Plan Your Own Trip
Planning a trip can become a stressful process when it should be one of the most fun parts! Here’s a little guide to the three most important elements you need to consider when planning a trip and the websites I use to get the best prices…
Flights
You’re not getting anywhere without booking those flights, right? If you can be flexible with dates, even by just one or two days, you can save hundreds of pounds! My go to when it comes to booking flights is Skyscanner. Here you can use their price calendar which shows you what days are the cheapest to fly on and compare prices amongst tonnes of different booking sites. It’s fantastic for not just return flights, but for organising multi-city trips and one way journeys as well. When it comes to booking flights, this should be the go to place in my opinion.
Hotel
Finding somewhere to stay in a new city you’ve never been to before can be tough! Booking.com has been my go to for years now thanks to it’s generous loyalty programme and easy to use interface. It’s so simple to navigate the website and find the perfect hotel in the perfect area. Not only this, their ‘Genius’ loyalty programme offers differing levels of discount on hotel stays depending on your level. From experience, its super quick and easy to progress through the loyalty programme and within 10+ hotel stays you’re able to access at least 10% discounts on nearly every hotel!
Airport Hotel/Parking
So you’ve got your flights, you’ve got your hotel booked, the only major thing left now is to get yourself to the airport. On my more recent trips I’ve started to stay at an airport hotel the night before a flight. It’s a great way to take the stress away from travelling down the day of your flight and worrying about getting stuck in traffic and missing your flight! Not only this, you feel like you gain an extra night of your trip! To book these I normally use Holiday Extras. They tend to offer the cheapest rates for airport hotels and parking, not to mention they’re always emailing you 20% off discount codes so you can normally get things for even cheaper as well!
Other things to consider…
The 3 elements above are generally the biggest and most complicated things to arrange for a trip but there are a couple more things to organise to make sure you completely ready for any trip:
Travel Insurance - Depending on your age and the length of trip, you can get this for as little at a few pounds! For the sake of that, it’s worth getting just in case you get into any bother abroad.
Airport Transfers - My advice when it comes to this is use public transport when you get there! I know it might not always be possible but where you can try to use it as it’s a sure fire way to save yourself some money right at the start of your trip! Most airports are fully set up for public transport and it can take you straight into the heart of any major city.
Other than that, there’s not much else you need to do other than to plan what you’re doing when you arrive and start packing your bags!
Booking a trip doesn’t need to be stressful, make it fun!