We love spontaneity in our holiday trips. There is something special to grabbing your laptop or taking out your phone because a weekend just opened up and you’ve got a chance to travel. But sometimes, we forget how spontaneity is a double-edged sword. When you don’t have time to plan, you end up taking what you can get - and often, that’s not conducive to a great holiday. Instead, what we’re going to deal with today is the pleasure of taking your time to really plan a holiday, whether it’s overseas or domestic, and why it leads to a better break.
A tailored experience: Flexibility and variety
When you don’t have time to plan, your choices aren’t so much narrowed down as you just don’t have time to think about them. Planning in advance, whether it’s a couple of months or half a year, means you can get every detail right and remake any plans that don’t quite work. Instead of booking any hotel you can find with capacity, you can check out short term rentals that allow you to enjoy the break in comfort and research the area for places of interest. You can talk to whoever you may be traveling with and canvass opinion on what they would like to do, ensuring a holiday that suits everyone.
The financial edge: Save big by booking ahead
We’ve all seen TV plots where someone wins big brownie points by booking a spontaneous getaway to somewhere glamorous. “We don’t have time to pack, just pick something up at the airport”, they might exclaim. Yes, that sounds amazing. Right up until the moment the credit card bill lands and they get extreme buyer’s remorse. By planning a holiday well in advance, you may lose that Hollywood thrill, but you also lose the incredible mark-ups you’ll pay on travel, accommodation, and anything else that needs to be booked. Months ahead, you can usually get a great rental for the same price that you’d pay for a motel at 24 hours’ notice.
Reduced stress: Dodging emergencies and surprises
Booking opportunistically can lead to some great holidays, but can equally end with you walking into a series of less than pleasant surprises. You’ll just book a ride share from the airport to your accommodation? Great idea, but you picked the one weekend when the carnival’s in town and the few drivers you can get have raised their prices. Or something much simpler, like you call your friend to ask them to house-sit and they tell you they have a prior engagement. When you plan ahead, it doesn’t just make Plan A stronger - it gives you space to make Plans B, C and D too.
The joy of anticipation: Enhancing the experience
Building anticipation too much never helped anything, admittedly, but a dim gray day can certainly be enlivened by daydreaming about the trip that is on the horizon. If you’re waiting on hold for an interminable spell, time to Google pictures of the view from your holiday home! With weeks or months between booking and traveling, you could even learn some basics (and some less basic things) of the language of the place you’re visiting. You can create itineraries in your head and on paper, too. Studies have shown that anticipation can have a beneficial effect on your mental health, and it’s not hard to see why.
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