Travel Planning Doesn’t End, Even When You’re Away!

As you head off on your dream trip, with your detailed travel plan in hand, please don’t think that your travel planning work is done. Whilst the hard work might be behind you, there are so many things which can happen on a trip that you need to be prepared for all eventualities and to react to changes in your travel plans where needed. A travel planner’s work is never done…

Examples of travel planning required during a trip

When there are problems with your flight

Dealing with cancellations and delays

If your flight or train is delayed, then you will need to quickly assess how this impacts your plans. Small delays may not have any knock-on effects, but longer delays might mean that you miss onward travel arrangements. More significantly if your flight is cancelled:

• Will the airline put you on another flight? And how soon will that happen? 
• When will you reach your destination? 
• What does the cancellation mean for the start of your trip itinerary, and 
• Who do you need to contact about the delay?  
• Do you need to arrange any alternative accommodation?

Although this can be stressful, try to keep a calm head and work through the questions methodically until you can see what the way forward looks like, work out what needs to be done and make a Plan B.

Monitoring connecting flights

My advice would be to make sure that you leave sufficient time between connecting flights to account for reasonable delays. If not, you risk missing your second, or third, flight. If you foresee a problem, don’t be scared to change things on the go.

• Recently we were flying from London to Dallas, and then on from Dallas to Calgary, with only two hours in-between flights.  On paper this should have been long enough, however after googling the London to Dallas flights, we noted that they were regularly arriving in Dallas one hour late, which would cut our transfer time in half.  
• We therefore made last minute changes to our onward flights, resulting in an overnight stay in Dallas on the way out.  Whilst this shaved some time off our trip to Calgary, on the way back it allowed us time in Dallas, so all was not lost.  

When a suitcase goes missing…

To be honest, this happens every now and again, so say a small prayer of thanks every time your bags arrive in one piece at your chosen destination.

If, or when, one of your bags goes astray, one of a number of things might happen:

• If you’re lucky, your airline will have texted you already to inform you that your bag hasn’t made the flight. In this circumstance, usually you complete an on-line form stating where to send the luggage when it arrives on the next flight (happened to us after a flight to Venice).
• Sometimes, you don’t receive a text and so, when your bag doesn’t appear on the carousel, you need to go to the baggage office to report the missing bag and make arrangements for it to be delivered (happened to us after a flight to Oman).
• If you arrive on a late flight and everything at the airport is closed, then you will need to complete the missing bag form on-line (happened to us after a flight to San Diego).

Note – Some airlines, or airports, are better than others about helping with lost luggage. Just don’t rely on the airline to keep you informed, you may to keep calling them to get the answers that you want about your luggage, which can obviously eat into your itinerary time.

• On our trip to Venice with the kids, the suitcase which didn’t make the plane from London was shared between our two daughters, which meant that they were both left without luggage for 24 hours. This is the argument for carrying a change of clothing in your hand luggage – at the very least 2 pairs of pants and 2 t-shirts. Lesson learnt.

When you have problems with your hire car…

The most common problem with hire cars is not getting the type, or size, of hire car that you booked. This seems to happen to us all the time.

• Once however, we created the problem by booking a convertible for a Florida trip, thinking that it would be fun but without realising how small the boot space would be – just room for the kids or the suitcases, both not both, so sadly we had to return it for something more ‘sensible’.

Navigation systems also seem to be unreliable – sometimes they work beautifully and sometimes they seem to have a mind of their own.

• On a trip to the Canadian Badlands and Prairies, our hire car randomly applied Valet Mode which unhelpfully switched off the sat nav function.  Luckily, we had a physical map to use when Google maps wasn’t available.

Occasionally, something more significant can happen with your hire car which might require you to take time out of your itinerary to sort out.

• We had to deal with a more significant car problem in Costa Rica when the engine of our hire car struggled in the mountains and all the warning signs came on.  Luckily, we made it to the hotel but then had to spend time ‘off itinerary’ waiting to speak to the hire car company on the phone. It was a shame, but we were philosophical about it – just one of those things that’s got to be sorted out.

When someone falls ill on holiday…

Obviously, what happens in this situation depends on how seriously ill the person is and where you are. If your travel companion becomes seriously ill, as well as calling a doctor or taking them to hospital, you would also call your travel insurance provider and follow their advice.

If the illness is nothing serious, and they are just not feeling well enough to participate, then you can review your itinerary and take a view. Potentially if travelling with children, you could ‘divide and conquer’ so that the healthy adult continues with the itinerary, whilst the poorly person recuperates.

• We have recently had to allow recovery time for bad backs and scorpion stings!

If mother nature gets involved…

Impact of bad weather

Bad weather is probably the most likley source of disruption on trips, so keep your eye on the weather reports whilst you’re away. On a low level, it could just be that wind or rain means that activities are cancelled, or that you need to work around snow or ice in the winter. It’s therefore good to have some alternative ideas, or indoor plans, to fall back on if needed.

• Once, we had a flip situation when we planned a visit to New York in the depths of February, expecting it to be cold and snowy.  The planned itinerary included a lot of museums and ideas for keeping warm indoors, but when we were there, it was gloriously sunny and so we wanted to be outside all week.  A much nicer problem to have when reworking the itinerary!

Experiencing a Force Majeure

Occasionally, significant events happen over which we have no control at all, such as, natural disasters including fire, floods, storms, hurricanes and even volcano eruptions. If it’s an emergency then the first thing you should do is follow the advice being given by the authorities – evacuation, stay indoors, return home. Know what the potential dangers are for the place you are visiting and take any warnings seriously.

• We were in Australia in 2010 when one of the Icelandic volcanos erupted which meant that our flight home was cancelled, and the airline wouldn’t fly us back for two weeks.  We were travelling with young children at the time and so we quickly had to put a plan together to secure accommodation and know roughly what to do with our extra time.  
• We also had to sort out funds as we needed to pay for an extra 14 days of holiday, which was interesting at the time, although was refunded later by the airline.

When something on the itinerary doesn’t work…

There is a limit to how much you can plan from home, so when you get to your destination, often you will have some surprises:

• We were caught out by Canadian Bank Holidays recently on a trip to the Canadian Badlands and Prairies – everything was shut in the country!
• We’d booked a restaurant in Seville which looked totally dead when we got there, so we cancelled the reservation and dropped in somewhere livelier.

I guess the point is that it pays to approach your itinerary with a flexible mindset and be prepared to change tack if it will benefit your travel group.

Share the load and let the trip planner have a day off

Share the plan

Although you may have put all the work into the plan, it pays to share the plan with everyone else in your travel group, so they are aware of what’s been planned – this avoids the need for everyone to keep asking you repeatedly what’s next on the itinerary!

By sharing the plan, you can also hand over the reins to other family members to help execute the plan, which can be nice if you want a day out of the driver’s seat for a change.

Above all, have fun with the plan. Don’t let it weigh you down, it is just the springboard for you to have an amazing adventure!

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Enjoy your travels!