Tip on how to do stopovers on the cheap

I'm a big fan of stopovers as a way to break up long-haul flights.

You get to pause from what might be an arduous, 20-plus hour journey, you can add a different accent to your itinerary, they help you recover from jetlag and they don't add much to the overall flight cost.

The trick is to use the "multicity" function, available on a number of flight search engines. For example, suppose you were travelling from Melbourne to London in early May, returning at the end of the month and looking to stop over in Tokyo for three nights.

Using the multicity function on the Momondo search engine, the best price for these flights is $1351.

That's flying with Cathay Pacific from Melbourne to Tokyo on May 2, Tokyo to London with British Airways on May 6 and BA again on May 29 from London to Melbourne.

By comparison, for a direct flight from Melbourne to London on May 2 and back on May 29, the cheapest price is $1024, according to Momondo. Your Tokyo stopover adds just $327 to the flight price.

Another example – Sydney to Frankfurt departing June 5 with a three-day stopover in Hong Kong, returning from Frankfurt to Sydney on June 27, could cost as little as $1346 with Air China, or $1657 flying a combination of Qantas and Emirates, compared with $1273 if you were to fly direct from Sydney to Frankfurt and back on those dates with Etihad.