How to plan your own vacation. Review of travel planning services. Why should I plan my trip? I want to be a free traveler

It may seem that planning an independent trip is an incredibly difficult and overwhelming task, and it is much easier to fit into a ready-made tour, where everything has already been thought out for you and you just need to fork out the cash. In fact, planning and thinking through your trip is not that difficult. Over the years of my travels, I have developed a certain algorithm according to which I plan my every trip, which I am happy to share with you.

Deciding on travel options

First you need to decide where to go. If you are an advanced dreamer, then you probably have a list of places on Earth that you want to visit. I have it, it’s proudly called My Tavel Bucket List and even . If you don’t have a list, then it’s time to make one, because when planning each vacation, it’s very convenient to refer to it and choose those places that you’ve been dreaming about visiting.

An option for those who consider such lists to be extremely boring or have extremely hard-to-reach places on the list, for which you need to allocate almost a month, and only a week or a couple of days of vacation, is to rely on the availability of tickets. For this I use Skyscanner, where I enter the word “Everywhere” in the “Where” field and as a result, a list of all tickets available for the required dates to different cities and countries is displayed.

We evaluate the options

It often happens that I consider several options for a trip: it seems like I want to go there and go there. To evaluate the options and make the final choice, I start counting money and time, for which I use what I made in my time (you can download it and use it too).

The file has several tabs for each option. For each of the options under consideration, I enter information on the days, where I am, what kind of travel I have, where I spend the night and what expenses I will have to spend.

Where and how to estimate the cost:

• Flights. I use Aviasales or Skyscanner. There is practically no difference between them, so which interface is more convenient for someone.
• It is convenient to look for train or bus tickets in a particular country on Rome2Rio. Or we simply type into Google search phrases like “how to get from Edinburgh to Glasgow” or “Paris Lyon train” and select national operators. Another great site is Seat61.
• Accommodation. For the purpose of estimating the budget, I use Booking, where I look at the cost of living per night in the housing category that suits me. Again, this is just for planning purposes to get a general idea of ​​how much a night costs in a particular city. Then you can easily rent yourself a place on AirBnb.
• Daily allowance. To estimate how much money I will need per day, I look at prices on Numbeo. If I know for sure that I will visit certain attractions as part of my trip (for example, I’m going to Paris and I know for sure that I’ll go to the Louvre), then I’m not lazy and look at exactly how much they cost and enter them in a separate line.

For clarity, the file contains an example from my last year’s trip to Vietnam.

After entering information for each option, I look at two parameters: the total amount of money needed for the trip, and the intensity of the trip - how much do I have time to visit and see. According to the second parameter, for example, I somehow dismissed a trip to Sri Lanka, because in the 8 days that I had, I had to spend almost half of the time on the road, moving from one place to another.

We buy, book and plan the route in detail

After evaluating the options and making the final choice of the travel destination, I proceed directly to purchasing all the necessary tickets and accommodation reservations. Again, it is convenient to use the above-mentioned Excel file and mark in color the already purchased or booked tickets. As I purchase tickets, I enter exact numbers into the table in order to understand the final budget.

I am a nerd, so I carefully plan what I will do in a particular city. Firstly, I make a list in advance of everything I want to see - museums, galleries, parks, shops and just beautiful streets. There are several sources for all these places:

• Wikipedia. I go to the city page and go to the “Attractions” section, where I select everything that I want to see. It is better to use the English version of the page, since Russian speakers, as a rule, do not have all the information.
• Pinterest. Here it is convenient to look for selections of places and recommendations for beautiful / photogenic locations.
• 34travel and iknow.travel. Perhaps these are the only two sites I check regularly for routes and recommendations from local and experienced travelers
• Google to the rescue. I just type “top sights of [city name]” into the search bar and go through 5-6 links.

I mark everything I find with a “star” in Google Maps, and using this map I wander around on foot and explore the city.

Getting ready for a trip

A couple of days in advance (and sometimes the day before), when everything is already precisely planned and purchased, I get ready to go on the road. For convenience, I made myself a list of things that I go through to make sure that I haven’t forgotten anything. You can take it as a basis and create your own.

• International passport
• Tickets printed/saved in phone
• Printed/saved insurance policy
• Headphones
• Telephone
• EBook
• Phone charger
• Charger for e-reader
• Portable battery + cord
• Selfie stick
• Toothbrush
• Shampoo
• Air conditioner
• Shower gel
• Washcloth
• Razor
• Cotton pads
• Shower gel
• Sunscreen
• Makeup remover
• Comb
• Flip-flops
• Pajamas
• Underwear
• Socks
• First aid kit

Or use the PackPoint app (available for both iPhone and Android).

As you can see, everything is not that difficult, so have a good trip 😉

Traveling with travel agencies is not always convenient. Let's say you bought a bus tour around the Golden Ring of Russia, it may not be a vacation, but a torment. After all, on the bus you will find yourself with people whom you will have to endure all week. Add to this the time limit; each attraction has a strictly limited time. Add here the route, approved and unshakable, from which you cannot turn away or rewrite it. And along the way you will be constantly taken to shops, souvenir shops, and you will eat in the “right” places. It doesn't sound very rosy anymore. Obviously, a tour package is the choice of those who find it difficult or simply lazy to carry out their plans on their own.

It’s no secret that for an independent traveler, preparing for a trip takes many times longer than the trip itself. Unless you decide to give in to fate, give it a thumbs up and hitchhike around the country. But very desperate people are drawn into such adventures. We just want to relax and see something new and interesting.

In the case of traveling around Russia, everything is both simpler and more complicated at the same time. If you are not traveling by personal vehicle, then the main problem of the entire trip will naturally be transportation. Whatever one may say, the main aspect that needs to be taken into account is distance. In the conditions of “my native country is wide,” the method of weekends away from home, so beloved by Europeans, is unlikely to suit us. Judge for yourself, to fly by plane from Moscow to Lake Baikal (the nearest airport is in Irkutsk), at best you will spend about 6 hours in the air. In the worst case, you will spend from 17 to 22 hours on the flight with a transfer in Novosibirsk, and a flight for the two of you back will cost about 50,000 rubles.

Agree, a very wealthy person can afford such a pleasure, and he certainly won’t fly to Baikal for 2 days. The example is far-fetched, you say, because from Moscow you can easily and quickly fly to Sochi or Crimea. But to the Urals, Altai or Kamchatka - the most beautiful places in Russia, it’s no less a flight. And what should those who do not live in Moscow do? Some of our compatriots will fly to Sochi as much as Muscovites will fly to Baikal. And we only considered air traffic. You can easily imagine how much time it takes to travel along the Russian Railway.

So it turns out that if you are going to travel around Russia, you need to go for at least a week, or even two. And the pleasure from a long vacation is much greater than from a short one.
Our article will help you choose a place to stay in Russia:. So, the place has been chosen. Let's move on to the second stage.

Buying tickets.

The most important and very important part of planning is buying train tickets - all at once and for your entire trip, including return tickets. The fact is that the railway message is the most popular in Russia and during the holiday season tickets sell like hot cakes. By postponing the purchase of tickets until the last minute, you risk simply not getting on the train you need. Therefore, ideally, you should buy a ticket as soon as it goes on sale. This happens 45 days before the travel date, so it is possible that you will have to buy tickets several times, because we add the vacation time to the 45 days of the first ticket and it turns out that return tickets have not yet gone on sale. To avoid numerous trips to the station, and often railway stations are located only in large cities, it is advisable to buy tickets online on the official website of Russian Railways.

Having bought an electronic ticket, you can feel quite safe, except for one small detail - you will need to print the electronic ticket before the trip in the terminals located in the station buildings. Several difficulties may await you here. Firstly, there are often queues at the terminals, and secondly, the terminal will not print your ticket less than 10 minutes before the train departs, so we strongly advise you to arrive at the station with a little time to spare (an hour, an hour and a half).

Having calculated the travel time and purchased all the tickets, we now know exactly the number of days we will spend away from home. It's time to look for housing.

Search for a hotel.

The hotel business in Russia is developed quite well, but there are also unscrupulous hoteliers; staying in the hotel of such an owner can completely ruin your entire vacation impression. Therefore, when choosing a hotel, you should definitely look at the reviews. That is why we will book a hotel via the Internet and through a large website, which has a large database of hotels and a database of reviews from visitors to these hotels. Another argument in favor of online hotel booking is that, as a rule, we care where to live and we choose our place of residence based on its actual location on the map. You can easily use the map below to do this. On it you can choose any hotel you like in Sochi.

If we are interested in another city, we will use the form below and simply enter the desired location in the search bar.

Then everything is as simple as shelling pears - choose the hotel you like, read reviews, look at its location on the map and book. You will not have any difficulties or problems. All hotels participating in the booking program, in case of their unfair work, can be influenced by filing a complaint on the website. Therefore, all the hotels presented on the site monitor their good reputation - after all, at the present time, online booking is almost the main source of customers for hotels.

Do you need excursions while traveling?

So, all the basic and most expensive manipulations have been done! We booked the tickets, we booked the hotel. It's a small matter. Identify interesting places to visit and schedule excursions. It's easier here. For an independent traveler, it is important to make a choice - book excursions through travel agencies or continue to travel everywhere and around by public transport and on your own.

It all depends on the place you choose to relax. If you have your attention on Sochi, then it will not be difficult for you to visit all the significant sights, both natural and man-made, on your own. Sochi has very good public transport, and the Lastochka train will make your travels a complete pleasure. We have a large series of articles about the sights of Sochi on our website: . Of course, not all the sights of Sochi are presented and described in it, but all the most interesting things are there. The main advantage of sightseeing on your own is the savings - getting somewhere on your own is always cheaper than taking a tour. And don’t forget that in most cases you pay for the guide’s stories. If you can completely do without local legends, and do not like being taken around cheese factories, apiaries and wine shops, then it is better to refuse excursions.

Based on the above, we strongly recommend that you do not spend money on excursions to Sochi, but explore everything yourself.

The situation is completely opposite with excursions in the North Caucasus. Transport links here are not very well developed and, say, you can’t get to Elbrus except by excursion bus. Therefore, excursions to the Caucasian mineral waters are not just a whim, but a very necessary and often even irreplaceable thing. You can get acquainted with the sights of the CMS in our other series of articles.

If you are a traveler or are just planning to become one, this book will become an indispensable assistant in organizing your vacation. Here you will find out all the necessary information about where and how to purchase tickets, hotels, excursions and other travel services at the best prices. The book contains many tips and recommendations that will help you organize various tours yourself without contacting travel companies. You will learn all the nuances of the tourist world that will help you plan an exciting, safe and comfortable trip for your budget.

* * *

The given introductory fragment of the book Vacation without a travel agency. How to organize a tour yourself (G.V. Ottens, 2018) provided by our book partner - the company liters.

So why do we travel? For many people, tourism is simply a vacation, an opportunity to change the environment. When buying air tickets or booking hotels, such travelers just want to lie by the sea and do nothing. For another category of tourists, traveling means much more than just a change of location and relaxing on the beach. Such tourists make a whole adventure out of their trip, testing themselves and their strengths. They travel to make new acquaintances, actively get to know new cities, exploring the nature of unusual places and sightseeing. Some tourists explore culture, others go shopping. If we combine all these goals, we will understand that the main reason for traveling is to gain new emotions and inspiration.

During the trip, you can not only restore your strength, but also get a complete reboot of your worldview, a change in your way of thinking, habits and even character. Traveling helps you discover in yourself what was hidden behind the dullness of everyday life, expand your consciousness, and realize your dreams. Travel, to one degree or another, becomes an integral part of every person’s life. While traveling, you can make not only new acquaintances, but also new loyal friends and important business partners. Thanks to travel, you grow and reach a new level of your personal development. And, of course, the feeling of beauty that we get while traveling is very important, which motivates us to work and live better.

Experience from travel is certainly transferred into our everyday life, and familiar and rather boring things appear from a completely different perspective. We can learn a lot from other cultures. For example, you can learn from the Spaniards and Greeks how to rest “correctly”. The Greeks have a rule not to talk about work during friendly meetings, during siesta, or on weekends. If you call a Greek during non-working hours for work, even for urgent matters, then this will be considered bad manners. I hope this book will teach you how to relax culturally and with pleasure and, importantly, without much damage to your budget.

How to plan your trip correctly

In order to go and relax for a couple of weeks in one of the hot countries or take an excursion tour around Europe, you need to properly plan your vacation and in time select last-minute offers from tour operators, hotels, airlines and other travel service providers that suit your budget and quality. In this book you will receive many tips on how to plan your own vacation. How to buy air tickets and book hotels at the best prices. Find out where the best hotels are located in different countries of the world, how to take out travel insurance yourself, how to find out whether Russians need a visa to a particular country and much other useful information for your travel.

Any trip is an exciting and enjoyable process that allows a person to regain strength and learn a lot of new things. However, before you go on a trip, you should consider the many nuances and aspects that arise in any trip. The primary task in such cases is to develop a route and schedule. The route defines the entire path along which you will have to travel from one point to another to the final destination. The schedule, in turn, determines the time intervals for which you can stay at certain points on the route. We must also not forget that the route should indicate all the hotels and other important places that may be needed on the trip. It is worth choosing hotels of appropriate quality, since such establishments with low quality service can ruin the entire impression of the trip. And, of course, the trip should be comfortable for your budget. In addition, an important issue is always a visa and its necessity for a particular country for Russians. By providing such details in advance, you can ensure the most effective and enjoyable stay overall.

There are two options for organizing tourist trips: purchasing a ready-made package tour from a travel company; and independent organization of vacation without contacting travel agents. Each of these two travel options has its pros and cons. However, after the notorious “revolt” of travel agencies and airlines in 2013-2014, when travel agencies and airlines went bankrupt one after another amid a sharp increase in exchange rates, many tourists began to increasingly rely on their own strength and experience to organize their long-awaited vacation. In such cases, it is important to learn how to correctly and profitably buy air tickets, last minute tours, find suitable hotels and select other travel services necessary for your complete vacation.

This book is a guide for tourists in the world of independent travel. It will teach you how to properly use popular booking services for various travel services around the world, and will show you what cultural and national features of a particular country you should pay attention to when planning your trips. In addition, the book will tell you how and where you can save a sufficient amount of your budget, and where you should not do this. Moreover, we will discuss in detail all the important issues of obtaining visas, travel insurance and other documents necessary for your safe travel.

I will not now highlight any service in first place, and this order does not give preference to one or the other. They all have their pros and cons, more or less equally.

Let's start with Agenda.

A Russian travel planning service that recently began to gain momentum and received investments. The design of the service is pleasing to the eye, it is convenient, nothing superfluous. Excellent calendar grid displaying planned flights.

The emphasis of the Agenda is mainly on the purchase and reservation of air tickets, hotels, transport, there is also the possibility of booking trains and buses, but unfortunately mainly only within the Russian Federation. The service is closely connected with Panaramio, which allows you to see photos of interesting places, and Foursqare for selecting attractions in the city where you are going. Compared to other services, there is a big disadvantage to adding interesting places to view, and if you are planning a big trip, you will have to work hard to add them to your calendar. It would be great if there was synchronization with the calendar on your phone or tablet, but I didn’t find one. It’s not clear how the creators missed such a moment in all their travels as the lack of Internet. Since there are no applications for Android or iOS, it is not clear how to use it while traveling. Timeline export to pdf is very poor.

Yes, it is quite possible to buy tickets, book hotels and cars here, and besides, the search is also carried out on low-cost airlines. But even during test trips to book a hotel or car in Asia, he didn’t find anything for me.

In general, there are some shortcomings that I hope will be improved in the future.

Next Mygola

An English-language service, also with a good interface, but less convenient. Compared to the Agenda, the calendar grid is less easily understood, but nevertheless quite convenient and understandable.

This same service is more geared towards sightseeing. A large selection of places with detailed descriptions and a link to the source or website of this place. There is an application, but it is no different from the website. You can look at all the points on the map, but you can’t see each point individually, and this is a minus, since it’s not possible to jump on the link to Google maps and get directions.

A huge advantage of Mygola is the route search and its preliminary assessment. At the very beginning, this really amazed me, because you usually find such information only on some blogs. There are a large number of options for traveling between points, using a variety of transport. From a taxi with its cost, to public transport, for which the cost is also sometimes indicated. It is not clear where this information comes from, but it is quite possible to estimate the cost.

Again, there is no export at all. There is also no synchronization. In conclusion, it can be noted that when planning a trip, the Mygola service can be used to find cheap routes by public transport.

Youroute

Another Russian-language service. The service attracted me with its simplicity. Nothing superfluous, easy interface, everything is simple and clear, come in and plan. Of course, like all of the above, it also has disadvantages. But let's start with the advantages, the first of which is a large database of attractions from all countries and cities of the world. Conveniently add objects to your route. The service is also connected to Panaramio and you can conveniently view photos of objects. From each point you can go to Google maps, you can get directions, but then there will be a service in which it is a little more convenient to do this.

A route immediately creeps between points; transport can always be changed. You can also easily change the order of sightseeing.

At the end you get this kind of route

As you can see, the route can be saved as a pdf and printed if desired. The stages themselves look rather boring.

I would add flight times, they can, in principle, be written down in notes, but nevertheless they are not displayed in the PDF, and links to a map for each point, preferably on Google. But there is information about these places, in a completely digestible form.

Well, the service is quite excellent, but it lacks something; if it could add a little from the first and second, it could turn out to be a better service for travel planning. Of course, the application is still missing. So guys, developers, I hope you will finish this service in the future.

Gogobot

Initially, I learned about it as an application. The first thing that caught my eye was that he posts all your actions on facebook, but this is disabled in the account settings. The service is English-language and has a large database of attractions that you can easily add to your trip. Add in bulk only from the table view; from the map you have to go to the object page. But in the application this does not cause much discomfort. There are selections of restaurants and hotels that can be booked.

There are interest clubs in which thematic places are selected.

The travel plan looks quite simple, like a pdf file, but nevertheless contains all the necessary information about the objects, with links to the page of these places in Gogobot.

Here is a type of PDF file that can be minimally customized

An undoubted advantage is the presence of an application (for iPhone and Android), where you can view your travel plan and use navigation for each object.

Decent service, unfortunately not in the native language. Another app for iPad would be great.
Well in the end

Tripomatic

The web service is not particularly striking in design, but the application is quite good (again, the iPad was bypassed), and with support for the Russian language.

It’s quite convenient to add places to your trip plan; the route and approximate travel time immediately creep in between them, which will give you an understanding of the time spent on travel, but unfortunately not about its cost. He also automatically builds the route of the day in such a way (well, at least he tries) so as not to make detours around the city, but to visit all the places along the way with the least amount of time. You can book a hotel on the website, purchase and viewing takes place on Booking.com. You can add travel by transport, for example between railway stations, unfortunately the time is not displayed, and there is no search for ticket prices either. But that doesn't matter here.
I also liked that after completing the compilation, you receive a schedule for your trip. It shows how many of the main attractions you missed.

Export to PDF is good, with all links to Google maps. By clicking, it immediately plots a route. The line of the day is not very clear, but you can figure it out.

The application is very good. With some nice features. For example, the object page shows the distance to it and a rotating compass that shows the direction of movement. Many attractions also display opening hours and entrance ticket prices. For some reason, the screenshots from iTunes show a translator, but I didn’t see it in the program itself.

In addition, the Tripomatic application has a paid, but very useful for tourist, offline map function. For 129 rubles. you can buy a map of the country, for 449 - Asia and Australia, and for 549 rubles. you can download maps of all countries that are available on Tripomatic (358 places). In general, the application takes place on the traveler’s smartphone.

In conclusion, I will say that there are quite a few services for compiling and planning a trip, in my opinion these are the most prominent. There are still many social travel networks where you can also get a lot of useful information, but they do not have such functions as planning.

Today, anyone with enough money can go on a trip to almost any corner of our planet. Of course, there are destinations that you should only travel through a travel agency. But most countries in the world can be visited independently by a traveler, even with little experience.

Independent travel has the main and obvious advantage - its independence. You can choose for yourself which museums and in what order to visit, how long to look at each painting and what not to look at at all, which hotel to stay in, etc. This type of tourism is perfect for families with small children who find it difficult to adjust to the frantic rhythm of group excursions. It will also appeal to those who are used to managing their own time, want to explore a country in more detail, or simply lovers of unusual and non-standard experiences.

Another advantage that you will discover if you decide to organize your vacation yourself is savings. You can choose a more economical mode of transport, a hotel at a low price, and you will not have to pay for the services of a travel agency.

How to plan a trip

So, if you decide to plan your vacation yourself, you first need to resolve several issues:

1. Direction of rest. You need to select the country and city of your holiday. Or perhaps you decide to go on a multi-country tour? The choice of the place where you will go on vacation will depend on many factors, including the composition of the group of vacationers, budget, availability of foreign passports and visas, etc. Before you finalize your choice, read several articles on the Internet, an encyclopedia, or a guidebook about the place where you are going to go. Pay special attention to the climate, visa regime, rules for entering the country (if it is abroad) and other important details.

2. After you have decided where to relax, you need to draw up a rough travel plan. Write down the main attractions of the area where you will be vacationing. If you plan to visit several cities or even countries, print or buy a map and mark on it the places you want to visit.

3. Once the plan has been drawn up and approved by all travelers, it’s time to start processing paperwork for the trip. If a visa is required to visit the country, find out how and where to submit documents to obtain it. For different countries, obtaining a visa can take from 3 days to several weeks, so try to pay maximum attention to this issue.

4. Booking tickets. Booking tickets will allow you to fix their cost for a while. In addition, booking tickets is often necessary for obtaining a visa.

5. Solutions to the housing issue. A huge advantage for an independent traveler is the ability to choose where to stay. There are a huge variety of accommodation options in all countries - from luxury five-star hotels to campsites, hostels and even in the homes of local residents (the latter option, by the way, is the most economical and most interesting).

Once these basic issues have been resolved, you can move on to the fun part of planning your trip - starting to plan the details of your trip.

What you should definitely know before your vacation

Here are the nuances you can find out in advance so that your trip is filled with truly unforgettable experiences:

— what national dishes to try (sometimes not only countries, but also individual cities and even small villages are famous for their delicacies);

— schedule of festivals and national holidays of the country or city where you are going;

— the most unusual museums of the city or country;

— if you are traveling with children, be sure to find out about the availability of amusement parks, zoos, and children’s museums;

— famous architectural monuments located not only in large cities, but also in the suburbs;

- unusual national transport (for example, camels, cable cars, trams, rickshaws, etc.).

Another unusual and interesting way to get to know a new city from an unexpected side is to invite a local resident as a guide. Find a forum where expats hang out and ask someone to give you a tour. In gratitude, you can bring something tasty from your homeland, for example, chocolate.