Travel The World, But Do You Need To Plan Your Trip?

To successfully travel the world, how much planning do you need to do? We all have a different relationship with planning – some people live by lists and extensive research and others prefer to go with the flow. I love travel planning, but then you know that from the title of my website! So if you’re looking for advice on how to approach travel planning your adventures, new ways of planning your travel, or just a reminder that you’re already good at planning, check out my blogs about planning your own travels.

Why travel planning can be enjoyable

Big ideas travel planning

Other than going on a trip itself, there is no greater pleasure for me than, curling up in front of a fire with our dog in the depths of a British winter when the nights are dark and gloomy, to read travel books and blogs, put together a Pinterest board of interesting places, look at the British Airways January flight sale, and develop a myriad of ideas to travel the world, many of which will not reach fruition….but some of which just might.

For sure, I would not have enough money or time to undertake all the travel plans I have saved as drafts on my laptop, but there is a lot of pleasure to be had from this big ideas form of travel planning and wondering where the next trip might take us. This has to be the best form of travel planning, and I’m sure that I am not alone in thinking this.

Note – it doesn’t have to be winter for me to start travel planning, sometimes my mind will start working on a plan as soon as we return from a trip, giving us travel plans to look forward to and helping to combat post-holiday blues.

Bringing a specific trip itinerary to life

Once you’ve decided on a trip destination, then the detailed travel planning can start. If you want to travel the world on your own terms, then I suspect that this is the part that people might find daunting, or too time-consuming.

There’s no avoiding the fact that good planning for independent travel needs an investment of your time – to put a trip framework in place, consider logistics and flesh out the detail. If you don’t have time to make your own travel plans, then using a good travel agent or itinerary planner can be invaluable, as long as you’re happy to let someone else do the heavy lifting. Whatever works for you!

However, starting from scratch with a blank sheet of paper (or EXCEL spreadsheet in my case) and gradually building a travel plan can be immensely rewarding. I will often trade watching TV in the evenings in favour of researching travel plans, and just fit the research in whenever I can – at times it has provided escapism from a stressful professional job.

So try to see it as an opportunity to create something exactly how you want it and enjoy the coming together of all your plans.

Why make a travel plan and trip itinerary?

Aside from the obvious reason – that some sort of plan is required to actually make a trip happen – there are other good reasons to travel plan, such as:

Travel plans help you maximise your time when away

One of the main advantages of having a travel plan and trip itinerary when you travel the world is to maximise time at your destination, and reduce lost time looking for somewhere to eat or debating what to do. I like to know where I am staying and always book accommodation in advance – having had first-hand experience of looking for accommodation on arrival at destinations, it is not something I enjoy when tired and disorientated in a new place.

It can be helpful to have some restaurants (but not all!) booked in advance, to cut down aimless wandering whilst looking for somewhere suitable to eat – particularly useful when travelling with anyone who gets ‘hangry’ (like me!) or young children who can go from ‘not being hungry to starving’ seemingly in a matter of minutes.

Similarly, having some activities booked in advance saves time what you might do, particularly if you are travelling in a group and everyone has a different idea.

Travel plans can improve your travel experience with young children

To date we have mainly been travelling as a family and, when the kids were younger, they regularly wanted to know “where are we going?”, “what are we doing next?” and “what’s for tea?”. So, although the kids were pretty good at going with the flow on trips, they also seemed to benefit from having a framework in place, which reduced their anxieties about being away from home and feeling out of their comfort zone.

As our children have grown into older teens and young adults, they have become more involved when I plan a trip, inputting about where they want to go and what they want to see, which has added a different, and valuable, dimension to the planning process.

Travel plans can reduce fear of missing out (FOMO)

Suffering from FOMO is a real danger for me, and so I try to make the most of our time on a trip so that we can see as much as possible of that destination. Whilst I have learnt to accept that you cannot see everything that a destination has to offer, my goal is to know that we have covered good ground and left with a good overview of the place – at least enough to know whether or not we would want to return if the opportunity arose.

Is it possible to ‘over plan’ your travels?

The answer is most definitely, yes. As a family we joke about “keeping to Mum’s itinerary” however, there is no room for an itinerary tyrant on holiday – if down-time is needed, the opportunity to do different things arises, or a plan needs to change, then of course that is a good idea.

Over the years, I have learnt to reign myself back from over-scheduling activities and consciously leave time and space in the itinerary so that we can all enjoy the place that you are visiting without feeling rushed. It’s a balancing act to be perfected!

Best laid plans…

Ultimately you should aim for a baseline plan which can be adapted as needed – as we all know, best laid plans don’t always work and the unexpected can happen, so having some flexibility around the plan is essential.

Indeed, some of our best travel experiences have come about ‘off plan’ when we have reacted to opportunities which have presented themselves, for example, when we were stranded in Australia due to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland but gained two extra weeks which then needed planning in live time…

So, is all this travel planning necessary?

No, not necessarily. You can travel the world in many different ways – catch a plane somewhere, book into a hotel and not leave its confines for a fortnight, for which no planning is required. In contrast, planning a road trip has lots of component parts to organise and so is a very different ball game.

In essence, the amount of time needed for your travel plan will depend on who you are travelling with, where you are going, what sort of trip you are undertaking and how long you plan to stay for.

Whilst I may sound like a planning nerd, I also aspire to the freedom of just rocking up to a place and going with the flow. One of my travel goals is to head to an airport with just my passport and suitcase and take a last minute available flight to somewhere we’ve never been, and to worry about where we are going to stay when we get there.

That would certainly offer a very different travel experience for me – hopefully it would be fun and liberating, rather than anxiety inducing for me, the travel planner!

In the meantime, I will continue to travel plan and blog about the experiences. Next up, 9 steps to smooth travel planning…

Thank you so much for reading my blog, I hope you found it useful?

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Enjoy your travels!