My Trip Planning Process

This past June Mr. C and I embarked on a week long, self-planned tour of France. Obviously, this was not the first self-planned trip we’ve done, and it wasn’t my first trip to France but planning it presented the opportunity to reflect on how travel planning works (at least for me). I’d like to share that process with you. 

Step 1: What are your goals?

Any country you go to, even if you choose one or two cities, will present you with so many options in terms of sites, restaurants, activities, day-trips….It can get overwhelming quickly and a voice in your head will start howling But I want to do it ALLLLLL. HOWWWW  The answer, of course, is that you can’t do it all unless you’re planning to slow travel your way across the planet (which actually is an option, just requires a different approach). So you narrow it down based on your trip goals. It may sound odd to have “goals” for something fun like travel; we generally associate goals with work, but your trip goals are just generally the types of things you want to see or the areas you’re most interested in. For example, in planning this trip to France, our goals were as follows: 1. See the D-Day beaches in Normandy 2. Honor my late aunt by taking in as much Medieval history as possible and enjoying all of the gardens. These two goals were the broad brush strokes, the outline, for our trip. It’s not quite a wishlist, broader than that, just a couple big ideas. 

Step 2: What is your budget?

If your goals are the broad brush strokes, your budget is the frame for the canvas. You budget will determine the time you have to work with, the places you can stay, the ways that you can access your goals, the kinds of food you can eat. So many things. For example, Mr. C. and I have two dogs, whom we have to board when we’re away, which directly impacts our budget. When looking at our goals, we were able to compare the cost of staying in Paris the whole trip and taking a ton of day trips out to the places we wanted to see, versus renting a car, and staying in a couple different places, driving ourselves to the sites we were interested in. Budget determined if the more desirable option (renting a car) was feasible. Budget also helped determine how long we could spend in France as a whole and therefore in each place we wanted to go. Budgets are so important when planning travel, otherwise travel can become unsustainable as you go into increasing debt to fund your wildest travel dreams (speaking from experience here). 

Step 3: What are the other constraints?

Constraints are directly tied to the various resources we have access to. Budget is the constraint tied to money of course. Time is another resource that we have, and one that can be limited. Be sure to consider less obvious constraints though. For example, energy, personal energy, is a resource as well. It funds things like our ability to be patient with travel snafus, our ability to enjoy what we’re seeing or experiencing, our ability to interact with the people and culture we’re in, in an authentic way. If you looked at our France trip, as I did initially, according to budget constraints we had a week. Our goals said we would see the Loire Valley, in addition to Normandy and Paris, which amounted to about 2 days in the Loire Valley, one whole day for castles. I could’ve looked at the whole day as 10 to 12 available hours, and after mapping out a driving route I could’ve planned for us to see 4-6 castles that day. But would we have enjoyed them? Would Mr. C. and I still be talking to one another by the end of the day? Would we have time to appreciate the fantastic French food & wine? Probably not. Use your goals to help you whittle down the massive list of things that, ‘would be so cool’, that ‘you should really see’, that ‘you could probably do’, into a list of things that you can do that will not deplete all your resources. 

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Step 4: Plan some flexibility.

Our budget allowed that we could rent a car instead of relying on trains and buses. Our goals helped us determine that spending a couple of days actually in Normandy was probably our best bet. We would be able to stop at Giverny on the way to Normandy (Goal 2), see the beaches (Goal 1), and see the Bayeux tapestry (Goal 2). We ended up in Villers-sur-Mer, a lovely little town right on the coast, and near enough to Bayeux and the beaches that we actually didn’t plan a specific itinerary for our time there. Instead we used our goals to create a list of places we wanted to go, roughly in order of preference, and started at the top, seeing how far we got, being careful to enjoy ourselves and not deplete our energy. 

One more thing…

I read somewhere once that in war, even the best strategy goes out the window the moment battle is joined. Similarly, the best, most carefully considered trip itinerary will rarely come off exactly as planned (I think I’ve had this happen once…). That is not a bad thing, often the sour of the moment adjustments that are made because something “went wrong” turn out to be some of the most memorable parts of the trip.. I got engaged that way… 

What are your trip planning strategies? Not sure you’re up to planning a trip on your own? Check out our coaching options in the shop!