Planning a trip with friends? That sounds fun as long as you follow some ground rules! There’s nothing worse than ending a trip with a sour taste in your mouth because it didn’t happen how you thought. Here are some group travel planning tips you might want to consider to make sure your upcoming trip happens as smoothly as possible:

Best Tips to Follow for Group Traveling

Find a Middle Ground

Before making any travel plans, we need to establish why you are going. Establishing where you are going and why allows you and your travel buddy to have a middle ground when beginning your travel planning.

If you’re going to Florida for a wedding, then the wedding takes priority over everything. If you’re are going to Texas for a birthday, then the birthday girl’s opinion holds a little more weight. Having an objective for every trip allows you to prioritize the types of activities that you’re going to plan.

Pick a Theme

Whenever someone mentions vacation we all imagine different things. Some of us imagine lounging all day by the beach and working on a tan, while others get excited to put on walking shoes and trek through the city. Establishing a theme for your trip means that none of you are getting woken up early with plans you didn’t expect.

Establish the Budget

Do you remember all those excursions we talked about? Yeah, they cost money! Without establishing a budget the two of you are going in financially blind. No one wants to hear about how you ran out of money on your first day or you didn’t know that you needed cash on you.

I budget the trip depending on the objective. If I’m splurging on one activity, the others might not be as grand. It’s important to have an understanding of the activities and the costs you’re going to get into, especially if you don’t have as big of a budget. It’s also important to have a budget for emergencies as anything can happen while you’re gone.

Plan Some Time Apart

If you’ve never spent an extended amount of time with this person, this trip might actually be kind of difficult. It’s super important to plan time for the two of you to wind down and be able to reflect so that you don’t get worked up. There’s nothing worse than getting into an avoidable argument just because you need a little bit of time to decompress. Planning some time apart or even having different sleeping spaces can make a tremendous difference.

Be Open & Communicative

Even with all of the planning you did beforehand, life happens and things come up. The most important thing on this list is being open, honest and communicative. Sometimes we can’t walk as far as we thought we could, or we have a headache and not an attitude, or we need some sort of comfort because we feel really out of our element. Being open and communicative allows everyone to make the best decision moving forward & sometimes that means picking up snacks before the next excursion.

Travel Planning