Travel Planning - The Long(er) Range Plans

Since leaving my job as a teacher to live overseas, I've become our personal travel agent.  As you know, we travel pretty frequently, particularly since moving to Europe, and with large amounts of time on my hands, I've become the principal trip planner in our relationship.  I can whittle away hours upon hours researching and I like to think that I've become quite good at planning a trip whether it be a weekend city break or a week long holiday in the sun.

In any case, I thought I'd share a bit of my process with you.

Step One: Long(er) Range Planning

Our long range travel goals generally follow the calendar year to align with the distribution of Joe's holiday days.  (He currently is allotted 20 paid holiday days per calendar year.)  There are quite a few behind-the-scenes things that we're required to take into consideration when planning to use his holidays which I think are pretty common to most people with a salaried/contract position.  (Things like time of year, when colleagues are taking holidays, the spacing of said holidays, etc.)  Aside from those, we remain flexible in our schedules as we're only working around one job and no children.  These plans loosely start to take shape as we enter the latter half of one year, in preparation for the following.

1. The Big Trips

Generally speaking, we tend to do 2 big trips a year.  A big trip usually takes more than 3 holiday days and often, but not always, is further away from where we're calling home.  The first big trip put on the calendar is a trip home, to Canada.  Scheduling that transcontinental destination often revolves around other things going on like a holiday or a wedding or a family event.  We don't physically book anything quite yet but we'll make sure time is reserved for Joe at work and we'll throw the trip into a month on the calendar.  

Later on, when things are more definitive, we'll iron out the details in terms of amount of days off needed and actual travel dates.  As part of our expat contract, we are allotted 1 return flight each to our home location and those are always booked through the company travel agent.

The second big trip often ends up being loosely scheduled in next.  Sometimes, we don't have a definite location chosen, sometimes we do but we try to space out longer trips and if we can, overlap with bank holidays.  This year, we scheduled holiday days for Joe around the May bank holidays in Norway well before finally deciding to spend the time in Greece.

2. The Little Trips

Little trips are rarely scheduled more than 2-3 months ahead of time.  We try to work around our larger trips and plan for long weekends in other countries throughout the entire year.  We keep a running record of holiday days that are still available and try to split them up and schedule things bi-annually.  As the summer is winding down, we currently know that we have 5 unused vacation days and are hoping to schedule 2 more long weekend trips after we return from Istanbul.

3. Locations

This is always the trick - so many places to see, so little time.  Broadly speaking, we're open to traveling just about anywhere so our location lists are usually more about what is most coveted at that particular point in time rather than where we'd actually go.

Travel locations fall into 3 very fluid categories: Weekend Trips, Longer Trips, No Holidays Necessary trips.  Weekend trips are usually cities that are at the top of our must-see-while-living-in-Europe list and they're often cities that we really feel need more than a 2 day weekend.  (Past trips include Berlin, Prague & upcoming, Istanbul.)  Either there's a lot we hope to see and do there or they're a little further to get to and often, more expensive in terms of flight costs.  Longer trips are basically the Big Trips that were described above.  (This year included Canada & Santorini.)  No Holidays Necessary are locations that are quite easy to get to from Stavanger.  It's possible to fly practically direct Friday after work and return Sunday night within reasonable cost.  (Recently, Stockholm, London & Oslo.)

These categories are constantly amended.  Sometimes new locations are added and they often move throughout the three headings depending on how we're feeling or what we're learning as we go.  When we're looking to schedule a trip, we'll ponder the destinations on our list and weigh them against a variety of factors (time of year, flight costs, local events, etc) usually causing something to fall into the frontrunner position.

I see a real benefit into keeping our plans and schedule loose.  You never know what might come up and it's nice to not feel restrained by a rigid plan.  Perhaps there's a concert or event we want to see or a flight deal randomly comes up or a friend comes to visit or Joe has a conference or training in another country - we're free to rearrange as we see fit.

Next, I'll get into the booking details but for now, I'm curious - how do your long range travel plans look?