MileValue is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more.
Note: Some of the offers mentioned below may have changed or are no longer be available. You can view current offers here.
A friend passed along an article from Time.com that advocates doing something I’ve done a few times, but not described:
You can often get a cheaper price on a cash ticket if you book the ticket in foreign currency through airline’s website designed for use by people in another country.
For instance, you can save about 35% on a roundtrip from Santiago, Chile to Easter Island, Chile booking in Chilean pesos through the LAN Chile website instead of in dollars through the LAN USA website.
I’ve noticed similarly cheaper flights using Colombian websites intra-Colombia and, most notably, Argentine websites intra-Argentina.
It’s easy to search the foreign websites, easy to translate them to English, and easy to pay with a credit card with no foreign transaction fees, so this is a trick everyone should be using.
Searching Foreign Websites
I recommend starting at the ITA Matrix. There you can quickly search for flights while toggling the “Sales city.” I searched Santiago to Easter Island roundtrip in April twice.
The first time I left “Sales city” blank, which defaults to departure city.
The second time I put Washington DC for the “Sales city” to see what the price would be on American websites.
Washington DC as a sales city led to a price of $616.
Santiago as a sales city led to a price of CL$242,586.
That is $393 or a 36% discount on the price designed for Americans.
You can continue to select different sales cities and might find a cheaper price, but generally the cheapest price will be the foreign country where the flights are.
To get the price in pesos, head to lan.com. Along the top, you’ll see United States (English) as the default selection.
Change it to Chile. This will give you a Spanish-language site of course.
Getting the Foreign Website into English
If you use Google Chrome as your browser, you’ll be asked whether you want to translate the page to English.
Going through the purchase steps, I was able to replicate the price of CL$242,586.
Avoiding Foreign Transaction Fees
The last step would be to purchase the ticket with a card with no foreign transaction fees to avoid being dinged 3% on top of the $393.
You can the Citi Premier® Card or the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, both without foreign transaction fees.
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel Portal and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
Editorial Disclaimer: The editorial content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuers, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuers.
The comments section below is not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all questions are answered.
This is true I have looked at other foreign websites and usually the US site is better priced BUT I have never hit the buy button because I don’t trust them . Get a VPN like $40 per year no one knows anything then and Wi-Fi is safe I’m used it many times ..
Domestic flights on Turkish Airlines are MUCH cheaper on their native website. So much cheaper than other search results that I thought they were mistake fares.
Thanks for the tip!
I heard a guy call into the Junkies in DC and reference this yesterday, wonder if its the same chap.
Dubaych is correct. Last year, as part of a group tour, I bought 2 domestic Turkish segments for about $200 on their Web site. (Full disclosure – it was a senior fare, but the regular fare was about $250.) Other group members paid over $900 through the tour operator’s US travel agent. This doesn’t show up correctly on ITA even if you list a Turkish sales city.
Great tip.
For Peru, I’ve used a Lima-based travel agency to get domestic tickets at the local rate rather than the foreign one. They made the reservation, then met me at the airport in the middle of the night between my flights to take my payment in cash. It seemed a bit shady to me, but everything worked just fine. That was a few years ago now, so I’m not certain it will work today.
Booking on lan.pe in spanish was much cheeper than lan.com for tickets but it was in spanish. this was last week.
I used an Indian site for India domestic flight (Kingfisher?) Saved 50%. couldn’t get Visa to approve the charge, so did Amex, no problem.
Mexican airline “Volaris” is sometimes cheaper when booking with Mexican pesos as well. Really nice airline with a new, modern fleet.
[…] month, I wrote about saving money on paid tickets by using a “fake location.” The idea is that airlines charge different amounts for the same ticket depending on where […]