Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Travel Talk: What's Your Travel Planning Style?


Last weekend, we booked a trip to Sri Lanka over Easter Break and it was, like, the hardest work ever. At one point, I tweeted, "Does anyone else plan their holidays with thirteen tabs open across two computers and a spreadsheet? No? Just us, then."

As I've alluded to before, I'm terrible at travel planning, which is especially ironic since I've been shortlisted for the travel category in this year's UK Blog Awards and I travel quite a bit. Sometimes - shamefully - deep down, I know that we probably wouldn't take as many trips as we do if it wasn't for John's handiwork and Zen-like state-of-mind.

And I'm not the only one. Recently, a friend admitted to taking the escalator straight up to John Lewis, plonking herself down in front of Kuoni travel specialists, and letting them plan her trip to Thailand. Another confided to me over a bowl of pho about how her upcoming trip to Burma was being "handled" by a group of travel agents. "It's just so much easier," she said, with a sigh of relief, and I was a little envious at that weight that looked to be actually visibly lifted from her shoulders.


But I think my travel planning style says more about my personality than anything else, i.e. anxious, anxious, anxious. Two weeks before our trip, I print out every single hotel confirmation, flight confirmation, rental car booking confirmation and carefully tuck and fold them into a (tabbed and labelled) plastic document holder, which also holds my travel insurance information.

I also travel with a near-complete medicine cabinet with me at all times (this is one habit of mine that I've never regretted).

You see, my first instinct when planning a trip is to panic. I'll look at a map of whatever destination we're going to and go, gulp. Whereas John ... John moves through five, distinct phases of travel planning. It's fascinating to observe.

Phase 1: Gathering information. "We're thinking of going to Vietnam," he'll mention casually to friends and colleagues at work. "Have you ever been? What did you think?" This is the informal stage of planning conception (I'm sorry to relate it to childbirth, but seriously. It's that's painful to me).

Phase 2: Study the guidebook. One of my favorite parts of travel planning is taking a trip to Waterstone's together (mostly because I spend ages looking at cards in the stationery section before getting distracted by a ghostwritten D-list celeb memoir) to buy a Lonely Planet. John will go home and flip through it thoughtfully for ages: before bed, on weekends ... and dog-ear pages of interest. I will point to pictures of beaches and say helpful things like, "I want to go there."

Phase 3: Browse accommodation. Are we the only ones who book trips around accommodation? That might be a slight exaggeration, but if there's a hotel we're dying to stay at (Sala Samui in Koh Samui was the best thing that's ever happened to me), we'll consider structuring a trip around where we'll lay our heads at night. This is also where the multiple tabs start happening ... from i-escape to Mr. and Mrs. Smith to Tripadvisor, we meticulously comb through reviews, pros and cons, and transport considerations. This is the lengthiest phase and one that I give up on easily.

Phase 4: The Spreadsheet. To help organize our trip, as well as to keep track of costs, John creates an Excel spreadsheet that magically calculates the cost of a 3-night stay in a luxury resort with a few clacking of the keys. Since I get a serious case of #smugface when I manage to merely sort and filter columns in Excel, I stay away from this phase, except to occasional tap John on the shoulder while he's working away to whisper things like, "I want to stay in the chocolate hotel. Okay? The one with the chocolate. Facing the mountain." (It's this one in St. Lucia, in case you're wondering.)

Phase 5: The Commitment. This phase involves a credit card and is the one that I fear the most ... heck, even buying flights back to Seattle freaks me out. But what if I got the wrong date? What if I change my mind? What if something happens and I can't go? What if this hotel has roaches and no one bothered to mention it? What if we missed that one Tripadvisor review that said the food gave them dysentery? WHAT IF? This is the point where, I run into the bedroom, pull the covers over my head, until John comes over with the laptop and goes, "Hello? Are you in there? Should I book it?" and I manage to squeak in agreement.

Totally. Useless.


Please tell me that you do better than this. How do you plan your trips? Do you enjoy it? Do you use Excel? Do you research chocolate hotels?

(And, also: Sri Lanka. YAY!!!)
SHARE:

20 comments

  1. I wish I was but I'm not. My 'planning' involves a Google doc or two with some ideas, but I feel like I can't really get into the mode of being somewhere until I'm there. So really, I don't plan much. John for the win!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Totally agree, Robin. Until I'm on that beach sipping a pina colada? I'm worrying with every brain cell I've got.

      Delete
  2. I've gone from one extreme to the other. Previously, my idea of planning was showing up at a train station, picking a direction and going from there or picking a general direction and a flight home from an airport 5 countries away and letting whims dictate my path.

    Now, however, I've become the most indecisive and anxious traveler ever - obsessively checking trip advisor and every site on the planet in order to get the best deal possible on the perfect hotel. Not sure however what I'm so afraid of because it can't be worse than having some random Bulgarian man try to buy me from a new friend I met on a train or getting given sweets with some sort of drug in them from some old lady. I would not recommend taking food from a stranger when you're in a place that has unexploded land mines off the side of the road.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have so many questions - I don't even know where to begin! But yes, I can imagine why those experiences might have put you off travelling as spontaneously and adventurously as you once did! Still, hats off to you for being that brave in the first place.

      Delete
    2. Haha.. Yeah, younger me was very interesting - makes for good stories. I don't even think it was so much those experiences that put me off as much as my husband introducing me to luxury travel. I haven't won the lottery yet so I can't afford to be impulsive AND stay at 5 star spa hotels,etc.

      Delete
  3. I didn't know chocolate hotels were a thing but I'll definitely be researching that now! I will often pick the hotel first, sometimes I'll hear about a unique hotel I want to stay at or more often will look at the ones available as part of a loyalty program. I only really do enough research to figure out how long I will want to spend there and then work out the finer details a bit closer to the time. Like you I always print out confirmations, maps etc before I go just in case! For the most part I enjoy doing the research and planning but it can be a bit overwhelming for more complicated itineraries.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha, I was totally joking about the chocolate hotels, BUT I really want to stay at that hotel in St. Lucia! It sounds like you're a pretty good planner, Stacey. I think my anxiety is partly fueled by the insecurity of having made a "bad" choice. But I think that you've just got to let that go at some point, otherwise you won't enjoy your holiday at all ... which is usually what happens to me at the very beginning of a vacation. It takes me a few days to relax and enjoy myself!

      Delete
    2. Oh that's too bad, chocolate hotels would be amazing ;-)

      Delete
  4. Haha everyone needs a John in their lives! I was lucky because growing up, my mom was the "John" travel planner .. she poured over books and made detailed itineraries that made our trips amazing! I myself can be haphazard in my planning... I once bought bus tickets for the wrong date (luckily the conductor was very understanding), and even had the audacity to land in a foreign country without a hotel reservation. Now, I am more akin to checking reviews and using miles which involves some planning... lol.. but I do love both the spontaneous trip and the carefully planned one. Your Sri Lanka trip will, undoubtedly, be the best of both !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha, I know - everyone does need a John in their lives, I totally agree. I'm excited for our trip! Also, why did you remove your hilarious Seville comment? I don't think we planned much ... you took us around (all I remember was Shandy Cruz Campo on the beach) and of course, jumping out of bed and, "Why didn't anyone tell me??" Poor John.

      Delete
    2. oh whoops, I may have deleted by accident. Exactly-- we did not plan anything, hence the chaos and jumping out of bed when we heard the procession music. Remember I also had a "feeling" I would see someone I knew, and then saw them on "la Giralda" stairs??? some things are better unplanned!

      Delete
    3. No ... I don't remember that ... haha! Maybe vaguely. Recap next week.

      Delete
  5. I wish I was an organised planner but I'm not either. I panicked before we went to South Africa. I was the only one on the trip who had never been (back up, I'd never even been on the African continent let alone travel down to the other side of the it.) I felt like everyone else knew what to expect and I was left with travel guides warning of crime, violence & malaria pills. I waaaaaay over thought it. I basically let everyone else do the planning for me and just worried. I really wish I'd done more of my own thinking and planning rather than be so influenced by everyone else's thinking by the time I got down there. For European travel, I've essentially already got a routine down. I cheat because I just google image everything (think its fair to say my decisions are almost always aesthetically driven...) But I'm curious about what I will do on my next big trip somewhere far away and unfamiliar. Loving John's method - duly noted!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. SO glad to hear this, Jess. I would have been exactly like you if I'd tried to plan a trip to South Africa! I think traveling's a big deal. People pretend to be cool about it (and most people are) but I don't think there's any shame in admitting that there are fears/worried involved when traveling or planning to travel!

      Delete
  6. My "planning" for trips usually doesn't extend beyond my transportation there and choosing a relatively innocuous-sounding hotel. Once I'm there, I wing it. I do get riDICulously anxious during the commitment phase, though. As in I check and recheck my reservations multiple times right up until the day of travel (after which I check and recheck the details of my return). I'm a bit of a Travel Spaz, haha. I'd like to get to a point where I'm grown up enough to actually plan a vacation: what to do, shows to see, where to eat, a nice place to stay, etc. So far, I've only done so once for a surprise trip to Vegas for my mother, and it turned out well! Which probably means I should do it again, haha.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had a feeling you'd be more of a laidback traveller, Gianni - I think we are opposites! But that surprise trip to Vegas for your mom sounds amazing. I'd love to do something like that for my parents!

      Delete
  7. Great post! I struggle with the commitment aspect of it too - it takes me ages to finally pluck up the courage to click "book" but the funny thing is, that's where it seems to end! I used to always be an obsessive planner (not the same as organised I must add) and my husband is by far the more relaxed of the two of us but since I met him, he's so good at sorting all those things out that I've become hopeless - I give lots of ideas for where to go and what to do but he seems to be the organised one who gets it all done! I'm a work-in-progress I guess :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Lol! So you already know what I'm like. I think I really over do it, not only do I look at all my favourite sites and cross-reference them, I have to read all the trip advisor reviews to make sure too! There a multiple spreadsheets, reems of print outs and a very frustrated Mr Silver!
    Lots of love,
    Angie
    SilverSpoon London

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Having a personal and clear copy of important docs such as the map, hotel and flight confirmations and travel insurance information in a secured document holder is a must to make sure that everything is on one place when you needed it. Well, aside from the documents and before everything else, planning is more important, as well as gathering information about the place that you are going to visit. It is better to know more about that place, than to risk violating their rules and be in trouble. Anyway, thanks for sharing!

    Clifton Johnson @ Insuring The Product

    ReplyDelete

© angloyankophile

This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services - Click here for information.

Blogger Template Created by pipdig