Choosing your next holiday destination
Getting Started
You want to dissapear somehwere and take that wayy long overdue holiday you’ve been thinking about for a while now, but the question is where? Well there are some key things you need to look at when picking a perfect holiday destination for YOU such as:
–Purpose of your trip
–Timing of your trip
–Budget for your trip
Purpose of Trip
Every trip has a purpose, Right? So you need to find yours, there is two questions you need to ask yourself.
– Why do I want to go? – What would I like to do?
For example if your looking to get away on a peacful and relaxing holiday, you wouldn’t want to vist a ciy like New York or Tokyo which have a very busy city life, you would rather travel to place like Fiji or The Phillipines where no one will bother you while your soaking up that tropical sunshine and sipping on your favourtie cocktail far away from home.
But maybe sitting on a beach all day is not for you, you would rather visit a beautiful city so you can explore old and modern landmarks, visit fancy restaurants or just go out clubing with friends in a foreign country places like Bejing, London or Singapore would be a great pick.
But what if you fancy a bit of both? You want to relax on a beach most the day, visit beautiful landmarks with out too much hassle hit up a nice restaurant and then hit the dancefloor at a popular nightclub. Places like Austrlia and a lot of other countries in Southern Europe such as Croatia, Greece, Italy, Spain are perfect places to relax while still keeping you busy whenever you feel like it.
Timing of Travel
Timing of your trip is really important and it alos ties in with the purpouse of your trip. If your looking to snowboard or ski on your trip for example a holiday to Japan in the middle of a hot summer would not be your best options as there is no snow to ski on.
Same thing applies for if you want a tropical beach holiday for example, going on a tropical island in the middle of December is not the best idea because your not gonna be able to enjoy the full experience and potential of your trip.
Although if you love a bargain and want to get away on holiday. Off-season places might be your best bet, as they are ussually cheaper and none crowded but at the same time cheaper isn’t always good if you can’t do the things you want to do.
Visiting festivals , concerts or major sport events such as The Olimpics, combat sports, football, bodybuilding shows etc, are great entertainment ways to enjoy your holiday.
Do a quick Google search to see if anything is going to be on while your on your trip, check if tickets are available on day or if you need to pre-book them and google anything and everything you want you know about the events. Our site also has lots of great conent which can give you information or ideas of activities all around the world.
The more you know about where your going or doing, it will be easier to navigate and less stressful if something does not go your 0way.
But If you’re just looking for a cheap holiday to getaway for a week or two going to a festival or sports event can be a bit pricey, so you best option is to avoid major events and look for Off-season destinations.
Take time to do your research as it will go a long way to planning your perfect holiday.
Budget for Trip
So you have found your perfect getaway destination, next question you might have is ”how much will this even cost me?‘‘
The budget for your trips comes down to one of the most importnat things because you can still travel with no puropuse or in the wrong timing you definetly can not travel wiht no money.
Budgeting early is a must because you want to know how much your trip will cost, if you don’t figure out each expense your going to make on your trip you are not going to know if you’re gonna be able to afford it in the time frame your hoping for.
You also don’t want to put a deposit on an airfare only to find out you can’t afford to stay in a standard accomidation your looking for. Booking accomidation or any entertinment event to find out you can’t afford any food for most of your trip is really not a good idea either because you may have a very unplest holiday because you are hungry.
To fuigure out the budget of your trip you need to add up all the expenses you will need to pay such as:
Transport – Airfare, Seafare, car hire/ Taxi from and to airport, pubic transport etc
Accomidation – Price per night, All inclusive hotel , air Bed n’ Breaksfast, apartaments etc.
Food and Drink – eating at resturants or street food stalls, cooking your own meals, Drinks (regular/cocktails/liquor) etc.
Sights and Activities – Water parks, Theme parks, Zoos, Tours, large scale entertainment events etc.
Shopping – Every day products, Souveniers, Clothing, Trip gear etc.
Other Expenses – Travel insurance, emergencies
ALWAYS take more money than you will need becasue you never know what can happen and its better to be prepared for anything that your trip might throw your way.
ADDING IT ALL UP
Best and easiest way to add every expnese you might have is to use an excel spread sheet, you can clik here to get a FREE holiday budget cost tempelate.
If you don’t have acess to an excel spread sheet you can easily do this with just pen, paper and a calculator.
All you need to do is make 2 quick table diargams one for budget per category and one with more detailed expenses.
To get a good clear overview of your costs and budgets, You are going to need 4 columns: one for the category of your budget, one for how much you are willing to spned on one categories, one for how much its actually going to cost and last one is how much money you will have left/over the limit in your budget after actual cost for said category.
Fill in the categories column along with the planned budget column, then you want to make another diagram with more detailed expenses. For example:
For this diagram you want 5 columns one for description of expense, make sure you include how many days/nights it going to happen.
Other column should be which category the expnese belongs in which will help us add all the expenses for said category.
A quantity column is needed along with cost per unit of expense and a final column which will show you the ammount its going to cost for said quantity of expense, do your research and fill in each detiled expnse you’re going to make.
Once you figured all the detailed expnses you can go back to the first diagram and fill in the actual cost of each category (add up all detailed expenses for each category from second diagram)
The second last step is to subtract the actual cost from the planned budget to find out how much money you have left or how much over the budget you are in said category.
Last step is to add up the total budget , add up the actual costs and money left over from the budget.
Remember to ALWAYS bring a good chunk of extra money coz you never know what can happen during your trip to paradise and you sure don’t want to be in a foreign country wiht no money left.
Thank you for reading hopefully after this post you will have more of a clear idea on how to choose your perfect next holiday destination.
DC – Team Paradise