is using a VPN really useful?
Summer vacation is just around the corner and you’re looking for the cheapest plane tickets possible. The VPN solution can be a good idea to achieve this, but is it the most effective?
As we know, when looking for the lowest possible prices, finding plane tickets can sometimes become a real obstacle course. Flight comparators are certainly useful, but are subject to strong price variations depending on a whole host of factors, in particular related to its location when ordering. There are a few tricks to buy cheaper plane tickets, and using a VPN is one of the solutions.
Flight comparators typically use your location to offer ticket prices based on the local market. The average income level of a country and the number of users interested in the same destinations can affect the price displayed. A VPN’s main function is to change a user’s IP address, and therefore their theoretical geographical location. Thanks to a VPN, it would thus be possible to avoid the increase in prices, or even to fall on more advantageous prices.
Why do airline ticket prices vary so much from user to user?
Airlines are fond of cookies. We are obviously not talking about pastries here, but about the small file created by websites each time you visit and which contains information such as your preferences, your connection identifiers, your browsing history or other data related to your interaction with the site.
The other reason, probably the most debatable, concerns the airlines’ use of user profiling to practice dynamic pricing based on demand and ticket availability. Apart from the fact that plane tickets tend to be more expensive during peak periods, such as summer vacations, user profiling also makes it possible to analyze customer behavior and preferences on flight comparators or airline applications, in order to provide them with personalized offers. Are analyzed in particular:
- The precise location of the user.
- Its computer equipment.
- His supposed income.
- His previous research.
- His buying tendencies.
- Its preferred airlines.
Some travelers claim that the international version of a travel site, for example (.fr) for France or (.co.uk) for Great Britain, will offer users different prices. Again, this technique can be interesting, but does not guarantee savings. Note that the time spent on a page is also taken into account: a price can increase by several tens of euros in just a few minutes.
Why can a VPN be useful to save money on plane tickets?
As we saw above, the information collected by the airlines to adapt their prices comes mainly from cookies, but also from the user’s IP address. Using a VPN will have the function of changing its geographical position and encrypting its connection data in order to deceive the site or the comparator.
Before any manipulation from a VPN, it is recommended to delete all login data from their browser or browse privately. This is to ensure that the booking site can no longer establish profiling based on your information stored in cookies. If this step is not completed, using the VPN may not have any effect.
Before starting any manipulation, it is important to note that this solution via VPN is not the absolute guarantee to get really cheaper tickets. Also, it may take some research time to come across real price discrepancies. Other elements to be taken into account such as:
- Flight dates : Flights from Monday to Thursday are generally 5% cheaper.
- flight time : Off-peak flights are often cheaper.
- The time of booking the flight : the ideal time to book would be Tuesday around 3pm.
Once your VPN is installed (via application or browser plug-in) and in order to maximize your chances of seeing the rates go down, it is recommended to connect to a server based in a country with a low average income. This is notably the case of India, North Macedonia and Malaysia. It will also be necessary to rely on a currency conversion tool for the prices displayed in local currency, that of Google does the job perfectly.
With this trick and depending on the flights. It is possible to save a few tens or even hundreds of euros per ticket. It is therefore recommended to choose a VPN service with a maximum of available servers and countries in order to maximize your chances of seeing prices drop. It is also partly for this reason that a free VPN may be useless.
The other trick is to connect to a server corresponding to the country of origin of the airline. Changing its IP address via a VPN to match the country of origin of the airline will display different prices: use a Finnish server for a flight with Finnair For example.
Which VPN to choose to get cheaper plane tickets?
As we saw above, it is necessary to favor VPN services whose base of available servers and countries is the highest in order to maximize your chances. We have selected three VPNs that fit perfectly into this category.
ExpressVPN
The first VPN service to go for when it comes to airline tickets is ExpressVPN. It has a vast network of servers distributed in many countries: more than 3000 servers in 94 countries. A good way to optimize your searches and circumvent the geographic restrictions put in place by airlines and travel agencies.
NordVPN
NordVPN is arguably the most reputable VPN in the world. In the case of flight booking, it offers a wide choice of servers around the world, namely 5200 servers in 61 countries to date. This number of servers can also be very useful if you want to compare the prices of plane tickets in different regions. NordVPN also offers a feature called “Dual-VPNwhich encrypts the connection by running it through two separate servers, providing an extra layer of privacy that comes in handy when booking airline tickets online.
CyberGhost
In the same vein as a NordVPN, CyberGhost also relies on a large server base and available countries: 6000 servers in 88 different countries. What to make sure to find the lowest rates depending on the country. Another element that is also important: it has an ad blocker and trackers to prevent booking sites from establishing a precise profile and adjusting prices.
If you would like to know more about other VPN services, do not hesitate to consult our dedicated comparator. You can also consult our VPN versus:
