Key Areas To Consider When Travel Planning A Road Trip 

For many travellers, taking a road trip can be one of the most enjoyable holidays, but they take a lot of planning. Once you’ve decided to embark on a road trip then, in addition to following the 9 steps to successful travel planning, there are a few specific ‘road related’ elements to consider as well. Don’t worry though, whilst planning a road trip can feel quite involved, making sure that everything is in place before you set off, allows your trip to run smoothly as possible, so you can really relax into and enjoy your journey.

Get your road trip route right

The route you decide to take when planning a road trip can make or break your holiday – too much driving, too many stops or unsafe conditions can all impact on your overall travel experience, so try to consider the following areas when planning your road trip:

Research – invest time at the outset researching the options for your road trip. The more time you spend in the planning phase, the better your trip will be in the end.

Starting point – decide where you want to start your road trip from and look at how you might get there (flights, trains, buses).

Circular or linear route – consider if you would benefit from a circular road trip route returning to your starting point, or from a linear route starting and ending in different places. If you have a different end point, then can you return your hire car and fly home from there?

Get input from others – have a look on-line for blogs by people who may have driven a similar route. If it’s a road well-travelled, then there might be a lot of insights about the route and what to expect which can be useful in planning your trip, such as, the state of the roads.

Consider if any strategic positioning is required – if you’re catching an early morning ferry, or an international flight, then it’s a good idea to stay near the ferry or airport the night before, just to ensure that you are in the right position for your onward travel, and to avoid any last-minute rush or hold ups to get there.

Stops along the way – what places would you like to see along the way? I find it useful to use a road map at this point of planning a road trip, putting post-it notes on the map for overnight stays and/or pitstops of various kinds (toilet, food, activity, sightseeing).

Driving distances – use GoogleMaps to research the driving distances between your overnight stays and pitstops. Our rule of thumb is that 2 hours should be the maximum drive without a pitstop or longer break. Overall, I try not to drive more than 4 hours a day, and if we do, we plan a non-driving day the following day.

How far can you travel – consider how far you can travel in the time you have set aside for your road trip. Be realistic and try not to underestimate how long you need to move around – allow for traffic delays, filling up with fuel, grabbing coffees, finding parking spaces etc.

Draft plan – use an EXCEL spreadsheet or travel app to help plan out your route with all your researched information on it.

Sense check – Once you have your draft plan set out, take a step back and ask yourself whether it looks reasonable? Does it look nicely paced, or too rushed? Are there too many overnight stops or not enough? Try and imagine how the route will feel in practice and amend if you think it necessary.

Add detail to your road trip itinerary

Now that you have a workable route for your road trip, you can start to address the detail.

How much detail to add – you may prefer to leave your plans lose and decide what to do when you get to your destination(s), or alternatively, you might prefer to choose activities and book some to in advance, particularly if you are travelling in high season, just to know that key activities are arranged. How much detail to add might depend on who you are travelling with, for example, I would schedule more in advance it if was a road trip with our kids.

Scheduling activities – use your itinerary spreadsheet or travel app to schedule activities and sightseeing as required, adding notes about opening times or pick up locations for tours. Note –we usually schedule a Laundrette morning, which can be a welcome highlight by the halfway point of our road trips!

Keep an open mind – my advice would be to approach scheduling with an open mind and be prepared for the need to be flexible, depending on what happens when you’re on the road. You might decide to make a diversion from your route to see something as the mood takes you – we once took a long unscheduled detour from the highway in Australia to Eungella National Park where we were rewarded with platypus sightings on Broken River.

Time to decompress – after a long drive, you may just want to chill for an hour and have quiet time, so try to bear this in mind when scheduling. Try to keep the schedule clear immediately after a long drive if you can or schedule a something relaxing.

Make bookings related to your road trip

Flights, accommodation, and car hire

Flights – book flights in line with what you decided about the format of your road trip (circular or linear route).

Accommodation – assuming that you are not hiring a motorhome for your road trip, then you will need to book accommodation for your overnight stays. Does the accommodation you booked have car parking on-site or will you need to use off-site parking, and how much will this cost?

Car hire – think about the type of car that would work best for your road trip, for example, is a 4WD preferable for desert or off-road conditions, or bad roads? What size of car do you need for the number of passengers and all their luggage? Note – be prepared however not to always get the exact type of car that you ordered!

Consider the additional costs of your road trip

When planning a road trip you will no doubt have a budget to work to. On top of the basic costs of your holiday – air fare, accommodation, food, and activities – the additional costs of a road trip will be:

Car hire – this can sometimes be booked as part of a package along with your flight, such as, with BA Holidays (flight and car hire). This can sometimes work out cheaper or offer Reward points with the airline you are using.

Car parking – this may be needed if your hotel doesn’t have on-site car parking, or if you are visiting a city.

Fuel – yes, a necessary evil on a road trip! There are Apps which you can use to help identify cheap fuel on the way, such as, GasBuddy for USA and Canada travel.

Toll roads – in some instances you can set the sat nav system to avoid toll roads, however sometimes it pays to take the toll roads for speed. Make sure you have small local currency to hand for tolls in case they don’t accept cards (such as in Costa Rica).

Car wash – to get rid of windscreen bugs.

Snacks on the go – to keep you going in between longer stops.

Local considerations

Whilst the basic steps of planning a road trip are the same, no matter where you are going, there will be some local considerations to make depending on where you are undertaking your road trip.

State of the roads – no two road trips will be the same, which is part of the excitement of embarking on a road trip in the first place. The roads will be a lot smoother and flatter in some places (Canadian Badlands and Prairies road trip), than others where the roads a less well maintained, or it is hilly (Costa Rica road trip). Sometimes there are special considerations, such as driving on sand, where you might need to let air out of your tyres to keep moving (Oman road trip). Just make sure that you are prepared for local conditions.

Impact of the weather – this will depend on when you are travelling in your chosen destination but think about the weather and if there are any special conditions you need to plan for, such as driving in ice and snow, torrential rain, extreme heat.

It might seem that there is a lot to think about, perhaps because there is, however just work through the planning phases in turn, and remember – the more road trips you do, the easier the planning gets!

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Enjoy your travels!