My Travel Planning Tips and Tricks
Last week I shared a peek into my brain when it comes to planning our trips. If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that travel is my love language. I find so much joy in traveling the world, and introducing my kids to new places and cultures.
I spend a lot of my downtime binging youtube travel vlogs, scrolling through my favorite travel Instagram accounts, and browsing the Airbnb homepage. I genuinely enjoy planning our trips and have learned a few tricks along the way.
So many of you asked for advice on planning, so I figured a blog post would be the perfect way to walk you through my process. Make sure to bookmark this page to come back to when planning your next trip!
I’m also linking a few of my most popular travel posts at the bottom of this page, so check those out if you’re looking for packing tips or travel guides.
Step One /// Create a Pinterest board
Start a Pinterest board for any destination you may be interested in visiting. You can search for blog posts or travel guides on that location and save them to the board as you go. I have boards for any place we may travel to one day and add to them as inspiration strikes or if I come across something relevant to that location.
You can follow along on Pinterest if you are looking for some travel inspo.
Step Two /// Utilize Google maps
This trick was shared with me by my best friend and it has been a game-changer. Identify spots from your Pinterest board or gather recommendations from friends and create a pin for that location on google maps. Once you’ve gathered a good-sized grouping, zoom out and see where the majority of your pins are located. This is a nice starting point for identifying where you’ll want to spend most of your time. Head over to the Airbnb website and keep that area in mind as you look for lodging.
Step Three /// Start the booking process
I break this step down into 4 smaller steps. I always start with accommodations. Then I move on to flights and transportation. Lastly, I work on scheduling tours and experiences.
Accommodations //
I only make reservations at fully refundable Airbnb or hotels when I’m booking far out. This allows me to make changes or cancel if our itinerary changes. By booking early I’m able to choose from a better selection of options within our budget. I try to stay consistent with booking through Airbnb because we’ve built up a profile over there with reviews. I also find their platform to be a little more user-friendly.
Flights //
I aim to book our flights around the 3-month mark for most of our trips. If I can find a great deal earlier, I’ll go ahead and book. Most of the time I’ve found that by 3 months out the price is about as good as we are going to get. We try to use a mixture of points and search for deals on sites like Scott’s cheap flights. I’m not loyal to one airline. Whichever airline gives the best price for the location we are trying to get to is who I’ll book through! Once we’ve booked our flights I go back through our Airbnb reservations and adjust dates as needed.
Transportation //
Book your rental car and any commuter travel needed. We try to book our accommodations central to where most of our activities are going to be located so that we can hit as many things on foot as possible. That is the great thing about organizing your trip locations through google maps! The biggest transportation logistic for us is always figuring out how to get from the airport to our destination. My biggest tip is to figure this out prior to your arrival so that you’re not having to deal with logistics with jet-lagged and tired kids in a foreign country.
Tours and Experiences //
This is the fun part! Start a list of places you’d like to see or local activities that sound interesting to you. We try to fit in 2-3 scheduled activities per trip and leave the rest of the days open for exploring or relaxing at the Airbnb. I often look for Airbnbs with a pool or nice outdoor areas for us to hang out in on our low-key days.
Step Four/// Add all info to a trip planner document
The last and very crucial step is adding all of your trip details to a planner in google docs. There are a ton of template options to choose from. I’ve rounded up a few and saved them to LTK. This one central document is where we keep all our flight info, contact info for Airbnb hosts, confirmation numbers, etc.
