How to Plan a Trip

In a few days I head off to Vancouver, an area in which for the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of research on. Although there was a lot of planning I still have no itinerary, no plans and no set schedules. I kind of like this. The idea was not to plan every day. I just wanted to get ideas and options of where to visit and how I could integrate myself into British Columbian culture. So how did do this? Well people ask me that all the time. “How do I plan my trip to ____ ?” (fill in the blank). You too probably find yourself asking this question. The best thing is to look at your resources. Here is how I planned my trip to British Columbia and some of the resources I used.

Ask The Question

How do you decide where to go? You could just open up a map and just point to a place randomly. But how do you know if it is a good place to go. One of the best resources are your friends and family as you know and trust them. So I asked my friends and family, “So where should I go for my next vacation?” Some suggestions were to Philippines, I guess my friends missed me there. Some suggested Colombia, but I had just recently returned from there. From a gathered consensus from friends, family and associates, Vancouver and British Columbia was to be the next destination. I was told it was like San Francisco but more beautiful. Since San Francisco is my favorite city, I decided to explore it as an option. And more beautiful? I had to see this or myself.

Get the Book

Now that I there is an idea of where to go, the next concern is if it is plausible or even an interesting enough place to visit. So I headed off to my neighborhood bookstore and purchase a guidebook on British Columbia. Usually, as most people do, I choose the Lonely Planet guides. This time I decided to spring for the Moon Handbook. It was slightly cheaper and wanted to try something different this time.

Flipping from page to page of the book I explored through the information; like if I needed Visa or not. Also if there was a cost to enter Canada. I also viewed the photos of the book to see if there was gorgeous places worth visiting and photographing. I read about culture and history, and the ideal daily budget.

For those who just don’t want to go out and buy a book, there are other resources that I used. One online resource for free is on wikitravel.org. Wikitravel is a cross between a Lonely Planet guide book and wikipedia. It is user submitted information to build guided information on travel in countries and cities around the world. Another good free website is lonelyplanet.com. The best tool is the budget per a day feature under the Practical Information section.

The Flight

Okay now that I have figured out that British Columbia is an interesting place to visit, what about the cost of a flight? Headed to to farecompare.com to see the average price of flight and when the best time to go is. Find it is expensive to go during the summer time of late May and June, which is when I planned. The cost so far is $280 round trip from SFO to Vancouver. I also checked out alternatives like a train through Amtrak.com, but it was not any cheaper as I would have to fly to Seattle.

Now the big question is when do I buy it? Well i know that the best day to buy is Tuesday. So I sign up for alerts on Farecompare.com on when the flight costs drop. I also pull out my iPhone and use the Kayak app to set up an alert of daily price updates.

About 6 weeks before my round about date I found a price I was happy. Usually prices drop the lowest around 6 weeks before your date of leaving as I have learned from farecompare.com’s blog. The price was $210 for the roundtrip through West Jet. (I actually found one as cheap as $180 USD through Virgin, but a non serious medical emergency prevented me from purchasing.)

Budget

After checking the flight, I checked the daily budget on Lonelyplanet.com and found that the budget per a day was about $120 Canadian per a day. The vast amount going towards to hotels. So I decided to do some research there first. I did some research on tripadvisor.com. Tripadvisor is a place to get user reviews on hotels and hostel and places to stay while traveling. I also put out a question on where I should stay at while in Vancouver on Gogobot.com. Gogobot is a social network for traveling, where you can get advice from friends on both gogobot and Facebook (as it can tie to your Facebook account).

I also proceeded to check out Wyndham‘s website and mobile app. The website is great because it has a lot of features. The mobile app is useless. I have a corporate discount and could not look up the discounts on the app. The website did get me enough information. The lowest cost I could find was $85. That was too expensive for my taste. So I decided to look into a hostel with a private room. The best deal found on hostelbookers.com and hostel world.com for a private room was about $80. This was not bad, but perhaps there was something cheaper.

The next stop was to AirBnb.com. AirBnB is a place where wonders can offer their home or apartment for rent. It has both a gorgeous and easy to use interface for both their website and their mobile app. With some research an apartment was found for $70 but even better, was a room in an apartment for $45. This allowed for the budget to be dropped like crazy. This allowed to stay with locals of Vancouver, possibly allowing for great advice of local places to visit.

Find Stuff to Do

The next thing is to find things to do. This is not to make a plans or Itineraries, but rather to be able to talk to locals of where else to go. It also allows for going somewhere when exploring and advice do not go as intended. It is also to find other travelers to be able to explore. Gogobot.com is a great place to find these points of interest. Again I posed some questions of where to visit on Gogobot. The ideas poured in and gave me ideas of places to photograph. This also allowed me to know where to avoid touts and hagglers from the obvious tourist spots. But also where I can find other tourists if I need to feel the need to be around someone of the traveling kind.

So with all these tools I still have no itinerary, no places to visit, and no plans. A lot of resources were used. Going into vancouver will be well informed, yet open to adventure of the unknown. Feel free to use some to the tools suggested here to help you plan your uncharted adventure.

What are some of the resources you use? Do you ever plan your trip out? Perhaps you love these resources too? Write a comment below and feel free to follow us on twitter and Facebook and follow our feeds.