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Unless you join the Navy or work for an airline, you will probably struggle to earn money while travelling in 2023.
Scrounging free flights and hotel stays is getting increasingly difficult in the post-lockdown, post-‘influencer’ world, and even professional travel writers now struggle to travel the world for free like they used to.
But there are still some ways to recoup the cost of your holiday, from renting out your home and driveway to looking after someone else’s pet while you sightsee.
Cut through the hype and discover what tips do and don’t work now, with our expert guide looking at how to:
Holiday Lettings, Vrbo, and Booking.com, all of which are quite easy to create and manage a listing on.General rental sites like Spare Room or Monday to Friday are another good way of finding people who might want a full two weeks in a city, where let’s face it most Airbnb guests only want to stay for a day or three.
Which site is best?
Spare Room and Monday to Friday tenants are usually young adults or business people looking for a stopgap while they find more long-term accommodation, so they not only want longer stays, but are less of a risk than some randoms from Airbnb.
You don’t earn as much as you would through Airbnb or one of the holiday booking sites, as you’re basically catering for people looking for a short residential let, which average a little over £250 a week. But it does mean you can rent out the property for the entire time your away without having to ask a friend to clean your house and make the beds every couple of nights.
There are just a few legalities to check before letting out your home, like whether you need to up your insurance. Airbnb, for instance, covers you for up to $1m in insurance, but your own home insurance provider may also need you to pay a small fee to include renters to your policy.
If you have a mortgage, you really ought to check if it’s okay with them too, as not all lenders allow you to offer your home out for short-term lets.
Airbnb
Airbnb makes it really easy and simple to rent out your house for a short period of time.
With Airbnb, you’re in full control of your availability, prices, house rules, and how you interact with guests. You can set check-in times and handle the process however you like.
Airbnb offers free listing on its site and leaves it up to you how much you want to charge guests.
Its messaging service also makes communicating with guests stress free, giving you the option of meeting them in person or just giving them your door details.
Guests must pay before they arrive and you are paid automatically when they check in.
Airbnb charges a 3% service fee which means if you were to let a property for £700 a week, its cut would be £25.20 and that means you’re almost guaranteed to make a hefty profit!
But the site also charges guests up to 14.2% on top of your asking price in ‘guest fees’, which can make your price less attractive, as that £700 listing will cost the guest up to £799.40.
Holiday Lettings
Holiday Lettings is very similar to Airbnb in the sense that you can advertise your lovely home on its site for no upfront cost.
The company does take 3% of any money you make, plus VAT where relevant, so, again, you lose£25.20 from a £700 listing. Like Airbnb, guests will also see some added guest fees on their final bill, which range from between 8% and 16% extra. That means that if you list your home for £700, the guest will actually pay between £756 and £812.
Holiday Lettings is a super useful site as it links to TripAdvisor.com which means it’s really easy for potential guests to find your place.
As Holiday Lettings put it, this partnership means that ‘our owners can now show off their guest reviews and get their properties promoted on a worldwide network of 25 TripAdvisor websites surfed by 340 million travelers every month’.
Booking.com
Booking.com is another great site you should consider when thinking about renting our your home. Surprisingly, more than 40% of overnights booked through the site are for stays in private homes and apartments rather than hotels and B&Bs.
The website has a handy feature which tells you how in-demand properties are in your area and how quickly your property is likely to be snatched up!
Booking.com takes 15% commission on the price that your guests will pay (which you set yourself!), meaning that if your guests are paying £700 for a week in your home, you will only be left with £595.00 in earnings. Meanwhile, the guest fees that are added on top of your listing can range from anywhere between an extra 10% and 25%., although they average around 15%.
Although this sounds like a lot more than the amount that Airbnb and HolidayLettings take, Booking.com is often the go-to booking site for travellers looking for nights away, and pulls in around 100 million visitors a month, so you’re paying for a premium service that can get lots of eyeballs on your listing.
Spare Room
Listings on Spare Room are free. It should only take a few minutes to create an advert, which can have as little or as much information and pictures as you feel necessary to include, and you communicate with interested renters through its messaging function.
Monday to Friday
Monday to Friday attracts a slighter older customer than Spare Room, as its clients are often businessmen and women who work in a different town to where their family live – and where they spend the weekend.
Unlike Spare Room, you have to pay to list on Monday to Friday, with prices starting from £34.95 for a two-month listing.
JustPark.com, ParkOnMyDrive.com, Stashbee.com and YourParkingSpace.co.uk. You’ll also find people listings their driveways on Gumtree, Facebook and other less-specialist sites, so it’s worth checking on those too to see if you could earn more by advertising on one of them.Setting up an account only takes a minute or so, and the sites then either take a small cut from you, the leaser, or, in the case of JustPark.com, add an extra commission on to bill which the person renting your drive pays.
JustPark
In terms of fees and commission, it’s free to advertise your space on JustPark, but the site does charge a 3% commission on every successful booking. Also, be aware that for longer bookings (more than two months), JustPark deducts 20% from your first month’s payment, but after that it goes back to 3%.
Its service includes a professionally drafted contract to download and a completely flexible rental arrangement – you decide exactly when and for how long you rent your space for.
Park Let
Park Let is the most restrictive option as it deals only with five or seven-day contracts. This means that if you’re going away, you have to make sure your drive is available to use 24 hours a day Monday to Friday (in the case of a five-day contract) or all day and night Monday to Sunday (in the case of a seven-day contract).
While it’s free to advertise your space, they do charge a 25% to 30% commission on your rental earnings depending on whether you opt for one week or two. This falls to 20% for people who rent their drive out on a more long-term basis. If you do eventually end up renting out your drive on a monthly contract after your holiday is over, you will also have to pay a one-off fee of £25 as well as 20% commission of anything you earn.
YourParkingSpace
Renting out your driveway on YourParkingSpace is absolutely free and you won’t have to pay a service fee, as a 20% charge is added to your price automatically, which the person using your drive then pays to the website. YourParkingSpace also provides users with places to park by the hour, which can attract more interest, especially if you live in an area popular with shoppers or tourists rather than commuters.
How much can I charge to rent out my drive?
The three cities most in-demand by space-shy parkers are London, Edinburgh and Brighton, where parking near the centre typically goes from £9.50 a day (if you exclude the chancers charging £50+). Even in the suburbs, the going-rate starts from £5 a day in Brighton, rising the closer you live to bus routes.
It may not sound a huge amount, but added up over a fortnight, you could (conservatively) look to make between £70 and £133 renting out your parking space – and that’s assuming you list at the very bottom of the market. Most of those drives are not in the most in-demand parts of Brighton, like near the beach or station.
It’s a similar story with other touristy cities like York, where city centre parking could fetch you around £7.50 to £12.50 per space, while a drive in the suburbs typically nets enough to pay for one of two ice creams on the beach each day.
If you’re lucky enough to live in central London or Edinburgh, your drive will pay for more than a few Magnums. You can easily make £20+ a day for each parking space you have in the English and Scottish capitals. If you’ve a double drive or double garage, you’re looking at £40+ a day – which adds up to £560 in revenue during your two-week trip away. Have space for three cars? You could earn £840 to put towards your spending money.
Obviously, you will need to check with your home insurance provider to ensure that renting out your driveway or garage doesn’t affect your policy, and any extra cash you make must be declared to the Inland Revenue on your tax return.
HouseSittersUK, for instance, charges £29 a year for access to its portal, which, as its website points out is ‘a fraction of the price of a night’s hotel accommodation’. You have to register with the site using Facebook, an email address or your Google log-in, which takes a few minutes. You can then begin searching for home owners in the area you’re hoping to stay, and chat directly with them to negotiate what they want and need from you. Most home owners do not offer payment, but some do. If they pay, they will typically mention this in the advert, but you can always ask about any remunerations or expenses when you message them.Home owners are forbidden from asking you for rent during your stay, although they are technically allowed to ask for help towards electricity and other bills. However, it’s generally frowned upon given many sitters get paid.
Can I house-sit in another country?
If you’re looking for accommodation abroad, MindMyHouse.com has listings across the US, Canada and Mexico, which account for over a third of all ads, as well as lots in the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
Again, you have to pay a small yearly membership fee of $29 (roughly £22) but there are lots of nice looking listings in exotic destinations. Of course, the home owners are generally looking for help on specific dates (usually when they themselves are going away), so if you’re looking to visit California, for example, it may make sense to look up who is listed in that destination – and when they are looking for house-sitters – and, organising your trip around that, rather than booking your flights first and then being disappointed when you discover there are no Californians looking for house-sitters the fortnight you’re going to be there.
Can I specify what I will and won’t do?
The interesting thing about this site is house sitters and home owners sign an agreement detailing exactly what is and isn’t included in the agreement, covering everything from payment (or otherwise) to the situation regarding utility bills, damages, and any chores/responsibilities. The contract also guarantees your stay, although each party can cancel the agreement up to seven days before you are due to arrive, so there’s always a chance you may have to find alternative accommodation if they cancel more than a week out.
Another popular site is Trustedhousesitters, however its joining fee is a lot more expensive, starting from £99 a year for a ‘basic’ membership. If you go down this route, it may not be a bad idea to upgrade to the £129 ‘standard sitter’ membership, which includes accidental and third party liability insurance, in case anything goes wrong during your stay.
Again, you’re unlikely to get paid if you accept a gig on Trustedhousesitters, but given its popularity with home owners, it’s a great site if you’re looking to find a ‘free’ holiday, as there ought to be plenty of listings to choose from.
Can I charge a fee to house sit?
Although payments are not the norm, you may be able to negotiate a small fee if there are pets to look after or any other additional tasks, so definitely give it a try if you feel you deserve a small daily amount.
One lady we know of at MoneyMagpie regularly makes £50 a day as a house-sitter. She only spends the evening and night in the house, before going to work the next day.
The reason for this high rate of pay is the fact that the owner of the house has seven dogs.
It would cost at least £10 per dog per day to put these dogs into kennels. By paying £50 to a house-sitter who knows the dogs, the owner saves £20 a day.
Generally, though, pay is minimal and starts at £10 a day. Some sitters ask for a food allowance of £10 a day, much like an employee can do when having to travel for their company. These sitters will often ask for 45p per mile for fuel, again much like employees get paid for using their private vehicle for work. Both of these payments are non-taxable, unlike any actual remunerations, which should be declared to the taxman if you meet the minimum threshold.
If you are more focused on earning money rather than just finding somewhere free to stay, you’re probably better looking at a specialised pet-sitting site, although you probably ought to be a real animal lover to bother applying to these. Most owners aren’t going to leave their beloved pooch with any Tom, Dick or Harry.
How do I become a pet-sitter?
The pet-sitting platform Rover doesn’t charge you to register and instead takes 15% of any money you make, much like Airbnb does. A lot of the sitters on its site are pros who either own boarding kennels and catteries, or run professional dog walkers services, and they obviously charge big bucks. That said, there are others who offer a more traditional house-sitting service, which is obviously preferred by many pet owners whose animals are too nervous or old to go to a kennel or cattery, so you might be able to undercut the pros, and net yourself a decent fee to help offset some of your other holiday costs. If you have a police check and can get references from other pet owners attesting to your dog-whispering prowess, you’ll also seriously boost your chances of getting selected.
Again you’ll find listings across the UK on Rover, as well as in popular tourist destinations like the US, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway – where hotels are notoriously expensive.
If you plan to look after someone’s pet, you really ought to look into getting public liability cover, in case the dog bites someone while you’re out walking them, for instance. Many professional house-sitters take out public liability insurance even if they never look after pets. You never know what sort of any blow-back you might get from the home owner if things go wrong, so it’s always better to be safe than sued!
MysteryDining.While most people who use the app review restaurants in their local area, it let’s you update your preferences if you’re travelling, meaning you can select to review restaurants and hotels, for example, while you’re elsewhere in the UK. They even have some international partnerships, meaning you could eat for free while on holiday in parts of Europe, the Middle East and America.
Can I get paid for reviews?
MysteryDining doesn’t pay you for each review, but offers ’capped reimbursements’ – ie. money to pay for the meal or hotel room you’ve been asked to review. It works on a tiered system (with bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels, depending on how many reviews you’ve done). Not surprisingly, the best gigs, like hotel stays, spa visits, meals at high-end restaurants, and afternoon teas, are reserved for people with more experience – which you gain, initially, by reviewing a lot of ‘quick service’ eateries, like Pret A Manger.
If living it up for free isn’t enough, you can find paid gigs here, although they require a bit more commitment and effort, and, are frankly, more of a job than something you can just casually do while enjoying a much-needed break.
If you’re the sort of person who likes to write reviews more generally, you might also be able to claw back few quid of the money you spent on your holiday by writing reviews of your hotel, too.
A lot of companies, like Tripadvisor, used to pay people to write reviews for them. These days, such gigs are few and far between. One website that does still pay for reviews of everything from hotels to airlines to toothpaste, tech and books is ReviewStream. It’s a really ugly website, but you could earn some spending money to put towards your next holiday by reviewing some of the places you visited on your last trip.
Again, the money’s not great – and there’s no guarantee they will pay for your your submission just because you posted a review on your portal for them to consider – but you can earn a few quid for doing what you probably would have done for free anyway on Tripadvisor, Booking.com or Google anyway.
American Express Platinum Cashback Everyday Card offer even more. For instance, you’ll get 5% cashback on the first £2,000 of spending in the first three months (up to a maximum of £100). After this expires, you’ll then earn 0.5% cashback on spending below £10,000 a year, and 1% cashback if you spend more that £10,000.The account is free, and there is no limit on how much cashback you can earn in one year. However, you have to spend a minimum of £3,000 in one year to earn any cashback.
You will also get cashback for every friend you invite to join (up to £150).
Meanwhile, you could earn 5,000 bonus Avios points (to spend on future flights, hotel stays and car hire) when you spend over £1,000 in the first three months after taking out a British Airways American Express Credit Card.
You will also collect one Avios point for every £1 spent with this card. Rewards can add up quickly for those travelling or using a credit card frequently for business; you’ll need to collect 18,500 points to pay for a flight to Europe.
You can also get a free ‘Companion Voucher’ when you spend £12,000 each membership year on the card, which you can use to either take a companion with you on a flight, or if travelling solo, gives you a 50% discount on the Avios price you pay for your flight. Vouchers are redeemable when you book a British Airways, Iberia or Aer Lingus Reward Flight in Euro Traveller, World Traveller and economy class cabins only. Taxes, fees and carrier charges apply.
Setting up an account only takes a minute or so, and the sites then either take a small cut from you, the leaser, or, in the case of JustPark.com, add an extra commission on to bill which the person renting your drive pays.
JustPark
In terms of fees and commission, it’s free to advertise your space on JustPark, but the site does charge a 3% commission on every successful booking. Also, be aware that for longer bookings (more than two months), JustPark deducts 20% from your first month’s payment, but after that it goes back to 3%.
Its service includes a professionally drafted contract to download and a completely flexible rental arrangement – you decide exactly when and for how long you rent your space for.
Park Let
Park Let is the most restrictive option as it deals only with five or seven-day contracts. This means that if you’re going away, you have to make sure your drive is available to use 24 hours a day Monday to Friday (in the case of a five-day contract) or all day and night Monday to Sunday (in the case of a seven-day contract).
While it’s free to advertise your space, they do charge a 25% to 30% commission on your rental earnings depending on whether you opt for one week or two. This falls to 20% for people who rent their drive out on a more long-term basis. If you do eventually end up renting out your drive on a monthly contract after your holiday is over, you will also have to pay a one-off fee of £25 as well as 20% commission of anything you earn.
YourParkingSpace
Renting out your driveway on YourParkingSpace is absolutely free and you won’t have to pay a service fee, as a 20% charge is added to your price automatically, which the person using your drive then pays to the website. YourParkingSpace also provides users with places to park by the hour, which can attract more interest, especially if you live in an area popular with shoppers or tourists rather than commuters.
How much can I charge to rent out my drive?
The three cities most in-demand by space-shy parkers are London, Edinburgh and Brighton, where parking near the centre typically goes from £9.50 a day (if you exclude the chancers charging £50+). Even in the suburbs, the going-rate starts from £5 a day in Brighton, rising the closer you live to bus routes.
It may not sound a huge amount, but added up over a fortnight, you could (conservatively) look to make between £70 and £133 renting out your parking space – and that’s assuming you list at the very bottom of the market. Most of those drives are not in the most in-demand parts of Brighton, like near the beach or station.
It’s a similar story with other touristy cities like York, where city centre parking could fetch you around £7.50 to £12.50 per space, while a drive in the suburbs typically nets enough to pay for one of two ice creams on the beach each day.
If you’re lucky enough to live in central London or Edinburgh, your drive will pay for more than a few Magnums. You can easily make £20+ a day for each parking space you have in the English and Scottish capitals. If you’ve a double drive or double garage, you’re looking at £40+ a day – which adds up to £560 in revenue during your two-week trip away. Have space for three cars? You could earn £840 to put towards your spending money.
Obviously, you will need to check with your home insurance provider to ensure that renting out your driveway or garage doesn’t affect your policy, and any extra cash you make must be declared to the Inland Revenue on your tax return.
HouseSittersUK, for instance, charges £29 a year for access to its portal, which, as its website points out is ‘a fraction of the price of a night’s hotel accommodation’. You have to register with the site using Facebook, an email address or your Google log-in, which takes a few minutes. You can then begin searching for home owners in the area you’re hoping to stay, and chat directly with them to negotiate what they want and need from you. Most home owners do not offer payment, but some do. If they pay, they will typically mention this in the advert, but you can always ask about any remunerations or expenses when you message them.Home owners are forbidden from asking you for rent during your stay, although they are technically allowed to ask for help towards electricity and other bills. However, it’s generally frowned upon given many sitters get paid.
Can I house-sit in another country?
If you’re looking for accommodation abroad, MindMyHouse.com has listings across the US, Canada and Mexico, which account for over a third of all ads, as well as lots in the rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
Again, you have to pay a small yearly membership fee of $29 (roughly £22) but there are lots of nice looking listings in exotic destinations. Of course, the home owners are generally looking for help on specific dates (usually when they themselves are going away), so if you’re looking to visit California, for example, it may make sense to look up who is listed in that destination – and when they are looking for house-sitters – and, organising your trip around that, rather than booking your flights first and then being disappointed when you discover there are no Californians looking for house-sitters the fortnight you’re going to be there.
Can I specify what I will and won’t do?
The interesting thing about this site is house sitters and home owners sign an agreement detailing exactly what is and isn’t included in the agreement, covering everything from payment (or otherwise) to the situation regarding utility bills, damages, and any chores/responsibilities. The contract also guarantees your stay, although each party can cancel the agreement up to seven days before you are due to arrive, so there’s always a chance you may have to find alternative accommodation if they cancel more than a week out.
Another popular site is Trustedhousesitters, however its joining fee is a lot more expensive, starting from £99 a year for a ‘basic’ membership. If you go down this route, it may not be a bad idea to upgrade to the £129 ‘standard sitter’ membership, which includes accidental and third party liability insurance, in case anything goes wrong during your stay.
Again, you’re unlikely to get paid if you accept a gig on Trustedhousesitters, but given its popularity with home owners, it’s a great site if you’re looking to find a ‘free’ holiday, as there ought to be plenty of listings to choose from.
Can I charge a fee to house sit?
Although payments are not the norm, you may be able to negotiate a small fee if there are pets to look after or any other additional tasks, so definitely give it a try if you feel you deserve a small daily amount.
One lady we know of at MoneyMagpie regularly makes £50 a day as a house-sitter. She only spends the evening and night in the house, before going to work the next day.
The reason for this high rate of pay is the fact that the owner of the house has seven dogs.
It would cost at least £10 per dog per day to put these dogs into kennels. By paying £50 to a house-sitter who knows the dogs, the owner saves £20 a day.
Generally, though, pay is minimal and starts at £10 a day. Some sitters ask for a food allowance of £10 a day, much like an employee can do when having to travel for their company. These sitters will often ask for 45p per mile for fuel, again much like employees get paid for using their private vehicle for work. Both of these payments are non-taxable, unlike any actual remunerations, which should be declared to the taxman if you meet the minimum threshold.
If you are more focused on earning money rather than just finding somewhere free to stay, you’re probably better looking at a specialised pet-sitting site, although you probably ought to be a real animal lover to bother applying to these. Most owners aren’t going to leave their beloved pooch with any Tom, Dick or Harry.
How do I become a pet-sitter?
The pet-sitting platform Rover doesn’t charge you to register and instead takes 15% of any money you make, much like Airbnb does. A lot of the sitters on its site are pros who either own boarding kennels and catteries, or run professional dog walkers services, and they obviously charge big bucks. That said, there are others who offer a more traditional house-sitting service, which is obviously preferred by many pet owners whose animals are too nervous or old to go to a kennel or cattery, so you might be able to undercut the pros, and net yourself a decent fee to help offset some of your other holiday costs. If you have a police check and can get references from other pet owners attesting to your dog-whispering prowess, you’ll also seriously boost your chances of getting selected.
Again you’ll find listings across the UK on Rover, as well as in popular tourist destinations like the US, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway – where hotels are notoriously expensive.
If you plan to look after someone’s pet, you really ought to look into getting public liability cover, in case the dog bites someone while you’re out walking them, for instance. Many professional house-sitters take out public liability insurance even if they never look after pets. You never know what sort of any blow-back you might get from the home owner if things go wrong, so it’s always better to be safe than sued!
MysteryDining.While most people who use the app review restaurants in their local area, it let’s you update your preferences if you’re travelling, meaning you can select to review restaurants and hotels, for example, while you’re elsewhere in the UK. They even have some international partnerships, meaning you could eat for free while on holiday in parts of Europe, the Middle East and America.
Can I get paid for reviews?
MysteryDining doesn’t pay you for each review, but offers ’capped reimbursements’ – ie. money to pay for the meal or hotel room you’ve been asked to review. It works on a tiered system (with bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels, depending on how many reviews you’ve done). Not surprisingly, the best gigs, like hotel stays, spa visits, meals at high-end restaurants, and afternoon teas, are reserved for people with more experience – which you gain, initially, by reviewing a lot of ‘quick service’ eateries, like Pret A Manger.
If living it up for free isn’t enough, you can find paid gigs here, although they require a bit more commitment and effort, and, are frankly, more of a job than something you can just casually do while enjoying a much-needed break.
If you’re the sort of person who likes to write reviews more generally, you might also be able to claw back few quid of the money you spent on your holiday by writing reviews of your hotel, too.
A lot of companies, like Tripadvisor, used to pay people to write reviews for them. These days, such gigs are few and far between. One website that does still pay for reviews of everything from hotels to airlines to toothpaste, tech and books is ReviewStream. It’s a really ugly website, but you could earn some spending money to put towards your next holiday by reviewing some of the places you visited on your last trip.
Again, the money’s not great – and there’s no guarantee they will pay for your your submission just because you posted a review on your portal for them to consider – but you can earn a few quid for doing what you probably would have done for free anyway on Tripadvisor, Booking.com or Google anyway.
American Express Platinum Cashback Everyday Card offer even more. For instance, you’ll get 5% cashback on the first £2,000 of spending in the first three months (up to a maximum of £100). After this expires, you’ll then earn 0.5% cashback on spending below £10,000 a year, and 1% cashback if you spend more that £10,000.The account is free, and there is no limit on how much cashback you can earn in one year. However, you have to spend a minimum of £3,000 in one year to earn any cashback.
You will also get cashback for every friend you invite to join (up to £150).
Meanwhile, you could earn 5,000 bonus Avios points (to spend on future flights, hotel stays and car hire) when you spend over £1,000 in the first three months after taking out a British Airways American Express Credit Card.
You will also collect one Avios point for every £1 spent with this card. Rewards can add up quickly for those travelling or using a credit card frequently for business; you’ll need to collect 18,500 points to pay for a flight to Europe.
You can also get a free ‘Companion Voucher’ when you spend £12,000 each membership year on the card, which you can use to either take a companion with you on a flight, or if travelling solo, gives you a 50% discount on the Avios price you pay for your flight. Vouchers are redeemable when you book a British Airways, Iberia or Aer Lingus Reward Flight in Euro Traveller, World Traveller and economy class cabins only. Taxes, fees and carrier charges apply.
While most people who use the app review restaurants in their local area, it let’s you update your preferences if you’re travelling, meaning you can select to review restaurants and hotels, for example, while you’re elsewhere in the UK. They even have some international partnerships, meaning you could eat for free while on holiday in parts of Europe, the Middle East and America.
Can I get paid for reviews?
MysteryDining doesn’t pay you for each review, but offers ’capped reimbursements’ – ie. money to pay for the meal or hotel room you’ve been asked to review. It works on a tiered system (with bronze, silver, gold and platinum levels, depending on how many reviews you’ve done). Not surprisingly, the best gigs, like hotel stays, spa visits, meals at high-end restaurants, and afternoon teas, are reserved for people with more experience – which you gain, initially, by reviewing a lot of ‘quick service’ eateries, like Pret A Manger.
If living it up for free isn’t enough, you can find paid gigs here, although they require a bit more commitment and effort, and, are frankly, more of a job than something you can just casually do while enjoying a much-needed break.
If you’re the sort of person who likes to write reviews more generally, you might also be able to claw back few quid of the money you spent on your holiday by writing reviews of your hotel, too.
A lot of companies, like Tripadvisor, used to pay people to write reviews for them. These days, such gigs are few and far between. One website that does still pay for reviews of everything from hotels to airlines to toothpaste, tech and books is ReviewStream. It’s a really ugly website, but you could earn some spending money to put towards your next holiday by reviewing some of the places you visited on your last trip.
Again, the money’s not great – and there’s no guarantee they will pay for your your submission just because you posted a review on your portal for them to consider – but you can earn a few quid for doing what you probably would have done for free anyway on Tripadvisor, Booking.com or Google anyway.
American Express Platinum Cashback Everyday Card offer even more. For instance, you’ll get 5% cashback on the first £2,000 of spending in the first three months (up to a maximum of £100). After this expires, you’ll then earn 0.5% cashback on spending below £10,000 a year, and 1% cashback if you spend more that £10,000.The account is free, and there is no limit on how much cashback you can earn in one year. However, you have to spend a minimum of £3,000 in one year to earn any cashback.
You will also get cashback for every friend you invite to join (up to £150).
Meanwhile, you could earn 5,000 bonus Avios points (to spend on future flights, hotel stays and car hire) when you spend over £1,000 in the first three months after taking out a British Airways American Express Credit Card.
You will also collect one Avios point for every £1 spent with this card. Rewards can add up quickly for those travelling or using a credit card frequently for business; you’ll need to collect 18,500 points to pay for a flight to Europe.
You can also get a free ‘Companion Voucher’ when you spend £12,000 each membership year on the card, which you can use to either take a companion with you on a flight, or if travelling solo, gives you a 50% discount on the Avios price you pay for your flight. Vouchers are redeemable when you book a British Airways, Iberia or Aer Lingus Reward Flight in Euro Traveller, World Traveller and economy class cabins only. Taxes, fees and carrier charges apply.
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