and a hotel stay. I found a deal from Expedia that threw in 3 nights at a hotel for free, dropping the price for the whole shebang to $809—or $134 per person per night (based on double occupancy).
I looked at Grenada on Travelocity and found air/hotel packages for just $1,193 per week (or $198 per person per night, double occupancy) at a very nice hotel. All-inclusive resorts tended to come in about $60–$100 more per night, but still significantly cheaper than spring rates.