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SALT LAKE CITY — Emily Holt says posting flight deals on Instagram started as a weird, quirky hobby. But that hobby has allowed her family to see Hawaii, Italy, Bosnia, Croatia and Cambodia, to name a few places.
“Before, I had always watched flights,” Holt said. “And so I texted my mom, ‘We should go here,’ and I texted my friend, ‘You should do this.’”
Then Holt created the Instagram account FlightsFromHome, where she posts airfare deals with departure from Salt Lake International Airport.
“My friends and family just started following it,” Holt explained. “They would tell their friends, family and people they know. It just sort of snowballed, and now there's quite a few followers.”
In fact, FlightsFromHome now has 100,000 followers.
“I guess there’s more people in Utah than I thought wanting a cheap flight out of the state,” Holt laughed.
Over the past year, Holt has posted round-trip deals like Salt Lake to Shanghai at $402, Salt Lake to New Zealand or Australia for $410, and round-trip to Las Vegas for just $39, among many other bargains. The tool she uses to find these deals is one nearly everyone has access to.
“I’m a big fan of Google Flights,” Holt said. “That’s my favorite.”
Google Flights lists flights based on an algorithm using price, number of stops, flight times and duration, and fees. The best flights top the list. Google also gives date tips, allowing you to see how much money you could save by changing your travel dates.
“You have to be willing to be flexible,” Holt said. “If you’re flexible, you’re kind of willing to be a little bit more spontaneous in destination or timing or travel, then you’ll be better off because you can snatch that good deal when it pops up.”
That flexibility works for saving both on domestic and overseas trips. The key, she said, is don’t to be too specific in your search using Google Flights.
“If you put in ‘Europe’ in Google Flights, you’ll get a list of Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Rome – just different cities in Europe. You can kind of see which one is the cheapest,” Holt said.
“Maybe you want to go to Germany,” Holt hypothesized. “Germany is $900 a ticket, but Amsterdam happens to be $400 a ticket. Well, you can snag that deal and go into Amsterdam and take a ride into Germany.”
KSL tried it for the Caribbean. Flying from Salt Lake to Antigua in March costs $812. But a flight to St. Croix instead, just two islands over, costs almost half at $462.
Google Flights’ price graph shows when to find the cheapest fares. Using that tool, KSL found a round-trip ticket to Hawaii flying out on March 2 would cost $552 dollars. But the ticket price would nearly double to $1,046 by pushing the trip just one month to April 1.
Holt also uses Google Flights’ price tracking feature. It alerts fliers when prices for a trip they want to take go up or down.
“You need to go someplace on these days, and they’ll monitor that flight for you so you don’t have to keep checking it all day,” Holt said.
She also recommends checking out the Southwest Airlines website directly for specials. Southwest's flights don’t show up in Google Flights.
“I like them,” Holt explained. “They give you two free checked bags, which is always a bonus.”
Here’s another tip from Holt: Watch out for fees from budget airlines.
“You’re going to pay to select your seat. You’re going to pay to carry on a bag. You’re going to pay to check a bag. You’re going to pay all these extras, so figure out what you’re going to pay in fees and add those to the total cost,” she said. “Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, and not apples to oranges.”
Google Flights isn’t Holt’s only source for deals.
“A lot of followers will give me tips,” she said. “They’ll shoot me a direct message and they’ll say, ‘Hey, there’s this great deal going on right now.’ It’s kind of cool because the Salt Lake community, I feel, has started to watch each other’s backs.”
