Travel bloggers, vloggers, travel writers, etc – we’re all a bit guilty of perhaps over-glamorising our travels, particularly if it’s something you seek to do frequently and as somewhat of a lifestyle. You know what I mean? The picture-perfect shots we snap of the scenery and perhaps even some b-roll footage…Yet so many of us fail to capture some of the scenes of what it’s really like behind-the-scenes if it’s not quite as picture-perfect as we think it should be.

As I type this up I’m sitting in a backpacker’s hostel and it’s all good – I have a relatively comfortable bed and everybody kind of keeps to themselves, so there’s nothing wrong with it at all. It’s super clean – cleaned every few hours a day and really, it’s more than just okay.

For some reason however we never quite want to show this “other side” of our travels and I reckon more of us should make the effort to do so.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that if you want to travel more frequently then you need to apply a bit of different thinking, such as how one might elect to lodge at a backpacker’s hostel to save money and so that you could perhaps extend your getaway by the maximum amount of time you’re allowed to stay in a specific place you’re visiting.

That’s just one option you have though…

Another option which definitely forms part of thinking a little differently is that of how you can effectively get your accommodation for free wherever it is you’ll be visiting. Okay so obviously money will exchange hands and in that way you’ll be paying for it physically, but effectively you can lodge for free and it all comes down to what you do with your own accommodation back home while you’re away on holiday.

Rent your own place out – there are so many decentralised options these days such as the very popular AirB&B, but there are many others in the like which cater more to a local market. Naturally you’ll have to do your due diligence and make sure that you’re complying with all the rules and regulations you have to comply with, for example you might need to get a special kind of insurance for sub-letting if that is indeed what you would be doing.

You’d also need to make sure that you can trust the person or people to whom you’ll be renting out your place while you’re gone, but generally that’s why these decentralised accommodation letting platforms have ratings systems.

If you own your own home which you’ll be renting out while you’re away then you can set it apart in terms of styling with some pieces from Hudson French Provincial Furniture that are style-representative of specific eras.

The bottom line is this – whatever amount of money you would effectively be making from renting out your current place while you’re gone is the amount of money you will have at your disposal with which to pay for your accommodation at your holiday destination. This effectively makes it free!