April 4

How To Plan An Epic Travel Itinerary

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In case you haven’t heard, we are launching Will Journey an itinerary based travel website. You can see the 1st live itinerary here, the rest will be launching soon! We know that planning an awesome travel itinerary is the hardest but most important so we wanted to build a site to help people dream up, plan and book amazing trips.

To celebrate our first itinerary on Will Journey we’ve decided to share our steps that we take when putting together our own travel itineraries.

Gather Inspiration

Any experienced traveler keeps a backlog of places that they want to visit someday, this list is constantly being added to. There are endless sources of inspiration out there and you can come across it anywhere, on your phone, online, on the tv or in real life. To help you out, keep some sort of storage system for keeping track of everything. I like to use Pinterest, you can either create public or private boards for this purpose. If you use private boards than you can upload screenshots or snapshots from your phone. It’s also helpful to gather inspiration from your friends, in person or over the phone. While their trip might have looked immaculate on Instagram or Facebook, it’s always worth the call to get their actual take on the trip.

Create Your Map

Now that you have gathered all of your inspiration and you have a rough idea of when you can take a trip, how long that trip might be and what part of the world you want to go to you should map out all possible destinations. I like to use Google Maps “My Maps” feature for every itinerary we book. You can also, print out a map if you’d like. Now, start adding all locations that you are interested in possible going to onto that map, making sure to Star or use a different color for the “Must Go” locations.

Develop A Rough Schedule

After your map is complete, it should become pretty clear about which locations you’ll want to visit, based on the priority level of each location and travel (mode of transportation and time) between locations. I like to start a spreadsheet with a row for each day. Columns are Start Location, End Location, Hotel, Travel Info, Activities.

Check Booking Prices & Availability

With your rough schedule in hand, go out and look at the availability for hotels, transportation and those must do activities. Unless you are booking 6 months to a year in advance, at this stage you will mostly likely run into some issues with that schedule. It could be very expensive travel or hotels not having available rooms. For hotels specifically, if you see online it doesn’t have availability and you really want to stay there, try giving them a call. It’s possible you can move rooms part of the way through your stay.

Make Your Final Destinations Choices

After you’ve confirmed that you can book a smooth itinerary have one last thought about your trip. Remind yourself of the purpose of the trip and if the proposed itinerary will meet those needs. For instance, if your main purpose of your trip was relaxation but your planned itinerary has you in a new hotel every night for a week straight just so you can see more places maybe you should cut some of the destinations and focus back on the core. Alternatively, if you’re an adventurer yet you’re looking to book a week straight at one hotel in a big city, figure out what you can an alter to suit your needs.

Book Hotels, Long Distance Travel and Must Do Activities First

Your itinerary is perfectly figured out, now it’s time to make a mad dash and book all of the essentials, hotels, long distance travel and your must do activities. Do this ASAP because one thing like a flight fully booking up could ruin your entire plans. Leave other bookings like airport transfers, standard dinner reservations and normal activities to be booked later down the road.

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