4 Travel Mistakes to Avoid
Who doesn’t love travel? Well, some people don’t, but others may have been put off travel by making common mistakes. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or you’re planning your first trip, the tips below can be helpful reminders to ensure that you have the best time possible.
Too Little Research
Are you arriving on a Sunday and there’s no transportation to your destination on that day? Do you have small children but fail to check ahead and see if there were any child-friendly restaurants nearby? Maybe you wanted a vacation full of nightclubs and meeting other singles but found yourself at a sleepy resort that resembled a retirement home. Of course, mistakes happen when you travel, and one part of being a successful traveler is learning to roll with it. However, you can prevent many of those mistakes, and doing the right research about your destination beforehand is key to making sure you’re prepared.
Poor Budgeting
If you don’t budget correctly, you might find yourself pulling out plastic to pay for a significant portion of your trip, and the interest on this can make an affordable trip suddenly costly. Even worse, you may have to borrow money from a friend or family member. It’s a good idea to overbudget so that you have plenty of room for error. You may also need to take a second job or cut back on your expenses to pay for your trip. In addition to trying to spend less on things like shopping and entertainment, you could also look at whether you could save on some of your regular monthly expenses. For example, refinancing student loans could mean that you have a lower monthly payment. A private lender may offer a more favorable plan than you currently have, and you could put the savings toward your trip.
Doing Too Much
Being unrealistic about how much you can do on a trip is a common mistake. This is generally adjustable if you’ve simply tried to include too many activities in a single location but can be disastrous if you’ve tried to cram three or four European capitals into just a few days on the continent or if you’ve overestimated how many hours a day you’re willing to drive on a road trip. One reason people often make this type of error is that they forget to account for transitions. For example, if you’re planning to fly to several different cities, you need to add in time to go through the airport and get to and from your accommodation to the airport. You need to build in flexibility to your time budget just as you did to your money budget.
The Wrong Traveling Companion
Whether it’s your best friend, your spouse or someone else, when the person you’re traveling with turns out to be incompatible in ways you never imagined, it can ruin everything. There are a few fixes for this. Talk about the possibility ahead of time. Agree that you don’t have to do everything together every day. Finally, remember that even married people sometimes vacation separately. There’s nothing wrong with finding a more suitable travel partner the next time around.