Travel Tips: When You’re the Trip Planner
Since 2004, my husband and I have taken a marriage retreat / recharge / unplug from the world / birthday-anniversary-Valentine’s Day-Christmas-gift / bucket list vacation every summer. This special time usually consists of two to three weeks of travel overseas. We take turns being the trip planner and do all of our own bookings, so we’ve gotten to know the ins and outs of travel pretty well.
Recently my nephew found out that he’ll be going to London and Paris for 10 days as a part of his graduate degree program. (Wish they had programs like that when I was in grad school!) He and his wife asked us for travel tips. Just in case you’re the trip planner for a big adventure this year, I thought I’d share these travel tips with you as well.
Here’s a copy of the travel tips email that I sent to them:
Dear A and D,
This isn’t meant to be digested all at once!! Whenever you need to procrastinate on something, you can pop back into this email and procrastinate productively.
I know we’ll talk about a lot of this trip planner stuff when we go out to dinner, but I have some travel tips blog posts that you can browse at your leisure. I wrote a 12-part, once-a-month travel tutorial for friends and family who were going to travel overseas for the first time in 2014.
The travel tips are written in order of what to do and when:
How to Plan for Travel: Budget
How to Plan for Travel: Set your travel goals
How to Plan for Travel: Choose Your Accommodations
How to Plan for Travel: Choose Your Transportation
How to Plan for Travel: Creating Your Daily Travel Itinerary
How to Plan for Travel: Prepping Your Travel Documents
How to Plan for Travel: Credit Cards, Debit Cards and Travelers Checks…Oh My!
How to Plan for Travel: How to avoid getting slapped (or worse)!
How to Plan for Travel: Let the spending begin …
Get organized for travel: What supplies will you need to pack for your vacation?
How to Plan for Travel: What’s left to do?
How to Plan for Travel: Get ready for departure …
Travel planner and logistics posts:
If you’re going to use a discount airlines, know this
How many vacation days do you take?
Location-specific travel tips posts (Paris/France):
Getting to Paris via The Chunnel
General tips for budget travelers in Paris – Part 1
General tips for budget travelers in Paris – Part 2
Travel planner videos:
Dealing with your return from traveling
Hope this helps!
Take care,
Helene
For more info about being an efficient travel planner – and other productivity tools and travel tips – from time management keynote speaker Helene Segura, click here.
