Planning Your Holiday
I love planning a new holiday. It is always exciting to start with a blank page about somewhere you want to visit. I am always amazed that in a short time you can become a font of knowledge about the place you are visiting courtesy of the wealth of information that is available online. I thought it would be helpful to go through the stages I use to plan a holiday.
I used to always start by buying a guide book – Lonely Planet has always been my go to guide and if you like having a book this is still a good way to plan a holiday.
Increasingly I now use the internet for my research.
When I am planning a holiday I usually have a reason why I want to go there so my first search may be a specific question about that – e.g. visiting mountain gorillas in Africa.
Other questions are things like top 10 things to do in a country or a city – to get some quick greatest hits in a place. Greatest hits are usually there for a reason and are likely to be worth seeing.
Other sources are luxury travel companies who are a good source for finding itineraries for places.
Having worked out an outline of where I want to go and the places I probably want to visit I then start to work on the fine details. This is where I find all the numerous blogs helpful as they tend to have more specific details about each place. To find the blogs just type in the destination that you are planning to visit into google and add blog.
Hopefully I now have a reasonable itinerary for my trip. Depending on where I am going I will sometimes book all my accommodation or in some trips I will book the first few nights then book more as I travel.
Accommodation
Airbnb has transformed booking of accommodation and increasingly this would be my first port of call when booking accommodation in most places. Their website is easy to use and the review system works very well.
I used to be a big fan of Trip Advisor for booking accommodation and it is still where I would look if I wanted to stay in a hotel for my holiday.
Planning Actitivies
Trip Advisor has been slightly overrun with adverts but is still useful at finding a good company if you know what activity you want to do . E.g. if you want to find a perfect walking tour in Hanoi using Trip Advisor is still an excellent way of finding the best ones.
Flights
There are lots of comparison websites. My favourite is Momondo. It is clear to use with lots of easy to use filters e.g how many changes, time of travel, airlines to consider, etc. The prices that are quoted are also usually cheaper than booking directly with the airline. Additionally in my experience it is often slightly cheaper than the other comparison sites.
Another good site is Skyscanner
Google have also joined the act with google flights which is also easy to use
Plugs
We are all tied to our phones and portable devices so having the correct travel adaptor is one of the most important things to pack for your holiday. Skyscanners have an excellent and comprehensive guide.
To avoid having to buy lots of travel adaptor plugs a simple idea is to take one adaptor and an extension lead which means you can plug in lots of devices to charge with just one travel adaptor
Mobile Phones and Data
We rely on our mobile phones for so many things and being able to use them when abroad has really become a necessity. Increasingly most accommodations have wifi linked to them and it might be that that will fulfil your data requirements on holiday.
If you want to have access to mobile data when you are on holiday there are a number of ways to do this.
Use your usual mobile provider – Since Brexit most of the major providers no longer allow you to use your UK data allowance in the EU. However, some of the smaller ones do allow you to use some or all of your data allowance when in the EU. The limit is usually 30GB but for some companies it can be less. Examples of companies that allow you to use your UK data in the EU are ID mobile, Lebara and Talkmobile. Companies that don’t let you use your UK allowance in Europe will normally sell you an add on for your holiday. This is usually better value than just paying for data as you go which can become very expensive especially outside Europe. They usually have a package for Europe and one for further afield. Contact your network provider for full details
Buy a local sim – Another option especially if you are going to be away for a while is to get a local SIM card for your phone. This is probably the cheapest option but it will mean that people will not be able to call you on your usual number.
Use an eSIM – the absolute game changer for travelling outside Europe that I have recently discovered is an eSIM
Using an eSIM
Increasingly phones come with an eSIM – this is an industry-standard digital SIM that allows you to activate a cellular plan from your carrier without having to use a physical SIM. All iphone X and later have an eSIM as standard. Modern Android phones also have eSIMs installed as standard. Click below for a full list of eSIM phones. The other criteria you need to check is to make sure your phone has no SIM restrictions attached to the phone the Airolo website shows you how to do this.
Airolo are a company that enables you to install data packages on your eSIM for countries all over the world. This is done via an app that you download onto your phone. The Airolo website has clear instructions on how to set it up and having used it in South Africa and Tanzania I can confirm it works very well and is reasonably priced. For example a 2GB package for 15day in Tanzania costs $8. The eSIM packages from Airolo are data only so you can’t make a normal phone call with them e.g. to book a restaurant but you can use the data to make things like WhatsApp calls.
Departure
Finally you are all ready to go! One last thing I would recommend is to print all your travel documents out. Increasingly when I travel in Europe I never print out tickets and boarding passes as I have them on my phone. However, if you are travelling to more exotic parts of the world paper is still king. Therefore print out your tickets, your visa and any other documents that you may need.
If you use any cloud storage systems I would also suggest having a copy of your passport scanned into the cloud so you can access it from anywhere if needed
Car Hire and Excess Insurance
Car hire has become very expensive since the pandemic. I find the Travel Supermarket a good comparison site for finding the best deals. We have rented cars with lots of companies and they are all fairly similar except Goldcar who are probably the worst car hire company we have dealt with and I would be wary about using them again. The most important thing about car hire is not to take out extra insurance when you arrive at the desk as this is usually an extremely expensive option. The best option is to take out an excess car hire insurance policy which is a better and much cheaper option. Depending on your requirements you can either take out a policy just for the trip or an annual policy which is often cheaper. There are lots of good companies providing excess car hire insurance I tend to shop around each year for the best deal. I currently have iCarhire insurance which works well. Their annual policy for Europe this year costs £41.99 which is the same price as 12 days as a single trip, therefore if you want to hire a car for a 2 week holiday it is cheaper to take out the annual policy.