Travel Planning Tips

Here are some travel planning tips to help with the enjoyable task of planning your vacation. Travel planning actually requires you to daydream about your perfect vacation! And once you have that well thought out, you can begin the actual planning to help turn that dream vacation into a reality.

The following travel planning tips will help you organize your perfect vacation.

Travel Documents and Vaccines

When planning your trip you need to consider where you're going and if you will need special documents or vaccinations. Will you be crossing any country borders? What are the current travel documentation requirements? Are vaccines required as well? These are things you will need to find out far in advance as they may take time to get taken care of. Are children traveling with you? What are the requirements for children? Are you flying with a child under two years of age? You might need a copy of their birth certificate to prove their age. For United States citizens, answers to many of these questions along with other travel planning tips can be found at the United States travel website.

Book Transportation and Lodging

This is the fun part... getting to shop around and compare prices for transportation to and from your destination along with finding a great hotel or resort, and possibly a rental car. There are so many travel resources out there these days that make it quite convenient to comparison shop online for your best deals. Be sure to take any notes so that you may compare and come back to the best deals. Once you book your items, be sure to print them out and put them in a central location with your other vacation information.

Vacation Activities

What do you want to do for fun on your trip? This is something that needs to be planned ahead as well. You don't want to overbook yourself and then be exhausted or end up disappointed because you weren't able to do it all. Check out our tips for planning vacation activities.

Make a Packing List

You should start a packing list way ahead of time so that you have plenty of time to think of everything you will need for your trip. You can check out our packing list for you to use, or to at least get you started on building your own list. You can read additional travel packing tips here as well.

Taking Care of Home While You're Away

Another travel planning tip is to organize things at home. Some things at home don't stop just because you're away. You can have your mail held by the post office, which can easily be arranged online these days, or you can have someone pick up your mail for you. You may want to have them take out or bring in the garbage cans for you as well and water any plants you have in your home. If you have a pet who is not traveling with you, you'll need to arrange a kennel or someone to care for your pet. Two other things to do before you leave are to make sure all your bills are paid. If you have online banking it's very easy to schedule payments for while you're away. The last thing is to set up a light timer so there appears to be someone home while you're away. These are all included on our packing list under the "to do" section.

Taking Your Travel Info With You

You should have a single location for all of your travel plans. I like to use one of those leatherette folders that travel agents used to give out. It's the perfect size for holding tickets and boarding passes as well as any paper documents you have, folded in thirds. An additional travel planning tip is that I keep them in order of need so that what I need first or next will be right on top. While on my trip, any reservations or confirmation numbers will be easily located in this folder along with my travel itinerary. This is also a great place to keep those travel phone numbers along with any emergency contact information.