Travel planning can be very daunting and overwhelming, especially when you’re going somewhere new. While some people love it, others can easily find themselves lost among all the information you can find online.
With so many different “best” itineraries, top things to see and “must dos”, it is difficult to know exactly where to go and the best way to approach your trip.
While you can of course work with an itinerary you find online and go fully with it (this is definitely the easiest option), you may want to chose specifically where you go and have a more personalised itinerary.
In this blog post, I’ll try to help you with just that, and give you an easy guide for a stress-free travel planning experience.
What you’ll need
I won’t dive deep into how to choose your destination or time of the year, so before you start travel planning, here’s what you’ll need:
- know where you’ll be going (the country, region or city)
- know when you’ll be going and for how long (time of the year and specific dates – ideally you already have your tickets)
- a physical guidebook if you like seeing things on paper
- Google Maps or any type of map (online is preferable)
- some time on your hands – travel planning, even the easy verion, takes time!
Now that you have all of this, it is time to start building your own itinerary!
Easy Guide to Travel Planning – How to build your personalised itinerary
Some key principles
- Be realistic: keep in mind that you will have to compromise on some things because you won’t have time to see everything, so focus on what you really want to see and try not to overestimate the time you’ll have.
- Be flexible: when travelling, there are always a few things that don’t go as planned, so always suppose that things will take more time than anticipated.
- Less is more: try to always aim for less than more in your travel planning, otherwise you’ll quickly burn out and feel frustrated. It is better to see less and enjoy more than to rush from one sight to another.
- You don’t have to do all this in one sitting! Travel planning takes time, so you can spread these out over several weeks. I’d just try to do all of this at least 1-2 month before a trip.
1. Make a general list of places you want to go to
With the help of your guide book and the internet, write down a list of places you want to see and visit, activities you want to do, etc. Depending on where you’re going it can be cities, towns, hikes, historical landmarks or museums.
Try to focus more on what you really want to do, instead of what you think you have to see.
In this process, it is also useful to keep in mind how long it takes for each thing. Visiting a museum can take several hours, while checking out a pretty building only takes a couple of minutes.
2. Search for time-specific activities
Maybe you are traveling during a specific time of the year where a festival takes place at your destination or they show an opera you have always wanted to see, or maybe it is the perfect season for whale-watching, northern lights or for a specific hike.
Some keywords you can search can be for example “visiting X in autumn/spring/summer/winter”, “what to do in X in summer” or “festivals in X in March”.
If you are traveling during autumn, it could be interesting to see where you can admire the foliage, in winter there might be Christmas markets, in spring you could try to see flower fields or flower shows, and in summer maybe there are music festivals or beautiful beaches to see!
3. Organise everything into a visual map
This to me is the most useful step. If you haven’t done it already in part one, I highly recommend adding all the things in your list into a map.
I use Google Maps and add notes to some places to help me remember why I wanted to see them.
4. Declutter your list
Now that you have everything in sight, and keeping in mind the time needed to do each thing, it’s time to see if you could actually fit everything into your trip.
Start by selecting the things you absolutely want to see and do, your non-negociables. Then, if that leaves some room for other things, add them according to how excited you are for each of them and how doable it is too.
I always recommend having less than more, as it will allow you to really enjoy each place you are visiting, instead of rushing from one thing to another.
What I like to do is writing down my list of non-negociables and keeping at hand (or on Google Maps) a list of other places to see if I have time.
5. Group things by location
At this stage of your travel planning, you have selected what you want to see, so it’s time to start thinking about some sort of itinerary. And by that I don’t mean something very detailed.
Look at the map that you have and see if some pins are close to one another. For example, maybe you have 2-3 things to see in the east of the city and 5 in the centre. Those could be your activities for two or three days, depending on what it is.
This will help you avoid losing time in transportation and it also makes more sense time-wise. You can either assign a whole day or half a day in each area, it all depends on how spread out everything is.
6. Book popular places and activities
Depending on where you’re going, I highly recommend booking in advance some very famous visits or activities. This could be for example the Vatican in Rome, the Universal or Warner Bros studios in Los Angeles, or if you want to see some ice caves in Iceland.
Especially if these can influence your itinerary (meaning they take some time), I recommend to check their availability in case you only have a few options left, and booking them.
Booking these things straight away will really help you organise your trip and you’ll avoid missing out because of sold-out tickets.
7. Write down a draft itinerary
At this stage, you can easily have a rough itinerary that will basically consist of “this day I will be around here, that day I will be around there”.
At the end of this process, you should have a draft itinerary with an area to be in each day. If you want, you can also have something more detailed, but try to keep some flexibility in your schedule.
8. Accommodation
If you are staying in one place (like a city) and visiting around, I would recommend checking online what is the best area to stay in.
If you are on some sort of road trip and moving from one place to another, then just check your itinerary and follow it for your accommodation.
9. Transportation
If you want to rent a car or a private transportation and even if you are moving by train, plane or ferry from one place to another, I highly recommend buying the tickets in advance, as it will help you plan your day better and avoid costly last-minute prices.
10. Write it down somewhere
Now that you have your personalised itinerary, write it down somewhere to keep track of everything that you have booked.
To keep things organised, I like to have a folder in my emails with everything linked to that trip, I add some things (transportation and booked activities) on my calendar and I have the rough itinerary somewhere at hand.
Enjoy your trip!
The whole purpose of travel planning and organising a few things in advance is to enjoy your trip to the fullest, knowing that you will be able to see and do what you want without missing out, while at the same time having the flexibility to explore more if you want to.
This is especially important if you want to make the most of a short trip, but also if you are going on a “big” holiday that you want to tailor specifically for you and your interests.
