A travel fan has shared how you can book a cheap weekend away using little to no annual leave.

For those who only have a limited amount of days they can take off work a year, it’s handy to know how you can take a trip without using up your annual leave. Many people like to travel and city breaks are ideal for weekend trips, especially if you only work from Monday to Friday.

Emma regularly plans holidays and trips around her 9 till 5 job and gives travel advice on social media. She posted a video on TikTok giving her tips on how to get away for a cheap weekend.

The travel lover from London said: “These are my top tips and tricks as to how to plan a cheap weekend away using very little annual leave, sometimes even no annual leave at all. I’ve done a fair few trips like this over the past couple of years and I’ve always been led by what is cheap as to where I’ve ended up going so we’ve ended up in County Mayo in Ireland for a weekend, Bucharest, I went with my friends last autumn, and then coming up, we’re going to Jersey.”

Emma then went on to share her travel hacks to plan and book a cheap weekend trip.

1. Find cheap flights

Her first one is to find cheap flights by using Skyscanner and Google Flights to search for the weekend and month you would like to go away and then have a look at where it is cheap to fly to. Emma mentioned: “A very key part is finding good times because you can find some really cheap flights but they might not work, especially if you want to do this using very little leave.

“You wanna be looking for either a Friday evening flight [or] Saturday morning flight.” What Emma particularly likes about Google Flights is that it gives you an indication of how cheap or expensive a specific flight is compared to the average.

The travel enthusiast stressed that the key to finding cheap weekends away is to not be fixated on a particular destination as that might not be where the best value flights are. She added: “Another thing to bear in mind is you’re flying on the Friday night, is it actually worth it, or are you better off going in the Saturday morning?”

Emma shared that she booked a trip to Zurich, Switzerland from a Saturday morning to Sunday night and she originally looked at flying on the Friday night after work but realised she wouldn’t have arrived at her destination until about 11pm. She felt this wouldn’t have been worth it as there wouldn’t be much she could do at that time and she would have had to pay for a full night at a hotel in Zurich.

The savvy traveller found that it would be better to fly out first thing on Saturday morning and only have to pay for a hotel stay for one night instead. She noted that however, it sometimes can work out to be cheaper to fly on Friday night, so it really depends on the dates and destination you are looking at.

2. Use Hotels.com to look for accommodation

Emma continued: “Then when it comes to accommodation I tend to always use Hotels.com. I just think I’m a bit of a creature of habit with this but they do have a loyalty program and they also have a price match guarantee.”

She shared that she is at an age where the place she stays makes “quite a difference.” At the age of 30-years-old, she is now “over” the stage of her life where she stayed in hostels and some “fairly horrendous places”.

The travel fan explained: “I’m not by any means staying in five-star luxury hotels, none of them are very expensive. All I really like is somewhere that’s clean, in a good location and that has good reviews so I tend to filter on Hotels.com by places that are rated highly but then I filter by price low to high and then I just work my way down until I find something that is good.”

After finding a place on Hotels.com that suits what she is looking for, she then books it and sometimes after booking her accommodation, she checks to see if the price has gone down. Emma remarked: “You wouldn’t believe how much it does go down sometimes and if you’ve booked a refundable room all you need to do is cancel the booking and immediately book it again and they refund you.”

She also sometimes checks Airbnb but she thinks this platform is better if you’re searching for somewhere to stay in a “more rural location.” The travel guru pointed out that another thing to remember about booking hotels is “a lot of banks do cashback”, such as Lloyds, Halifax, American Express and Monzo.

Emma elaborated: “All of those do cashback so just check before you book to see if they’re doing that. If none of them are doing it then I would definitely book it on a rewards credit card.”

3. Take hand luggage only

Something else that “really keeps the price down” is only taking hand luggage. When you’re only going away for a maximum of two nights, you don’t need to take a lot with you, according to Emma.

When travelling by plane you can take hand luggage, what you take with you onto the plane, and/or hold luggage, checked baggage that is dropped off at the check-in counter at the airport and stored in the plane’s cargo during the flight. You can reduce costs by paying for hand luggage only.