International Vacation Itinerary Tips & Tricks

Can You Create an Awesome Travel Itinerary in a Country You’ve Never Visited?

One of the wonderful things about traveling is that you get to enjoy all sorts of new experiences, even if you’ve already been to your destination in the past. However, how do you figure out what to do and where to go when you’ve never been to your destination?

As someone who’s planned travel to several international destinations where I’d never traveled before, I can tell you that it takes a bit of a leap of faith to believe that all your planning will turn out okay and that you won’t have any serious bumps in the road while traveling.

Are the activities you’ve planned going to offer you the best experience? Will the hotels you’ve chosen allow you to get a few beautiful nights of sleep during your travels? Have you chosen the right type of transportation during your trip, whether that’s local flights, rental cars, or public transport?

The good news is that even if every single facet of your travel doesn’t come out perfectly that you’ll still get most of it “right.” even if there are a few hiccups along the way. Maybe one of the hotels you chose has really small rooms that you aren’t that impressed with, or perhaps it would have been easier to take the train than fly across the country.

As you plan your international itinerary, there are some things you can do to improve the likelihood of an amazing vacation experience, from start to finish. Let’s learn about some of the ways you can plan an amazing itinerary, even if you’ve never been to your destination.

(note: some of the links here are to websites with which I am an affiliate, and your purchases help fund my website!)

Spend a Day Reading Reviews, Blogs, & Experiences

One of the best ways to figure out whether a hotel or activity is a good idea is to read about the experiences of the people who have gone before you. The internet is an incredible tool for learning about all the finer details that a standard hotel or activity listing doesn’t mention.

The official pictures may look amazing, but are they truly representative of the experience you’ll have? One of the tricks that the camera plays is with the appearance of size. When taken from a certain angle, a hotel room might look spacious, but you’ll get there and it’s a quarter of the size you think it was.

This actually happened to me when I traveled to Vietnam. Many (most actually) of the multi-story buildings there, whether they’re in the large metropolitan areas or in the country, are very thin and long. This design has something to do with the way taxes were levied in the past. It was the width of your house from the front that determined your tax rate, so everyone started building super thin houses.

Because of this curious architecture, some of the rooms you’ll encounter today when traveling there are quite thin and narrow. Now, even though my expectations were different than reality, the size of the room didn’t make a negative impact on my experience. To the contrary, that hotel stay was wonderful, and I slept beautifully and had an amazing breakfast each morning we stayed there.

However, my point is that you can’t always totally trust the pictures you see. If you have access to hotel reviews – particularly images posted by travelers – always take a look at those photos and read the reviews. Those reviews may end up influencing your hotel pick or other choice for an activity, meal, or transportation option.

Timing & Season is Important When Traveling

One of the most important decisions you can make when traveling is the timing of your trip. There are multiple reasons you need to consider your dates carefully. The first is the cost of your trip may vary dramatically, based on whether you’re traveling during the high season when everyone else wants to travel or whether you’re traveling during the low season, when tourist activity is low.

In most cases, traveling during the high season will always cost more. Not only will the cost of your flights increase, but all the rates on your hotel stays will probably change, too. I haven’t found too dramatic of a difference in the cost of activities and guided tours, but you may encounter some modest changes in the price of things like taxi rides, tours, and meals.

If your main goal in traveling is an awesome budget friendly international trip, avoiding the busy travel season is the number one way to save money. That $1,200 ticket to France from Los Angeles in June may go down to $500 or $600 should you choose to travel in December or January. Instead of paying $300 a night for a nice hotel in a walkable and cozy part of Paris, you might score a $100 per night room with all the same perks, just during a less busy part of the year.

Another reason that choosing your travel dates carefully is important is the weather you’ll experience during your trip. If you’re particularly vulnerable to hot or cold temperatures, its’ vital that you take a look at the average temperatures for the place you’re traveling. Remember that if you’re traveling to the southern hemisphere from the north or the other way, the seasons are completely opposite. December in Australia is not freezing like December in New York.

Sometimes, it doesn’t really matter when you travel; you’re going to encounter some difficult weather. For example, I visited Vietnam and Cambodia in March, when you’d think the weather wouldn’t be crazy, one way or the other. Vietnam was quite comfortable, if a bit humid, but Cambodia was like visiting the surface of the sun. Walking around Angkor Wat was the experience of a lifetime, but it was 96 degrees Fahrenheit, and I just about melted.

Language Fears of First-Time International Travelers

One of the common fears travelers have about visiting different countries is the language barrier. If you’re from England and you’re visiting the United States, you probably aren’t worried about communicating with the locals. However, if you’re a Canadian visiting Turkey, you might wonder whether communicating with people who don’t speak English will make traveling really tough.

In the vast majority of cases, a language barrier won’t cause any huge issues. Furthermore, if you’re a first-time international traveler, it’s doubtful that you’ll venture too far off the beaten path into tiny towns where the locals aren’t regularly exposed to languages other than their own. Nowhere was this more apparent than when I went to Vietnam.

When we were in Hanoi and in much of Da Nang, the locals all spoke at least a little bit of English, and when we weren’t in a largely populated area, we were always with our tour guide, who was multi-lingual. Some countries even have a large population of multi-lingual residents. For example, we rarely interacted with people in Colombia who didn’t speak at least a little bit of English (it did help that my traveling partner and I spoke some Spanish).

Now, if you only speak one language, you have nothing to fear about visiting another country, even if that country’s inhabitants don’t regularly speak your language. Not only will many of the people who work in hospitality speak a smattering of several different languages, but your tour guides will also speak in your language (you’ll see what languages are spoken by your guide when you book your tour).

I wouldn’t consider myself truly bilingual (I speak some Spanish and German, but haltingly), and I’ve definitely traveled to countries where I haven’t known a single word in the local language. Even if you’re traveling to a country as a single lingual, getting around the touristy areas shouldn’t be too difficult, even if all you can do is communicate in hand gestures with the locals.

Confused? It’s Easy to Get Affordable International Travel Itinerary Help

This is where I get to toot my own horn. One of the services I offer is creating international itineraries. I’ve always loved traveling, but it wasn’t until I started traveling internationally on a yearly basis (well, more than that) where I discovered how fun it was to create an itinerary from scratch.

Yes, you can certainly join a group tour without any effort and simply enjoy the experience, but those multiday tours that include everything but the flights are a pre-packaged deal where you don’t get to have any input other than where you might sleep (you can often pay more to stay in nicer accommodations on those pre-arranged tours).

The fantastic part about making your own itinerary is that you can arrange your travel however you’d like with the flights and activities that suit your lifestyle best along with the budget that’s affordable for you. I have complete confidence that, with a little research, you can take the leap and create an amazing itinerary.

However, if you’re still a little nervous and you’re not sure whether you could put it all together, that’s where I can help. I create itineraries for domestic and international travel, specializing in American travelers going overseas. I’ll create anything from a four-day weekender across your state to a multi-week international trip to the other side of the world.

If you’re interested in getting an itinerary made, do visit the dedicated page here on my website for itineraries. However, if you have some questions, feel free to contact me, and I’ll walk you through anything you want to know about the process. Now’s the time to look beyond your horizon and experience something new and amazing in another country, or just across your state. Contact me, and let’s talk about your next amazing adventure.

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