One of the first decisions you face when planning a trip is:
“Where should I go?”
There are a lot of factors to consider when finding your perfect destination, let’s discuss some of them.
Budget
Time of Year
Days Available
Traveling Party
Interests
Flexibility
Budget
First and most important, establish your budget. You could nail down all the other items on this list only to find out that you can’t afford this dream trip you’ve put together. If you start with the budget, preferably using money you have saved, then you will have a better idea about what destinations are possible for the money you have available. I highly advise never going into debt for a trip. There’s nothing worse than coming home from a trip and having to pay interest on that expense for the next year. You can still have fun on a very small budget! Think state parks, National Parks or free days at the musuem.
Time of Year
Do you have a specific time of year you are available to travel? Maybe your child has school and is in sports so they only get a few weeks off per year. Or maybe you are given the same weeks of PTO at work each year. Possibly, you are joining other families and your schedules only match up for one week.
Another factor in choosing the time of year is weather. You wouldn’t want to schedule a beach vacation at the Jersey shore for February. Unless you really love sitting on the beach in your winter coat. Nor would you schedule a ski trip in July, unless you were leaving the United States. Instead, some destinations will be very weather dependent, so consider what time of year matches your interests.
Days Available
Imagine you live in Colorado and you have an available long weekend coming up. Three glorious days of freedom. Where can you go? That all depends, do you live near a major airport? From Colorado, you certainly can’t go to Europe and back in the time you have available, but maybe you can get a flight to Las Vegas for 2 nights. Or does it take you 3 hours just to drive to an airport? If so, maybe you are better served looking at other places you can enjoy within a 3 hour drive of your home such as a National Park or a weekend in the city.
Be smart with your time when planning a trip. Don’t spend all your time getting to and from your destination so that you don’t have enough time to enjoy your destination. A few days hiking, eating out and relaxing within a few hours of your home might be better than a Bucket List destination that you can only enjoy for a day due to travel time.
Traveling Party
Traveling with others can be so rewarding! You have the ability to share experiences and make memories with your favorite people. How can that ever be bad?
Imagine this scenario, you booked a National Park trip for your extended family. You are bringing your kids and meeting up with the cousins and the grandparents. The kids love exploring the outdoors, running down trails and splashing in the streams. You love to hike and enjoy the tranquility of being in nature. But one of the grandparents has limited mobility and will now be stuck at the hotel or visitor’s center waiting for you while you adventure. You forgot to take all members of your traveling party into consideration.
Thinking about the needs and interests of each member of your traveling party might sound overwhelming, and it sometimes does limit the trip you can take together. Personally, we’ve traveled with our family of 5 that has a large age gap from our oldest child to our youngest. We’ve also traveled with cousins and friends. Each trip was very different. But ultimately, they were each a much better trip for everyone when everyone had the opportunity to have fun.
Interests
This one is more obvious than all of the others. Of course you’ll plan a trip to somewhere that interests you. But sometimes the problem isn’t “where interests me?” rather, “how can I narrow down the places I’m interested in?”
This is where budget, time and traveling party come together. Once you figure out those, you’ll already have narrowed down your list of places and will probably already have a good idea of where you’re headed. This is where you become more specific in the destination. Now is a great time to see if there are any events happening in any of those destinations. Maybe you’ve narrowed it down to a beach in the Carolina’s. Your son has just finished learning early American history in school, so naturally your brain goes to the Wright Brothers. Or maybe you find out that Myrtle Beach has a music festival happening that your daughter would love to attend. See, you just found your destination!
Flexibility
Here’s where I’m about to change your whole way of thinking and turn you into a savvy traveler. If you have the ability to be a little flexible, try playing with those dates on the flight calendar. Maybe your dream destination is cheaper if you shift your dates by a week. Or maybe you are stuck with certain dates, but have a lot of things that interest you. Try using Google flights search using your home airport and dates to see what areas are affordable that week.
If you are flexible in the areas of both time and interest and just want to see the world, this is for you!
If you ask my husband where he wants to go, he’ll tell you everywhere. Our favorite way to travel is where we let the destination pick us. Let me explain. We go to Google flights and type in our home airport and then search. No dates, no destination. Just our home airport and search. This will bring up the lowest price for a week long trip sometime in the next 6 months to all the destinations on the map. Our last big adventure found us in Prague for my husband’s birthday. Those flights cost us less than $500 per person from the airport closest to our home on the East Coast of the USA. We’ve also found flights for our family from the airport closest to our home on the East Coast of the USA to Hawaii for $500 per person. If you are really flexible, try other nearby airports. Our best deal to date was a trip to Paris from a major airport on the East Coast of the USA for $300 per person. On all of these trips, we did not set the date or the destination. We just let the search engine show us the best deals it could find in the next 6 months to everywhere. Flight prices change often, so if you don’t find your dream trip today, if you are able to be flexible, try again tomorrow.
Each time you travel to a new destination, you are learning something new about that corner of the world. Each time you choose to return to a familiar destination, it’s like having the comfort of going home. No matter where you choose to journey, I hope you enjoy the journey!