Travelling as a student is one of the best things you can do with your vacation time. It is an excellent break from studies, to allow your body and mind to recharge and relax. And it will help your personal growth greatly.

Travelling is one of those life-changing experiences that can promote confidence in yourself, and whatever career you ultimately pursue, confidence and a healthy mindset is essential. Whether you're hostel-hopping around Australia, on a sailing adventure in Croatia or negotiating the Trans-Siberian Express, you'll return home a totally different person. Employers love it, and it gives you something interesting to talk about during your interviews.

I want to travel more, but how can I afford it?

One of the best-kept secrets of the travel industry – you can buy holidays from other people, who cannot use theirs.

Almost everybody makes their travel plans in advance. But often plans change – work comes in the way, or a breakup means that second ticket is now useless (maybe even the first ticket too – few are brave enough to travel solo!). So there are lots of pre-paid, non-refundable flights, hotel rooms and package holidays that go unused.

This is where you, as a resourceful student, can score! You can buy someone else's reservations for half price!

How does this insanely awesome idea work?

Flights are trickiest. To resell a flight, the purchaser has to change the name associated with an airline ticket to a new name, and now the flight can be transferred from the original passenger to you.

But the airline must allow name changes. Here is a list of airlines that will enable name changes.

Airlines that allow name changes may charge a fee to make the name change.

Everything is done through the traveller's online account and is 100% legal and allowed. Lots of airlines allow name changes and their number increases all the time – it is a service that passengers want, and the airline industry is responding accordingly.

It is much simpler transferring a hotel reservation as the person selling the booking can call the hotel and just change the name of the main guest under the booking. Hotels allow this practice, and usually no fees are charged for this service.

Packaged holidays, e.g. where you buy travel and accommodation together, can be sold onto another person, dependent on the terms & conditions of the travel agent selling the holiday and will probably charge for a fee to do so. In Europe, travel agents are obliged to offer this service by law!

A few hints and tips

• Be flexible. As this is the cheapest travel and accommodation that you can ever find (since someone else will have paid half the price for you!), but you have to be flexible with the dates and even the destinations. Airlines allow the dates of flights to be changed too, but you will have to pay an extra fee to do that.
• Always check that you are giving the seller the correct passport names. If you give them the wrong names, you will have to pay for the name change fee twice.
• Always check that the booking has been transferred correctly in your name.
• If you are wondering where to start looking for other people's flights and holidays for sale, SpareFare is the biggest secure marketplace connecting sellers and buyers of travel reservations.