HOW I BOOK AND PLAN MY TRIPS ABROAD - Step by step guide

Planning trips is my favourite thing to do - I spend so much time on Pinterest, creating boards on places I don’t even have any plans to visit, or on Instagram saving photos. Whenever I actually book a trip I spend hours researching and planning and create an itinerary because I love exploring so much so I always want to make sure I’m not missing anything and I have everything covered. I was recently asked by someone if I could create a guide to how I plan my trips abroad… so here we are, with this blog post. I hope you enjoy and I hope you find it useful!

Step 1.

Obviously you need to decide what country you are going to visit. This can be hard, there are so many amazing countries out there and it’s so difficult to choose. The first thing I do, is decide what kind of holiday I want:

Do I want it to be short haul or long haul?

Hot or cold?

Beach or city?

Lots of walking and exploring or driving?

Relaxing or full of activities?
What kind of things do you want to do there? Eat good food? Party? Dive/snorkel? Do educational/historical things?

I often decide the answers to these questions depending on lots of things, such as the trips I’ve been on previously; for example if your last holiday was a hot beach holiday with lots of sunbathing and relaxing, maybe your next one could be a road trip through a cooler climate with lots to do? I like doing it this way as it gives me the variation and diverse experiences that I enjoy the most about travelling. I also decide the answers depending on the weather, check the forecasts, as theres nothing worse than rain the whole time, or heat too hot that you can’t leave your hotel. If you only get a certain time of year off work or school, then I always google ‘Best place to go in (insert month)’ and this will usually give you a good idea of weather conditions. You can also use google to find out the best place for certain activities, e.g. “best place for scuba diving” or “best beaches” etc.

The next way of deciding where I want to visit tends to be from recommendations. I talk to my friends and family and find out places they’ve been that they loved. I also often store a few places in my mind that I’ve seen my friends or acquaintances visit that I’ve liked the look of (maybe keep a list in your notes page). Another way of doing this is by using sites like Conde Nast traveller, and Telegraph Travel and Lonely Planet as they will give guides to each country and also where to visit within that country.

If you want to visit lots of different places, maybe consider doing a combined trip - e.g. inter railing in Europe, or visit one place on your way to another.

Step 2.

Once you know where you are going, and how long for, the fun part starts! My very first thing I do, before even booking my trip, is to head to Pinterest. If you’ve never heard of Pinterest, you need to get to know about it now. You can search in your destination and the amount of time you are going for, and hundreds of travel guides and itineraries and pictures etc will come up. For example, if I’m planning a city break in Barcelona over the weekend, I’ll type in “48 hours in Barcelona” or if I’m planning a trip to Los Angeles, I’ll type in “Things to do in LA” or “Travel Guide to LA”. Pinterest saved me when I was planning our road trip (blog post for this linked here). The best thing about Pinterest is not only the amazing travel guides, but also all the incredible pictures. I often get a feel if it seems like the kind place I’d like to visit from the pictures (obviously look at lots, same goes for the travel guides as it’s worth reading lots of different advice and recommendations until you find the guide that suits you best). Also, you can be really specific on Pinterest, so for example, if you wanted less touristy things to do, you can type in “locals guide to” or “away from the crowds….” or if you wanted a food guide you can type in “best food and restaurants in…”. Create a board for the country you are planning on visiting and pin all of the ones you like into one board. That way, when you are in the country, it is easy to pull up Pinterest and have a look through.

Another great tool is Instagram. I mentioned earlier about saving posts. Create a folder on Instagram too and type in the country/city geo tag and then save the ones you like. Often this only works well when you know more specific areas you want to stay in/places you want to visit.

Step 3.

Once you’ve decided on a country and an area you want to stay in, then the next step is to choose a hotel. This is one of the hardest decisions - I get so nervous booking hotels as it’s so frustrating if you end up booking one that you aren't pleased with.

The first thing I do is use sites like Conde Nast, Telegraph Travel etc and type in what I’m looking for, e.g. “ Best Luxury Hotels in…” or “Best budget friendly hotels in…” or “Best rated hotels in…” “Best value for money hotels in…” . This is great for getting an idea of which hotels to look more in detail at. If you find the same hotel names cropping up again and again, or ones you really like the look of, then make a note to look at those in more detail.

As I mentioned Instagram is great for planning trips. I find this works the best when you want to suss out hotels - you can see real peoples real pictures of the places, rather than just the professional hotel pictures. But, of course, take all this with a pinch of salt because some people are just really bad at taking photo’s haha! It’s a good way of telling if you like the hotels exterior and rooms etc, as well as seeing how busy it is, what kind of people stay there (e.g. young people, families, older people etc.)

The other great sites are obviously trip-advisor and booking.com, where you can read hundreds and hundreds of reviews. This is often how I make my final decision on which hotel to book. When reading reviews, you do have to take this also with a pinch of salt too, as you never know who is writing these reviews, and also people have different tastes and different needs which may cause them to view hotels differently. Also, bare in mind that most people only tend to leave negative reviews.

If most of the reviews are good, but one or two are bad, read them, but I tend to overlook these as I often think that this is just one or two disgruntled humans who perhaps had a one off bad experience or maybe are just really fussy etc. But, if the same issue is cropping up over and over again in reviews, then thats a warning sign. If a hotel has nothing but good reviews, I’ll normally be persuaded to book it as I think it’s so hard for a hotel to maintain good reviews consistently, when like I said, most people will only leave negative reviews. If you are looking for something in particular, for example you want to know what the beach is like or the pool, or the food, then use the search bar and type in pool or food etc and read those reviews. Trip Advisor also has really good room tips to take advantage of too.

Decide what is your priorities when booking a hotel, e.g. is it good customer service, is it a big pool, is it good facilities, is it room size etc, and then look at the hotel with this in mind. For me, location is normally the biggest thing, so I always look at the map and see where all the different hotels are in relation to the airport, the city centre, the beach etc (this is best done on booking.com or hotels.com when you enter your dates).

Step 4.

Once you’ve booked your hotel, you can start accumulating all of your ideas and write them down somewhere that you can access when you are away. I personally keep it all in my notes page on my phone, but others like to create an excel spreadsheet, or a word document etc. I often divide it into the days I’m there and write down what I’d like to do on each day, and then I also go and check the things that I want to do and their location to each other - for example if two things are close by to one another, then I will do them both back to back. It’s important to utilise your time well and save yourself going back and forth needlessly. Whilst I do this, I also check out the best times to visit these places (I normally find this out from the Pinterest guides), e.g. maybe somewhere is better at sunset, or sunrise, or quieter in the mornings or on a particular day. Maybe somewhere is only open on weekends etc. Then, you can plan out your trip in the most efficient and enjoyable way possible. This may sound like a lot of work, but I think the more you put in to planning your trip, the more you will get out of it. So it’s definitely worth it! Also, make sure you plan in some relaxing time/days too if you are planning a busy trip!

Step 5.

Another thing I do is find out whats on in the city that I’m in when I’m there, for example I’ll google “What’s on in New York on the (insert dates)” and often you can find a timetable of events etc throughout the city. There can be some really good concerts, festivals, markets, sport events etc that you’d miss otherwise!

Step 6.

And finally, enjoy your trip! Don’t stress out about visiting every single place, or trying to make the absolute most of it all. You have to enjoy yourself too, and if that means not going somewhere one day so you can have a longer lunch and relax or whatever it is, then that’s okay too. You don't want to get to the end of your trip and need another holiday because of how busy you were and how much you stressed about everything you wanted to do and see!