You know you want to travel, but where do you begin? Often times, planning where to travel and how to travel can be challenging.

If you’re new to traveling, there are a couple ways to plan your vacation:

1. Travel Agency
2. Guided Tour Packages
3. Self-planned

Travel Agency:
Pros: Travel Agencies can plan your vacation for you. Some of the items agencies may plan for you are: transportation, accommodations, meals, itinerary, visas, and passports. Travel Agencies usually have business partnerships with commercial airlines and/or tour companies which allows them to offer discounts on vacation packages. However, travel agencies may sometimes charge a premium for the services they provide. Having a Travel Agency plan and book your vacation can save you time and effort at a pretty reasonable cost.

Cons: Some of the cons of discounted tour packages are:

• You must follow the itinerary set by the tour. This includes following the schedule and planned stops along the tour. You may stop at “tourist traps”. Tourist traps are places where tourists are led into buying merchandise from a specific vendor or business.
• You travel with a bunch of people you do not know with a wide age range. Not a problem if you don’t mind making new friends 🙂
• You have to wait for everyone. Hopefully everyone in your tour group is on time when meeting the tour schedule.
• In discounted tour packages, accommodations and meals usually are of lesser quality. The reason is to lower the cost of the package so the company can still make a profit. If you prefer a more comfortable vacation, there are packages for every kind of budget.

Self-Planned Trips:
Pros: The best thing about planning the trip yourself is that you have absolute freedom to do what you want. You set your own schedule and pace. You get to see what you want to go see.

Cons: It takes a lot of time and effort to plan every aspect of your vacation. However I’ve listed a few bullet points that will help when you begin planning your own trip.

Here are a couple of starting points to take into mind when planning your vacation:

1. What places do you want to visit? Out of those places, where do you want to travel to the most? (If you’re like me, there are hundreds of places you may want to visit. Pick the place you absolutely want to see first! ^_^)
2. When do you want to visit that place? (Prices for airfare and hotel can vary depending on the season you travel. Also if you need a passport and visa, it usually takes a few weeks to get those travel documents. Plan ahead!)
3. How do you plan on getting there? (Plane, Car, Train, Bus, etc.)
4. Where do you plan on living while there? (Hostels, Hotels, Apartments/Vacation Rentals, etc)
5. How long do you plan on staying there? (This helps you plan how much to budget and what you want to accomplish in that time frame)
6. How many meals a day are you planning to eat? (helps for planning the budget, I generally don’t eat breakfast)
7. Once you answer the questions above, begin calculating a budget for your trip.

Do you have any travel tips? Post them below in the comment section! 🙂