How to Get Best Deals for Family Vacation to South Africa?

Kids change our lives and our viewpoints altogether. When you have babies to take care of, there are many things to take into consideration, especially when booking a trip to South Africa. Backpackers can take flights at odd times, with multiple hops and on rickety airlines to save money. However, when you have children of your own, it is not about getting the cheapest tickets only. The agents at TravelhouseUK recommend flights to South Africa with the best value, for people with younglings to take care of onboard.

South Africa flights can be costly at times. Even for a single soul, the trip’s cost can exceed £550 for a roundtrip flight to Cape Town around Christmas time. Paying for the entire family’s travel needs takes a large bite out of the savings. By following these simple practices below, you can skim off the overheads and get the cheapest ticket to South Africa for your family over this Christmas season 2019. People who prefer travelling alone can also get the best value flights to Jo’burg at any time of the year, and save a little extra over your vacations by keeping these points in mind.

Best time to book flights to South Africa

Right now is the best time to book flights to South Africa if you want to spend your winter break in Johannesburg or Cape Town. Four to five months before your intended departure is the best time to call our agents and let them know about your travel plans. By booking flights four to five months in the future, you provide reassurance to the airlines that their business plans are moving forward. As an incentive, the airlines usually lower the prices of the tickets. Booking a flight a few months before time also conveys the message that the traveller is not in a hurry and looking for other options. Pitting airlines against each other is the best policy for getting the most inexpensive tickets to South Africa.

Tricks to get best deals for flights to South Africa

It is not a hard and fast rule but booking your tickets on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, will get you a better deal. Showing a bit of flexibility can cut the cost by hundreds of pounds by the end. Booking flights late in the night has also helped some to find low-cost flights to South Africa. The idea is that in the morning, firms and business are buying flights for their employees from their large corporate accounts. To make a good profit, the airlines raise the price just a tiny bit during the day. In the night, however, ordinary people are the only ones looking for cheap Johannesburg flights, so the prices are lowered a bit to be more competitive. Also, consider using many different airlines for your travels. For example, take a British Airways flight to Cape Town but on the way back choose the services offered by South African Airlines and Mango Airlines.

Direct and connecting flights to South Africa

The less stressful of the two is the direct flight. Both British Airways and South African Airlines provide direct flights to Cape Town and Johannesburg. For example, British Airways aircraft with flight number BA59 takes off at 9:30 PM UK time from London Heathrow Airport and arrives in Cape Town in the morning at ten. The total duration of the flight is only eleven and a half hours. South African Airlines offers a direct flight service (SA 235) to O.R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. These flights are scheduled to take off at seven in the evening from London Heathrow and touchdown in Johannesburg at 7:00 AM.

Connecting flights offered by KLM and Air France are the cheapest with a stopover in Europe. However, Qatar Airways provides an even cost-effective option that can lower the price by forty to fifty pounds per person. These connecting flights have longer travel times that can be up to 20 hours with lengthy stopovers in Doha. Connecting flights are less than ideal for a family with small kids. However, if you think your kids can manage this, choosing the connecting flights would give you a discount of 30 to 40 per cent on your travelling expenses. For an even better deal, try to reach South Africa a week or two before the holidays begin. Pack light because some airlines tend to charge more for every extra bag, which would eventually cost more than the direct flight.

TravelhouseUK Payment Methods

Paying for your trip can be a bit unnerving. Many people, who use our services to go to South Africa, are people with families, who work in the UK to provide for their kids in South Africa. Accommodating our hard-working clients to the best of our abilities is our company’s objective, and so we offer our customers the Fly-Now-And-Pay-Later option. This option is for people who need to take a flight urgently but do not have the required funds to pay for the trip. With Fly-Now-And-Pay-Later you can make the trip to South Africa now and keep paying for the travel fare in instalments, for the next few months.

Alternatively, if you have been fastidious and booked a flight four to five months from now, you have the option of paying for that flight in monthly instalments, before you depart. Many customers choose this option because there is no added interest to the cost, and you get all the insurances by just paying a fraction of the price. Giving instalments of a few hundred pounds a month stops you from digging into your savings for the family trip to South Africa. Sign up for our newsletter to get alerts on popup South Africa deals and benefit from the discounts. Some of our clients pay their fares by using airline affiliate credit cards and avail frequent flyer points for better deals in the future.

Communicate with your kids

Children are sharp these days. Nowadays, even toddlers waddle towards the television and try to swipe the screen to watch another cartoon channel. They have yet to make televisions that flip channels like that, but it does reflect that children, in this space-age, learn faster and understand quicker. Try to sit down with all your children and have a conversation with them. Try to communicate to them that the family would be taking a trip and leaving for another country in a few days. Children will be excited to hear about the safari trips and the animals that roam in the nature reserves of South Africa. Older children would love to know that about the whale-watching tours off the coast of Cape Town and the national parks around Johannesburg.

A change in the environment can be taxing on children and their behaviour. Communication is essential and can help the child mentally prepare for a journey. In case that the child does not understand words yet, prefer taking night time flights to South Africa, and let the child sleep through the trip. Since the time difference between the UK and South Africa is only an hour, the baby is not going to feel much of jetlag. Overnight flights are a bit cheaper but if your child requires a specific environment to fall asleep, consider taking flight to Cape Town or Johannesburg in the day. Prefer booking the front seat with legroom or an aisle seat so that if your child needs help in the toilet, you do not have to jump over other people’s legs.

In summary, finding the best flight to South Africa for your family does not necessarily mean that it has to be the cheapest. TravelhouseUK provides flights that are best in value and more accommodating for a family with kids, and we are looking forward to booking your trip to the land of the safari parks. The big five – elephants, lions, buffalos, leopards and the rhinos will not only fascinate you but will make this trip to South Africa memorable for the children as well. Romantic getaways on private concessions reserve can rekindle the spark in a relationship. Make this Christmas a warm one, surrounded by the nature, wildlife and the sense of adventure.