The Roadmap has nine stages. You can work through them in order, or jump to the bit you’re stuck on.
The most overlooked decision that quietly dictates everything else.
This sounds like an obvious starting point, but it’s the most overlooked decision in travel planning – and it’s the one that quietly dictates everything else.
In our family, we genuinely never know who’s coming on a trip. Now that our children have left home, every holiday involves a different mix of availability, interests and priorities. Add a severe peanut allergy into the equation, and suddenly the destination, accommodation, airline and even the activities all need careful thought. It’s one of the main reasons we still haven’t managed a full family trip to Thailand.
The dynamics of a group can change everything. A trip that works perfectly for a couple often falls apart with teenagers. Something ideal for young adults can be exhausting for younger children. Before you look at destinations, dates or budgets, get honest about who you’re actually planning for – and what each person needs to enjoy the trip.
Families with young children are among the UK’s most frequent travellers, averaging 6.5 trips per year (ABTA Holiday Habits via Weather2Travel, 2025). The shape of your group dictates how often you can realistically plan trips, not just where you go.
Once you know who is coming, the kind of holiday you want usually follows naturally. Different people enjoy different styles of travel, and no one knows your group better than you do.
This step is about being honest with yourselves. A holiday that sounds great on paper doesn’t always work in reality, especially when you factor in energy levels, attention spans, expectations and weather. As a family, we value freedom, flexibility and immersion, which is why most of our adventures involve road trips or staying somewhere that feels like a home away from home. All-inclusive resorts have never been our thing, but they might be exactly right for you, and that’s the point.
The what actually splits into two, related by different decisions; the style of holiday you’re taking (a road trip, a city break, a coastal week, a camping adventure), and the experiences you want built around it (bucket list activities, UNESCO sites, watersports, wildlife, food and wine). Most trips combine both, for example a coastal week in Croatia with watersports and a vineyard day, say, but it’s worth thinking through them separately so you don’t try to cram everything into one trip.
Beach breaks (48%) and city breaks (45%) remain the most popular types of holiday UK travellers intend to take, but almost half of people now say they’re likely to try a country they’ve never been to before (ABTA Destinations to Watch 2025). Knowing your style is the only way to filter that growing list of options.
Once you know who you’re travelling with and what type of holiday you want, timing becomes the next natural decision. For most people this isn’t about choosing the perfect season, it’s about choosing a realistic window that works.
If you’re travelling with younger or teenage children, school holidays will dictate your dates. Empty nesters, young adults and couples have far more flexibility, and that flexibility is genuinely valuable; travelling outside peak periods means quieter destinations, lower prices and a more relaxed pace.
When you pair your travel window with your chosen holiday style, your options narrow in a useful way. A family with teenagers might be looking for winter sun to recharge before exam season, making February half-term the only realistic opportunity. A hiking focused trip might be far more enjoyable in spring or autumn than at the height of summer. Understanding seasonality also helps you avoid extreme weather, overcrowding and inflated prices.
Flying in August now costs an average of 167% more than flying in January, the cheapest month – up from 99% in 2019 (Which? Analysis of ONS data, 2025). The premium for school holiday travel is genuinely getting worse, which makes shoulder seasons more valuable than they’ve ever been.
By point in the Roadmap, your options should be narrowing down. You know who you’re travelling with, what type of holiday you want, and when you can realistically go. The next step is to match those choices to destinations that are actually at the best during your travel window.
This is where the question stops being where do I want to go, and becomes where makes the most sense right now?
Take a winter holiday hoping for some sun and a few activities with teenagers in tow. From the UK, the Canary Islands gives you warmer days, fewer crowds and short flights, ideal for limited annual leave. Mexico or Florida offer reliable winter sun but with longer flights and a real trade off in on-the-ground time.
Australia and South Africa are options, but it’ll be their peak summer, meaning hotter temperatures, higher prices and busier destinations. Same trip, four very different experiences depending on where you go.
Thinking in terms of where to go when rather than just where to go is what stops you booking a holiday that looks brilliant on paper but underdelivers in reality.
Destination is the single biggest factor driving UK holiday booking decisions – 45% of people rank it as their most important consideration, ahead of cost (33%) and dates (12%) (ABTA Holiday Habits 2025-26). Getting this stage right is genuinely the heart of the planning process, but shouldn’t be first.
By now, you’ll almost certainly have a rough idea of a budget in mind. Destination choice naturally brings cost into focus, but we deliberately approach budgeting after exploring where and when we want to travel, not before. It’s far more exciting to choose a destination first and then decide how to make the holiday possible.
We firmly believe that budget alone shouldn’t dictate the quality of a holiday. A well-planned trip with a modest budget can be every bit as memorable as an expensive one. That said, certain destinations and travel styles demand compromises if costs need to stay under control.
Planning a family trip to Australia on a tight budget? Self-contained accommodation lets you cook a few meals in, which avoids the budget creep that can quietly wreck a long trip. Collecting Avios or hotel reward points over the years has been a real game-changeer for our long-haul flights.
The key is understanding where your money has the biggest impact and where you can save without detracting from the experience.
With your destination, timing and budget taking shape, this is the stage where your trip starts to feel real. Choosing the right accommodation and activities is what gives your holiday its rhythm – how the days actually unfold once you arrive.
Accommodation comes first. We like to know exactly where we’ll be staying before we lock anything else in. It removes anxiety, saves time on arrival, and provides a reliable base, particularly when travelling with children or when food allergies mean we need to know what’s near us.
Past experiences of last minute we’ll figure it out when we get there travel (hello, inter-railing days) taught us that certainty is worth the planning effort. Platforms like Booking.com and Airbnb are great for comparison, and many bookings now offer free cancellation while you finalise flights.
Activities come second, and they should support your holiday style rather than overwhelm it. A balanced itinerary mixes a few must-do experiences with breathing room to adapt as you go. Always check reviews on Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, Google or GetYourGuide before booking – the best insight is from people who’ve already done the thing you’re considering.
Travel maintained its position in 2025 as the engine of the UK’s experience economy – only 28% of people now say they’d cut back on holiday spending to cover day-to-day costs, the lowest figure in years and well below cinema (45%), clothes (40%) or eating out (57%) (ABTA Holiday Habits 2025-26). Spending on the right experiences genuinely is what people prioritise
Packing usually gets left until the last minute, but it’s one of the easiest places to remove stress from your trip, if you approach calmly. By this stage, your destination, accommodation, activities and transport are all in place, which makes it far easier to pack with intention rather than panic.
A smart packing strategy isn’t about taking more, it’s about taking the right things, organised for how you actually travel. We always recommend starting your packing prep earlier than you think you need to. That extra time is what lets you replace missing items, wash or buy essentials, and avoid the last minute scramble that can overshadow the excitement of departure.
For travellers with severe allergies, like our family, this stage also covers things like translated allergy cards and properly stocked medical kits – none of which you want to be sourcing the night before!
One in three UK travellers admit to forgetting an essential item on holiday, with chargers, adapters, and medication topping the list (Post Office Travel Money research, summarised by Compare the Market, 2025). A simple checklist removes the risk almost entirely.
Even the best-planned trips don’t go perfectly, and that’s okay. Travel confidence doesn’t come from assuming nothing will go wrong. It comes from knowing you’re prepared if it does.
This stage of the Roadmap covers the things most people leave to chance. Travel insurance that genuinely matches your trip (especially if you’re doing adventure activities or travelling with medical considerations); entertainment for long journeys that turns travel days into part of the experience rather than something to endure; and a Plan B for when weather, transport or group dynamics force you to change course.
It’s also where AI tools start to earn their keep. Although we are cautious about AI for initial planning, for in-the-moment problem solving (translating a menu, finding a backup hotel, working out compensation rights), it’s genuinely useful.
A quarter of UK people who went on holiday abroad in the past year did so without travel insurance – and the average travel insurance claim now stands at £1,724 (ABTA/ABI, 2025). The risk of going uninsured isn’t theoretical, it’s a four figure bet against yourself.
The journey doesn’t really end when you get home. The days and weeks after a trip are often when post-holiday blues hit hardest. As everyday life resumes, and the memories start to fade faster than you expect.
This final stage of the Roadmap is about holding onto the experiences and giving your trip a proper ending rather than letting it dissolve into a blur of unpacking and laundry. We use the Journi app to bring together photos, notes, locations and moments into a shared digital travel journey. This way, everyone in the family can contribute, it captures the small details (inside jokes, unexpected detours, the favourite meal nobody can quite remember the name of) that fades first if you don’t write them down.
It also gives the trip a sense of closure, helping you reflect on what you loved and what you’d do differently next time.
Holidays carry genuine wellbeing weight – 80% of UK adults say holidays are important for their mental health, and over 90% say they look forward to going on holiday more than almost anything else (ABTA Holiday Habits 2025-26). Preserving those memories properly is part of what makes the next trip easier to look forward to.