Travel Tips : How to Choose a Trip Location

I get asked a lot how Nick and I choose the destinations we travel to. With a never ending list of possibilities around the world and even in our own home country of the US, let me tell you, it’s often a daunting task. We each have so many places on our “lists” that we want to see and experience and sometimes they line up and sometimes they don’t. We spend quite a bit of time, over a span of a few months brainstorming where we should head next and the process really does entail a lot of research and gathering information. So today, here is the process we go through of choosing a destination and all that it entails.

We start brainstorming for trips about a year in advance. For example, right now we’re in the process of discussing options for our Spring trip for next year (2015) and while that may seem like a long time in advance, that’s one reason we can travel so much because we plan ahead and can work it into our schedules. We won’t book anything for a while, but it’s important to give yourselves a few months of brainstorming ideas for locations. For us, we talk and see where the other person would like to go and try to meet in the middle or match up locations that might be close to each other.

Often times we start off with totally different locations than we end up going with too, so keep your options open.

After you figure out some of your ideas while brainstorming, choose a specific part of the world that interests you. For us, we were thinking the Mediterranean or Middle East for our Spring trip next year so we looked into a few different options for countries in that region during our brainstorming. Once you narrow down a specific area of the world, it makes everything easier because you have less to choose from. Narrow it down even further than continents, try and figure out particular areas such as SE Asia, Southern or Northern Europe, etc.

This is a big step in narrowing down locations even further. Some places just aren’t great to travel to at certain times of the year. For example, Nick and I don’t like to travel in the Summer as it’s too hot for us and there are too many tourists, which narrows down a lot of spots that might be best that time of year. For our Spring trip next year, we started with the idea of Greece, specifically Santorini, however upon further research and contacting people we know there, we realized that when we’d want to travel (February or March) that really is too early to really experience the Greek islands, not enough would be open and we’d miss out on some of the great weather and beautiful sunsets which are so specific to that part of the world. Learning that, we moved our area of focus to Spain, where the temperatures will be warmer (but not too hot) and things will be more available and easier to get to.

There are also places that I personally wouldn’t want to see in the Summer time in the heat with hords of tourists. It’s important to confirm what your location will be like in the time of year you’ll be traveling as that can really narrow down your options even further.

Once you finalize a location, you’ll want to do some good research on things to see and do and how you’ll get to your location. Keep in mind that flights often only operate during certain times of year or specific tourist attractions might be different in off seasons. Confirm you’ll really be able to experience your destination before you make the final bookings.

Once you’ve finished up all your research and confirmed that everything will work out for your trip, make the final bookings. I usually start with flights, as that’s the most important to lock in, especially if you find a good price. Then I follow with hotels and then transport options if we need to book in advance. No matter how far in advance, if I see a good deal on hotels or flights, I jump on it, because you can work the rest of your trip around those good deals usually. I also usually have an idea of places to stay and flights we’ll want that I find while doing the research in the above steps, so usually this part is pretty easy and quick, since you already have the information you need.

Travel Tips : How to Choose a Trip Location

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