I remember when my dad first told me about the 7 Ps. I was young and foolish and just thought it was quite funny. Years later he said it to me again and I realised that it had somehow stuck with me and become a bit of a life lesson. Whenever I have a project in mind whether it be at work, home or travelling I spend a huge amount of time planning, researching and structuring whatever I’m trying to achieve into some form of plan or itinerary. I try to think of every eventuality or instance that could occur and come up with an alternative or back up if it does. Due to this obsessive planning, I’ve become quite handy at organising trips and have managed to cram our precious holidays full of things to see and do.
So here are 7 tips on pre-planning your trip to absolutely maximise your time away. Whether it be a small city break, a week-long holiday or a month or longer adventure. You deserve the very best!
Choosing Your Destination
Not sure where to go? First, decide on the budget. How much can you spare from now till departure? Don’t book something you are going to struggle to save up for and afford as you won’t do it justice. Also, you may have saved enough money by x month to go to x destination. But is it the right time of year? You don’t want to arrive in Thailand during the monsoon season, or Marrakech during Ramadan. Be aware of cheap flight/hotel prices as they tend to direct tourists to the less desirable parts of the year so make sure you check the weather and local events for that time of year. However, if you want to save a buck or two then this works in your favour! If you’re not sure where to go Skyscanner is great for helping you choose a destination. Select your preferred departure airports (any London is great for us) and select everywhere in the “to” section. Choose your ideal dates and Skyscanner will do the rest. You can find some great deals here especially if you’re flexible on dates. Poland, Germany and Spain often have some ridiculously cheap flight options.
Planning Your Flights
once you’ve picked your destination and know your travel dates choosing your flight and hotel is next. Your flight times are actually quite important as again the price can fluctuate depending on the time of day. What sort of trip are you planning? For example, on a 3-4 day city break, we like to travel as early as possible on the first day and arrive home as late as possible on the last day. There is something nice about arriving in a new city in time for a late breakfast or early lunch and you feel you get more time there. Leaving in the evening means you can squeeze in that little bit of extra sightseeing or one last delicious local meal before you head home. However, if you’re on a long haul flight this idea may not work as well. Europe to Europe is often fairly easy and manageable. If you’re crossing many borders and time zone changes you may consider looking at your accommodation check-in time and planning around that a bit. (Or you may not have any flexibility at all..) If you’re like me there’s almost no amount of travel that will stop me brimming full of excitement and newfound energy on arriving in a new destination. But travel is exhausting so arriving in Tokyo after 36 hours of travel means you might want to check in to your hotel straight away to drop off your luggage and have a shower. If you arrive at 6 am you’ve got a long time till check-in. Lots to consider.
Location
We always look at this before we decide on where we want to base ourselves. Location is super important, especially if you’re only there for a few days. Although taking advantage of public transport can vastly expand your stomping grounds it can be confusing and you don’t want to have to rely on it many times a day just to get around. We often try to find somewhere fairly central and nearby train station, bars, restaurants, attractions and parks. A quick Google search can easily show all the must-see attractions and there is a bounty of top 10, 20, 50 must-see sights in x destination. As for the sights and activities themselves, it’s always worth looking into how much each attraction is and whether you may be able to save money/time by pre-booking or arriving on the day. Tripadvisor can be helpful here. With further afield destinations like Mexico or Thailand, for example, we have found that organised tours although slightly more expensive can give you a far more organised and educated perspective and a more inclusive package as lunch is often included in the day trips.
Accommodation
Once you’ve done a bit of research on what you want to see, eat, drink and enjoy. It’s time to suss out where to stay. There are vast options for every budget in every city with booking.com, Airbnb and hostel world being the top 3 in my opinion. Everyone knows about these 3 so I’m not going to explain them too much. Play around with filters on booking.com to find your ideal place, location and price, or use the handy map. We always look at apartments if we’re staying for more than a couple of nights and often find them to be much better value in certain cities. For a more homely experience with a bit of character, you can get some truly stunning accommodation on Airbnb and you often get a local resident to pick the brain of. On the face of it, offers can appear cheap but just be aware there are cleaning services and other fees added on at the end. Some cities are better than others for Airbnb but can make for a great experience and still can offer up the best value for money. Hostel world we use when on a longer stint and want to keep things cheap. Alongside various dorm and room sharing options, you can find some good deals on private rooms which can work out better than hotels at times especially if you want to socialise with like-minded folk in the hostel bar.
Transfers
It’s important to work out how you are going to travel between airports. For us, the hard part is often on home turf as we’re a couple of hours away from the airport. Car park and bus options are not cheap here in the UK! Upon arrival in a new country, we’ve never had any issues getting from our destination airport to the city centre or wherever we’re headed. So look into various options with Google but a bus or train is usually the cheapest and easiest choice and transfers can easily be picked up at the Airport.
Getting Around
You’ve got from A-B now it’s time to go from C-Z. You’ve done some research on what you want to see and do, so now take a look at how you get there. Use Google to search for place to place, check the distance on foot, then decide if you need to check public transport. Rome2rio is also awesome for planning long-distance trips further afield. Most major cities have great metro or tram systems that when taken advantage of can really open up a city for you. In megacities like Bangkok or Tokyo it’s essential to get used to the metro systems, they are cheap, reliable and can save your hours of travelling on foot. Don’t be afraid to use local buses or trams but do take a look at timetables and maps so you can get a rough idea on how it works and then Google any questions you may have. It can be very overwhelming turning up to a new place and trying to work out a public transport system on the fly. We don’t often use taxis but the general rule of thumb everywhere you go is to only take officially licensed taxis with a working meter and always negotiate a fixed price first. Uber is used by millions these days, although I don’t have experience with it myself yet, they are huge for a reason in that they are trusted and safe.
Sightseeing
Touched on this above but use google to find the hidden gems to visit on your trip. Top 10 must-see/hidden gems articles are numerous for every destination and I’ll be creating some myself in the future. Although they are very similar most will sometimes include one attraction that others may have missed. Whenever we go away now we can’t sit still and relax, we really push ourselves to get out and see new things. Whenever we take a trip longer than a few days we’ll often take day trips to other destinations and use different spots as bases, for example, we stayed in Japan for two weeks last year and spent our days split between Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Using these cities as bases we managed to use japan’s incredible rail system to take trips out to the local heritage sites like Nikko, Mt fuji and Hiroshima with ease and saw a great chunk of the country.
So that’s my 7 tips to planning your next awesome adventure. A free bonus tip for you, don’t forget to check your destination’s online tourist board as it will contain a wealth of information.
For me, I get a kick out of planning and researching a new trip which a lot of people hate. If you would like any assistance in organising an amazing holiday itinerary, a banging stag do or even a month-long jaunt then head over here (add link) where we offer a full planning service for a very reasonable fee to help us run the site. Don’t overpay with travel agencies and event groups! We can work it out for you and with you.
Safe travels
