| Product: |
How do you plan your holidays? |
| Date: |
07/05/02 (354 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: The 'Lets find out where, we are going', method
Disadvantages: The ' Fly by the seat, of my pants', method
Planning anything is really not on my top ten list of favourite hobbies. Rather strange really considering I am a professional planner and Project Manager! The will is always there and I really do try but I am just not that kind of person. You see, when God was handing out ‘Organisational Talent’ I was somewhere near the back of the queue. My colleagues tut and mutter about the state of my desk (I prefer to call it ‘organised chaos’). My home is also a bit of a mess (again I prefer the term cluttered!). Planning anything turns into a kind of strategic military operation which is why I don’t enjoy it very much.
When it comes to holidays, experience has shown that I have too very different approaches to planning – the ‘Lets find out where we are going’ method and the ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ method. Both of these methods are very different in approach and style. I have used real situations to highlight both of these methods. So sit back and enjoy.
The ‘Fly by the Seat of my Pants’ method – the usual approach
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Scenario!
My boss has ordered me to take 2 weeks off at the end of this month. I have to go and ‘relax’ and ‘recharge’ (my boss is big into that kind of therapist speak!) and he expects me back with a sun tan. My first reaction is panic – I only have one week to book, pack and leave. HELP!
How much?
Right the boss says I need to go on holiday, so how much can I afford to spend. I am as organised with money as I am with everything else in my life, so I quickly flick to my online account to check my finances. Good all my overtime and premiums have come through so I can afford to splash out a bit. 1000 squid should get me pretty much anything at the kind of short notice I am being forced into. So who can I con into coming wit
h me?
Who to travel with?
Now experience has told me that your travelling companion (or companions) can make or break your whole holiday. So I decide to choose carefully. As I fancy a bit of a girlie break, I give my buddy Isa a call. Nope, sorry no can do – she can’t get the time off work. So I decide to ask the mancsoulfiance. He is definitely the reasoned one in the partnership. He finds the whole thing hilarious, but promises to take the time off and come with me. On one condition, I decide where we are going and book the trip. He takes one look at my budget, sniffs and slashes it – he always does this and keeps reminding me that I have credit card bills that need paying – yeah yeah!!!
Where to go?
Now this is going to sound grovelly but my first port of call is dooyoo. I race to the travel pages, randomly click until I find a crowned opinion in a part of the world that sounds interesting (i.e. South America – Brazil - go!), I read the op and if it sounds good, make a quick note. After work I rush to the travel agents, a very nice lady who is used to my bizarre requests and non-sensical time scales. I tell her I want to go to Brazil as I have heard it is very nice. She smiles, indulges me and then suggests somewhere completely different – ‘you would much prefer Uruguay I am sure?’ – ‘Ok, just book me something for the 15th’. So half an hour later I am booked onto a flight and into accommodation in a small resort outside of Montevideo (Who? Where? What?). The tickets will arrive in 1 weeks time, just in time for me to fly. The good old Travel Agency will also sort out what visas etc I would need for the trip so I didn’t have to worry about that.
What to take with me?
This is a nightmare - I have no idea where I am going? I know nothing about the place, the climate or the cost. Time is running out so going out and buying lots of new stuff is really not
an option. Hmmm ok lets be practical. I start with the usual things I always take, and put them in the suitcase so I don’t forget. Uruguay is in South America right, so it is bound to be hot and I think it has a coastline. Well even if it doesn’t – tough - I dig out my bikini, t-shirts shorts and floaty skirt anyway. Then a horrible thought hits me, what if it is like Chile or Peru, they are cold. So as an afterthought, I stuff some stout walking boots and several warm sweaters in my already overflowing suitcase. Damn too much stuff! I suddenly remember a tip on a travel show I watched years back. Put everything you want to take with you on your bed and then half it. So I do it . Ok I won’t need the camping stove or the manicure set after all. Oh just shut the suitcase and forget about it.
What to do when you get there?
Having arrived in our lovely hotel. We start to think about what we can do. To plan the 2 weeks we go to the tour reps pep talk (well at least you get free booze!) and think about the tour options. One or 2 sound good so we sign up. The following day it’s into town to the tourist information centre. This is actually surprisingly full of good ideas, and so we sort a few trips and visits out. Our holiday is now planned so we can sit back and relax.
Result
Despite all the hectic, this was actually a great holiday. Although I think more forward planning would have made the whole thing more enjoyable. This is not always the case when planning holidays using this method. I can think of plenty that turned into a complete disaster because everything was far too slapdash and last minute. Not to be rcommended if you want to keep your sanity.
The ‘Lets Find Out Where We Are Going’ method – the planned approach
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Scenario
For those not in the know, I am getting married in the
near future to my Dutch Mancsoulfiance. One of the nicest parts of this whole wedding thing (which is an organisational nightmare and the worst thing to plan in the world!) is the honeymoon. I was determined from the marriage proposal, that I would plan the honeymoon with great care and affection to ensure that the honeymoon is perfect. This is still in the planning process although it is approaching it’s final stages.
How much?
Well as this is my honeymoon, I am tackling it with a ‘money is no object!’ attitude. Even the otherwise penny wise mancsoulfiance is prepared to splash out. The mancsouldad has even promised a contribution (and he is a right old skinflint!) So the budget can be stretched to cover pretty much anything.
When and how long?
Hmm, do we go straight after the wedding or wait a few weeks. We thought about this for quite a while weighing up the pros and cons. The weather would be better later but it is more romantic to go straight after the wedding. It would make the wedding seem like it had gone on for longer etc. So we decided to look for a trip straight after the wedding. The how long was dependent on our bosses. Giving a boss as much notice as is humanly possible proved to be the best approach and he agreed to let us go for 3 weeks.
Where to go? – The Research phase
We have taken several different approaches to this. We want to go somewhere we have never been before. We want somewhere warm but with plenty of things to do. We want romantic luxury and a few honeymoon perks. When we started we both had absolutely no idea where to start.
TV Programmes
I have never been a big fan of the Gloria Honeyford style shows and never found them particularly interesting. They always seemed to send people off to the same places and the prices were through the roof. However in my hour of need I strangely found myself drawn to them. I watched not only specific holiday programmes but fi
lms and documentaries with keen interest. The variety of things I watched of the next few weeks was enormous. I saw everything from the Tierra del Fuego to Romania. Anything that seemed vaguely interesting I made a note of to follow up later. The good thing about the TV as a media is that you have a lot of visuals. Unlike books and brochures, they are not necessarily only trying to show you the beautiful things. You can’t help put pan over some of the not so nice things as well. They also provide a valuable feel for culture and people. I had seriously underrated their appeal.
After 2 months intense TV watching I had drawn up a list of a few destinations that seemed to be what we were looking for.
Fiji – Holiday programme
Mauritius – Holiday Programme
New Zealand – Lord of the Rings
Malaysia – Documentary
The Maldives – Diving Programme
Burma – Documentary
So on to phase 2
Internet and internet guide books
With my list of destinations, I then went to my humble laptop. I think the online Rough Guides are fabulous. Not only do they provide valuable information (which is also contained in the guide books), but they also offer links to other official sites with yet more information. So I started my research. I went to each of the online ‘Rough Guides’ and read up as much as I could on each of the shortlisted countries. I was specifically interested in the things to do and attractions sections. They provided a wealth of information. On each of the destinations I made a small pros and cons list which I weighted.
After I had read all the travel guides I then surfed over to dooyoo to see what the community had to say on my shortlist. I personally think this is the great strength of dooyoo. It allows your average joe soap the chance to look at what people who have tried the products/places etc actually think of them. This has a huge advantage over brochures etc be
cause you are reading an opinion and not what some marketing chappy would like you to believe. When I enter dooyoo as a consumer, I never rate! It is good for dooyoo revenue to prove that so and so many people have viewed the sites who are not members. Having taken the dooyoo ops into the equation and written yet more notes, I then moved onto the holiday sites, to see and compare prices
I have been very badly stung by these holiday sites in the past and am still very sceptical about using them. The service is generally not so good and the offers they make are extremely unflexible. The only 2 exceptions in my opinion are the British based site myfirstresort.co.uk and the German site billiger-fliegen.com. Billiger-fliegen offers the best flight prices around combined with excellent after sales care. Myfirstresort.co.uk also has some great bargains and is more of an all-around site. Both of them are extremely helpful for working out costs and for finding the best deals. In this particular case I used these 2 site to compare prices and look at how this would affect our budget.
At the end of my research the list had been narrowed down to
Fiji
Mauritius
New Zealand
Now on to my favourite phase.
The Travel Agent
Travel Agents have come in for a lot of criticism lately which I think is a little unfair. In my experience they offer an excellent service and are extremely helpful. As I live in in Germany, I regularly use a German based agency, Atlas. The ladies there know my quirks and my preferred tastes and are able to offer advice based on this, which is something no online site is able to do. I personally don’t have a problem paying a little extra for this as it means I get what I want. I gave the agent my list and she handed me over the relevant brochures and told me to look through them and then come back in a day or 2 to discuss what I thought and put together an agenda. My Htb (wedding speak for husband-to-be) and I
went through the brochures that evening and weighed up what we thought. We disgarded Mauritus as according to the brochures there didn’t seem to be a lot to do there apart from sun and the prices for a good hotel were extremely high. From price and quality we still couldn’t choose between New Zealand and Fiji and decided to ask the agent’s advice. She came up with an excellent idea, why not combine the 2. She put together a holiday plan whereby we spend just over 10 days in each country and combine this as a kind of stopover with the flights. She offered us a permanent base in Fiji but a touring option for New Zealand with a series of vouchers for hotels and a suggested route. The price was quite high but considering it is our honeymoon we are prepared to pay for this. She also gave us an info pack on the countries, with tips for travellers. This seemed like the perfect solution to our problems and so we signed on the dotted line.
Post booking preparation
After I had signed on the dotted, I went to a book shop and browsed the travel books. I decided on The Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand. As the trip we have booked gives us pretty much a free choice on where we go, we are currently using this and the online Rough Guide to plan out our route. Both guides offer a wealth of experience and tips and single out the most interesting regions. Although both lack a little in photos, the written descriptions are able to provide you with all kinds of information. We can even plan in which hotels we would like to stay and know about some of the better restaurants. Although the route is not planned yet, the book will accompany us on our trip. I am also thinking of buying a book version of the Rough Guide as reference on holiday.
What to take with me?
Well as I know where I am going and what it is going to be like I can prepare accordingly. I have plenty of time to buy new clothes and refill my first aid box. I know I need summer clo
thes for Fiji but that I will need some warmer stuff for New Zealand. The packing could not be easier! Why don’t I always do it like this
Result
I have picked up information from just about every source I can think of and have planned my honeymoon accordingly (if you can think of anything I have missed or could consult please leave a comment – I would be most grateful!). I have also made great use of other people’s experience and most available services. Fingers crossed the honeymoon is a great success – with this amount of planning it should be.
To be honest I don’t have the time for the more considered and planned approach normally although I think being prepared is far easier if you know what you are letting yourself in for. I am not going to change the habits of a lifetime overnight but I feel that planning for my honeymoon has certainly helped me see life from the other side. I am going to make a supreme effort to do it more often.
Summary:
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