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How a price alert got me to Bali for way less than I expected
I’d wanted to go to Bali for months before I actually booked it. Every time I checked flights, the price felt like too much to justify — so instead of giving up on the trip and find an alternative destination or departure city, I opened Skyscanner, searched my route, and set a price alert. Then I closed the tab and let it do the waiting for me.
A few weeks later, a notification landed in my inbox: the fare had dropped. Not by a little — enough that I booked within the hour, before I could talk myself out of it. That’s the whole trick with Skyscanner that nobody tells you: you don’t have to obsessively refresh flight searches. You just let the tool watch the price while you get on with your life, and it tells you the second it’s worth booking.
Why Skyscanner is my first stop for every flight search
I’ve tried other search engines. I’ve compared directly on airline websites. Skyscanner consistently either matches or beats them, and it does it while showing me options I wouldn’t have thought to look for. What’s more? You can combine it with hotel and car hire search.
- Price alerts — set an alert on a route and get notified the moment the price drops. This is exactly how I booked my Bali flights, weeks before I would’ve pulled the trigger on my own.
- Whole month view — instead of checking one date at a time, you see an entire month of prices laid out, so shifting your trip by two or three days can save you significantly.
- The “Everywhere” search — type in your home airport, leave the destination as “Everywhere,” and it shows you the cheapest place to fly that month. Great for when you don’t have a fixed destination yet.
- Filtering that actually matters — number of stops, layover length, specific airlines, baggage-inclusive fares. As a solo traveler, I filter out anything with a layover under an hour every single time.
How I actually use it before every trip
My process hasn’t changed much in years:
- Search my exact route with the whole month view, or “Everywhere” from my home airport if I don’t have a fixed destination yet.
- If the price isn’t where I want it yet, set a price alert instead of checking back manually — this is exactly what got me to Bali for a fraction of what I first saw.
- Compare the cheapest days and note if shifting by even a day or two changes the price meaningfully — it often does.
- Filter by stops and airlines before I ever click through to book, so I’m not tempted by a price that comes with a nine-hour layover.
It’s not complicated. It’s just consistent — and letting a price alert do the watching is the single biggest reason I’ve been able to travel more often on a solo, self-employed income than I ever expected to.
Find your own cheap flights
If you’re planning your next trip, search your route on Skyscanner here and set a price alert before you do anything else. You might end up booking a trip you’d almost given up on — like I did with Bali.
What that Bali trip taught me
Waiting for the right price meant I nearly talked myself out of going at all. The lesson stuck: the flight is rarely the reason a trip doesn’t happen — it’s usually just impatience. A price alert fixes that, and it freed up enough of my budget to spend properly on the parts of the trip that actually matter.
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