Departure preparation for your working holiday (the full guide)

Wait until your visa is approved

Unless the consular authorities of your destination country REQUIRE you to do so, we advise against buying your plane ticket before your visa is approved. We have already seen WHVers buy their ticket too early, just to find out that their visa may not be issued in time (or worse, it’s denied). In general, change fees are hefty, and modifiable tickets are also significantly more expensive.

Once your visa is approved, researching airfare should then become a priority, as we explained in chapter 1’s post-approval to-do list.

Tips for finding the best deal

1. Be flexible about your date of travel

The most important thing you can do if you want a good deal is to be flexible about your travel date. Go to Google Flights (or a similar platform) and look at the calendar of prices. You can see that the prices can vary a lot, and if you can be flexible, then you’re better positioned to take advantage of the cheaper flights. General trends that you might notice include:

• Peak season at your destination is more expensive than low season. For example, peak season in Europe is June to September, whereas in Australia and New Zealand it is December to February. When the weather is nice and people go on vacation, prices increase.
• Weekends tend to be more expensive than weekdays. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the cheapest.
• Departure times with undesirable hours are cheaper (i.e. super early or super late).

2. Don’t attempt self-transfer itineraries with short layovers

When trying to find the best deals, you may come across self-transfer itineraries. This is basically when you coordinate your own layover by booking multiple tickets separately with multiple airlines.

This is risky because if your first flight is delayed (or cancelled) and causes you to miss your second flight, neither the first nor second airline will reimburse you or help you to rebook – all risk is on you as the traveller. If you really want to take this route, ensure that the layover time is sufficiently generous. Or even spend a day or two exploring the stopover city.

3. Clear your cache and use a VPN

We can’t guarantee this will have a noticeable impact on the prices you see, but it doesn’t hurt to periodically clear your cache when researching flights. If you have a VPN, turn that on as well. These measures can make it harder for sites to track your behaviour and apply dynamic pricing.

4. Don’t assume one-way costs less than a roundtrip

Logic dictates that roundtrip flights will cost more than a single one way flight. While this is true in most cases, it is NOT ALWAYS so. Let’s look at Air France as an example. If we choose the following one way flight, it costs €1,089 euros.

But if we keep the same travel date and add a return flight, the total roundtrip itinerary drops to €674 euros. We confirmed that this was the TOTAL for two legs of flights, not per way.

Airline pricing strategies are mysterious (sometimes faulty, even), but if you can get a free trip back home for the holidays during your working holiday, why not?

5. Pay attention to the fare class

Before you hit purchase, make sure you understand the class of the fare. How many checked bags are included? If none, how much does each bag cost? Is seat selection free? These may seem like trivial things, but if you’re flying ten hours to move across the world, they make a difference. Also inform yourself on the cancellation and modification fees.

6. Take advantage of promos exclusive to pvtistes.net

We have negotiated special offers for our members! If you’re taking any of the following itineraries, make sure to use our links to get extra baggage allowance on flagship airlines at no extra cost.