When browsing hotels and flights for a summer vacation to London, I decided to do as the locals do – sort of.
I used a virtual private network (VPN) to change my location to the U.K. in hopes of finding a deal, a much-hyped travel hack.
“Travel sites often use dynamic pricing, meaning they show different prices depending on your location or browsing history,” a December 2025 blog post on NordVPN’s website reads. “If you switch to a server in another country or region, you can get the cheapest international flight deals with a VPN. Especially during the holiday season, when prices surge before Christmas and New Year, this trick can make a real difference.”
I decided to give it a go myself, but my search didn’t yield the results I hoped Here’s why.
For the purposes of my experiment, I searched Hotels.com for travel dates on an early June weekend using NordVPN. Virgin Hotels London-Shoreditch was listed at about $910 for the two-night stay. While the prices were displayed slightly differently on the U.S. site, the total was nearly the same at $906 (and appeared to be more expensive by booking across the pond).
I figured I’d try my luck with rental cars and browsed options from Hertz for pickup at Heathrow Airport (LHR). A small car – a Ford Fiesta or similar – was similarly more expensive on the U.K. site, priced at roughly $229 as compared with about $222 on the U.S. version.
I traveled – virtually – to Mexico to run the numbers there, too.
The Westin Resort & Spa, Cancun, was listed at about $300 for a two-night booking on the Mexican version of Hotels.com, while the U.S. site listed it at $297, a modest savings. Hertz’s Mexico and U.S. sites, meanwhile, showed the same price – $41.96 – for an Intermediate 2/4 Door car rented from Cancun International Airport (CUN).
I also tried the same comparisons for both trips using another VPN provider, ExpressVPN. Hotels.com asked me to complete a digital puzzle to prove my humanity, but even after doing so, it wouldn’t let me through (I’ll ponder what that says about me later). This time, I used Booking.com for the hotel searches.
Even so, the results were largely the same, with only slight differences. The Cancun hotel was even closer in price on the Mexico and U.S. versions of Booking.com, for example.
Marijus Briedis, NordVPN’s chief technology officer, said prices may vary “a lot depending on the website, time, and where your server is located.”
“If you keep trying different options, you can find better deals online,” he told USA TODAY in an email. “Some sites change prices more based on your location, and sometimes the best savings come from connecting through less obvious countries. In our 2025 research, using servers in places like Turkey, Poland, Croatia, or Moldova sometimes led to better deals than connecting from the country you’re traveling to.”
However, when I set my location to Turkey and reran the London hotel and car rental searches, the hotel was priced the same in Turkey and on the U.S. Hotels.com site. The rental car was also more affordable on the U.S. Hertz site, at roughly $245 compared with about $273.
“Hotel prices are dynamic and can vary from one search to the next based on many factors, including live changes in availability, hotel‑originated rates and promotions, special offers, currency fluctuations, and other variables,” Expedia told USA TODAY in an email. “On Expedia and Hotels.com, travelers can view prices on any of our international sites directly – with or without a VPN – and using a VPN does not impact the price they see.”
ExpressVPN, Hertz and Booking.com did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
My flight deal searches were marginally more fruitful. The U.K. version of Google Flights showed an Iberia flight as the cheapest from the New York area to LHR. The round-trip journey from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) – with a stop in Madrid – was displayed at just under $583 using NordVPN. The U.S. version showed the same flight as $583.
The cheapest flight to Mexico from the New York area was slightly more affordable with my location set to that country. A United Airlines flight from EWR to CUN – with a stop in Houston – was $411.42 round-trip on the Mexico version of the site, and $413 when viewed from the U.S.
I obtained roughly the same results when viewing the flights with ExpressVPN as well. Google declined to comment.
Robert Cole, Senior Research Analyst, Lodging and Leisure Travel at Phocuswright, previously told USA TODAY that different rate structures can be applied to different distribution channels and locations.
For instance, a hotel could give a third-party booking platform a less expensive price but ask that it only list that rate in a particular place. “They go, ‘That’s great, but do not sell that in the U.S.,'” he said. “You know, ‘We are (a) Miami Beach resort or we’re a resort in Cancun (or) the Dominican Republic, we want German business.'”
To obtain a certain price, travelers may also be required to present a home address or a driver’s license from that country (when renting a car). “My words of warning are, yes, you can do it, but you have to be very careful knowing who you’re dealing with,” Cole added. “So, it’s very much traveler beware.”
That depends. I came up largely empty-handed, but spent money in the process. A month of access to NordVPN and ExpressVPN cost me about $14 each (though subscription prices vary).
I may have just had bad luck, though.
“When there are price differences, they can be significant,” NordVPN’s Briedis said. “Our research found savings of up to 40% on some flights and hotels. A family of four booking flights from Mexico City to Disneyland Orlando saved almost $600 by connecting through Moldova. These savings don’t happen every time, but for expensive bookings, even occasional discounts are worthwhile.”
This story has been updated to add new information.
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.
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