Travel & Trips Done Differently
The idea of travelling and taking trips to explore new places is an attractive one. The thought of experiencing foreign cultures, different food, a change in weather, or even just escaping for a break to relax is all very exciting. So the question is; why do more people not travel away on trips more often?
We've put a lot of thought into that question over the years, and we think the answer is actually pretty straightforward. Most people either don't have the spare time to travel for weeks and weeks on end (especially without having to sacrifice daily commitments such as a job, etc.), or don't have tonnes of spare cash to burn on expensive trips (or in most cases, usually some combination of both).
​
It seems as if the general idea of 'travel' these days suggests you have to go away for months on end, spend thousands on flights to reach the far corners of the globe and leave your regular life back home behind. It feels like if you don't go travelling with nothing but a backpack to bare-bones hostels on the other side of the world, you aren't actually travelling or seeing the world at all.
The truth, though, is that seeing the world, exploring, having a great time and making memories doesn't require such a massive commitment in either time or money. We've come to realise how good of a time you have depends far less on where you go, and instead depends on who you're with, what places you visit within a destination, and how much (or more to the point, how little) you spend in order to make it all happen.
It's exactly this type of thinking that inspired us to start the Shoestring Travel Club in the first place; to show people like you that you can go away on trips abroad, make great memories and have an amazing time, all whilst using spare time you already have and without breaking the bank in order to make it happen.
​
Our Philosophy
Our philosophy follows this thinking pretty closely. We want to help you travel more for less, and everything we do comes back to that very same principle.
For example, look at the photo below. Which destination do you think this picture was taken in?
​
Thailand? Australia? Somewhere in South America?
Nope. This photo was actually taken on the island of Ibiza... in April.
This comes back to the point we made earlier, great times can be had almost anywhere. You don't have to go to the far corners of the world to have them, you just have to go somewhere.
That 'somewhere' can be popular, not popular, in season, out of season, or anything in between. When you start to say 'why not' and simply go and visit places, you'll start to realise how you can have a fantastic time and visit some spectacular places for very little time and money.
​
And that is exactly what we want to inspire you to do!
How We Aim To Help You Do It
Building, Finding & Researching Full Trips
To best help people like you to go on more of the trips we just talked about, we spend a lot of time researching, building and finding full trips that are ready for you to just click and book for yourself.
We look for these trips to be high quality (meaning no hostels), routinely affordable (meaning cheap enough that you can book multiple without having to worry about committing a huge sum of money) and easily bookable (so we give you the links for you to book everything yourself).
We also want you to maximise spare time you already have to take more trips away, which means minimising the amount of annual leave you need to take and / or time away from your existing everyday commitments in order to start going on some of the trips we find. We therefore look for trips within the next 6 weeks (so you can see what time you probably have free already around your existing commitments), that are between 1 and 7 days in length (to minimise time away / required annual leave and to also keep prices low), to short-medium haul destinations (since a 9 hour flight across multiple time zones isn't really convenient for a trip of a week or less) and mainly for groups between 1 and 4 people (since it's likely that if you're booking a trip for a group of 5 or more you'll likely have an existing trip in mind).
​
We upload any trips we find and / or build to our members area, and send emails to notify members of what we've found each week.
Finding Standout Return Flights
Through our trip research, we often come across standout return flights that are far cheaper than the usual route fare, but ones that we might not have looked to find matching accommodation for to build a full trip. When we find these flights, we note them down and publish them as collections of standalone flight deals on our members area. These can serve as great points of inspiration for you to use to build your own trips away!
Also, each week we send one or two of these standalone flights as our free 'Quick Trip Picks', which you can subscribe to for free by clicking here.
Destinations: Information & Inspiration
In the dawning age of AI, the web is full of bot-generated recommendations that have been pulled from all sorts of sources. What they cannot give (at least at the minute) is a real opinion and thoughts on places that are off the beaten track, and we think it's those opinions on places that might not be in the mainstream that truly matter and help make a good trip great.
We research destinations in depth (including visiting them ourselves). We don't want to show you a super expensive Michelin-starred restaurant just because it was rated top on trip advisor, we'd instead much rather find that little hole-in-the-wall bar well outside the main tourist area serving the best garlic bread you've ever eaten for €3.50, or the hidden cove with a golden sandy beach, no people and a small cave in the rock allowing you to sit right by the waters edge and watch the fish swimming under the waves.
Anytime we find a place worth sharing, we add it to our Destinations Map. This allows you to take a look at our insights into some standout destinations before you even set foot somewhere new. However, remember these are only ideas and inspiration! At the end of the day, its all about exploring new places and giving things a go, so make sure to explore other places yourself, too.
Not A Travel Agent!
Despite our passion for for building trips and finding flights, we are not a travel agent. We do not book trips or flights for you. We instead find and build the best ones out there and then send you the booking links for you to book for yourself, so you can be sure that the prices you see are the best we've managed to find (since we don't inflate prices we find like travel agencies do)
That's Us!
That's pretty much everything about us here at the Shoestring Travel Club!
We hope you like the sound of what we do, and hope to see you on the inside very soon. If you want to subscribe to our free Quick Trip Picks mailing list, click here. Or, if you want to try Full Membership free for 14 days, click here!
Blue Skies,
Adam - Founder of the Shoestring Travel Club
​
Adam - Founder
Join The Club
Want to become a full member and join us? Great! Take a look below and choose whichever subscription option works best for you:
Or, join our Quick Trip Picks mailing list for free by clicking here