If you're going to visit New England, summertime is easily one of the most hospitable times to visit. You'll miss the devastatingly beautiful autumn foliage blanketing hill after mountain, but you'll also miss the equally inhospitable and dangerous snow-shroud suffocating the region's frosted and winding streets. If you don't have any summer plans, and maybe have some kids going stir-crazy at home, you might be hankerin' for a last-minute trip to the most scenic and oldest areas of the U.S. If so,
there are deals circulating through the travel-o-sphere at the moment that will help you cut costs and fret as little over your budget as possible.
But first, the biggest general piece of money-saving advice: Plan your trip in advance and decide what you want to see. "New England" officially consists of a full six states: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. You're not going to be able to see everything in one trip, and can't even fully explore one state in one trip -- not even micro-sized Rhode Island. Combining Connecticut parks like the pristinely manicured Talcott Mountain State Park with Rhode Island's array of coastal towns and Boston, with its iconic Freedom Trail is one big trip right there. This is why it's best to pinpoint some localities and chart your path along the road accordingly (or railroad, which we'll get to). Select the facets of New England that you're most interested in -- cute colonial towns, expansive natural environments, delicious seafood, etc. -- and roll with it.
That being said, you could always use the hacks currently available and build your itinerary that way. From hotel steals to transportation deals, restaurant discounts to attraction bargains, summer 2025 might be the time to head to merry old New England.
Read more: 5 Of The Best Breweries Across Vermont
Get To And Around New England As Cheaply As Possible By Train
Public transportation can be a great money-saving hack that's also environmentally friendly. If you're traveling with kids, Amtrak has an exceptional ongoing offer of 50% off for kids ages 2 to 12 (kids under 2 ride for free). If you're visiting the charming coastal communities of the greater Cape Ann area in Massachusetts, the Cape Ann Transportation Authority (CATA) is offering completely free bus rides through December 31, 2025. This can help you get around through some absolutely picturesque sailing and fishing coastal towns like Gloucester and Rockport and visit their charming waterfront areas.
Additionally, visitors to Boston -- especially Massachusetts residents -- can take advantage of Boston Harbor Islands ferry discounts. Residents get a $10 discount on ferries during the week, while Boston-area libraries offer 50%-off tickets to those who hold library cards. There are also discounts available for EBT and WIC users.
If you're going to see New England beyond the immediate vicinity of an Amtrak or Metro-North Railroad stop -- or the range of the "T" in Boston (the metro, officially named the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) -- you're going to need to drive, take a ride share, or hop on a bus. Aside from interstates, much of New England is one big, spaghetti-stringed mass of narrow country roads cloistered by thickets of deciduous forest. Our biggest money-saving piece of advice here is to plan well. If you're renting a car, having a smart road route reduces gas usage. And if you see a good fuel deal when you're above empty or even at half a tank? Get the gas then and save money later.
Grab A Deal On New England Lodging
Once you've taken advantage of one of New England's summer 2025 transportation hacks, you can move on to lodging hacks. The good news here is that, while some hacks include big chains like the Hilton and Four Seasons, deals also include quintessentially New England bed and breakfasts, which is something of a must-do if you can swing it. The bad news for out-of-staters is that some of these deals target New England residents, no matter that New Englanders can hit up many of the region's sites via day trips.
On the New England resident front, Maine's Kennebunkport resorts offer 10% off to residents of any of New England state. Certain chain locations like the Four Seasons Hotel One Dalton Street in Boston offer an eyebrow-raising 20% off to New Englanders. Outbound Stowe in Vermont, meanwhile, offers a flat rate of $129 per night to all residents of New England, plus New York and New Jersey. Wayfinder Newport in Rhode Island offers a staggering discount of up to 35% off to New Englanders. There's loads of deals like this, some of which are seasonal and some of which are ongoing, and some of which are subject to conditions like booking through a hotel directly and not a travel site.
Those who are visiting from further afield can take advantage of New England lodging discounts, too. Canyon Ranch Lenox in Massachusetts, a wellness spa, has a gonzo free-overnight stay deal for those ages 13 to 21 traveling with parents (two nights minimum) for stays before Sept. 15, booked by Sept. 1. The Grafton Inn in Vermont offers 20% off weekday stays through September 11, 2025. And for the Canadians in the crowd, Boston's Revere Hotel offers a welcoming 15% discount through September.
Savor New England Cuisine Without Breaking The Bank
No trip to New England would be complete without some of its famed seafood fare, even if it's only a simple bowl of clam chowder -- either the white stuff (Boston clam chowder) or the red stuff (Manhattan clam chowder). But chowderheads aside, New England's coastal towns are teeming with every type of crustacean and mollusk you can imagine, especially stretches like Maine's unofficial "lobster crawl" set of towns. And while seafood is, sadly, often expensive, Red Lobster is calling, if you dare.
On the non-chain front, New England has other food hacks available for folks wanting to shrink their vacation expenditures, seafood included. Folks in Boston have a mountain of options to look forward to during 2025's Dine Out Boston, which spans from August 3 through 16. Formerly called Restaurant Week Boston and now encompassing two weeks, Dine Out Boston includes reduced price, set menus at a bonkers 129 participating restaurants throughout Boston. This includes cuisine of all types, but leans heavily towards Italian, surf-and-turf, and general American eateries. Pazza on Porter in East Boston also has $10 pasta-and-wine-bottle deals on Tuesdays, so feel free to load up. Boston's Ninety Nine Restaurant also offers a free kid's meal with each purchase of an adult meal. Various places around Boston offer $1 oysters during specific windows of time across the week.
Aside from these choices, it'd be a good idea to check on deals where you're going. There's just too many options across all of New England to cover here. But worst-case scenario, you can reliably rely on good, reasonably priced, local pizzerias.
Load Up Your Itinerary On New England Attractions And Activities
Finally, we come to things to do in New England besides sleep, eat, and get around. The entirety of New England is saturated with outdoor activities, particularly of the woodland-hiking and beachside-lounging varieties, the latter of which you can actually do in summer because it's not too cold. Many of these options are free or cost little more than parking, so we're going to sidestep these options to focus on largely town-based activities. And of course, one of the best things you can do in New England is just walk around its pretty, colonial streets, like that of the infamously historical town of Salem, Massachusetts (especially at Halloween).
Looking to Boston again (it's a prominent city with lots to do, after all), it's Institute of Contemporary Art is totally free to enter from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. every Thursday. Boston's Hatch Memorial Shell outdoor music venue along the Charles River also has free concerts throughout the summer, including Beethoven's phenomenal Eroica Symphony (Symphony No. 3) on August 20.
Outside of Boston, the Tides Beach Club in the aforementioned Kennebunkport, Maine hosts free stargazing parties on specific summer dates from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Whale's Tale Waterpark in Lincoln, New Hampshire has a huge, daily deal of nearly 50% off for those visiting after 2 p.m. Looking out to New England's outdoors, Lincoln's Loon Mountain Resort in the White Mountain National Forest is offering free, 30-minute downhill mountain biking lessons for the summer. These options, plus whatever else the reader can dig up, is sure to transform a summer 2025 trip into something more affordable.
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