Layover in Kiev

Flying through an airline’s hub rather than going nonstop is the oldest savings trick in the book. But a stopover in Kiev? That’s new. Ukrainian International Airlines began flying out of New York in late April — tragically bad timing. Less than three months later, a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down near the Ukraine-Russia border amid unrest in the southern and eastern parts of the country itself (far from Kiev). But the airline staged a comeback with almost absurd promotional rates from New York (Dubai for $453?), and although tickets are going fast, as of this writing you can still get from New York to Istanbul or Athens for $479 in February, for example; to Bangkok for $953 in May. All have very reasonable layovers. I couldn’t resist, and booked a flight from New York to Tbilisi, Georgia, and back from Yerevan, Armenia, for $493, with two checked bags (great!) and Ukrainian airplane food (hmmmm).

Stay on Top of Currencies

To state the obvious, some countries are just more expensive than others. I found that out on a trip through Scandinavia, where I ran through cash maybe five times as quickly as I had in an earlier trip to Bolivia. But how cheap a country is can change from year to year, especially as its currency changes. I ran the currencies for most major (and some minor) tourist destinations from Jan. 1, 2014, to late December and found out which ones lost the most ground against the dollar. You probably have already heard that the Russian ruble is tanking (as of late December, a dollar will get you 94 percent more than it did a year ago), but here are some other countries where you would get at least 13 percent more cash for your cash if you arrived there right now: Argentina (31 percent), Chile (16 percent), Mongolia (15 percent), Israel (13 percent) and — yes — Sweden (16 percent) and Norway (21 percent). It was also a bad year for the euro, which means right now is a good time to go to Europe: You would receive about 10 percent more for your dollar in countries from Portugal to Slovakia. (Of course, not all goods and services will be exactly that much cheaper, including hotels that set rates based on the dollar.)

Package It

You spend a lot of time searching online travel agencies, but have you ever clicked the “Packages” tab? It’s not a match for every trip, but I found out this year that booking a hotel and flight together is the single fastest way to save. It’s not even that unusual to pay less for the plane fare and hotel together than you would have paid just for the flight. But it’s important to compare the price to the best deal you can find elsewhere. When a site tells you you’re saving 10 or 20 percent, that’s compared with the very same flight and hotel booked separately, which is probably not what you would have booked if you had done separate searches. Also note that flights booked through Priceline won’t always tell you your exact itinerary before you book a package, so you might end up with unsavory layovers.