How to Plan a Trip with Friends or Family

Traveling with friends or family can be a lot of fun or very stressful. In this post, we’re sharing our proven tips on how to plan a trip with friends or family so that everyone will enjoy it.

Traveling with family, whether it’s one person or ten, can be a fulfilling and wonderful experience.

On the other hand, we know friends and families who have traveled together and ended up not talking to each other for a very long time.

Unlike organized tours with strangers, traveling with family or friends comes with expectations that aren’t always met.

We find that open and honest communication: listening, and asking questions during the planning stage help make traveling together a success for everyone.

Understanding Your Group

All great travel starts with detailed planning. But before you even start planning a trip with friends or families, you need to understand the likes and needs of the group.

Here are some critical things to take into consideration before you even select that travel destination:

• Age – What are the ages of the people with who you will travel? Is everyone about the same age or do you have a wide range of ages? Do you have very small children, teens, and grandparents?
• Health – Does someone have special needs like wheelchairs or limited mobility? Do you need to take allergies or food restrictions into consideration?
• Interests – Do you have a cultural bunch or do you prefer sports? Maybe there’s a foodie or someone who loves shopping? Outdoorsy or city dwellers?
• Money – What is the budget of the different people in the group? Is anyone having financial struggles you need to consider?
• Sleep Schedule – You may not think this is important but it is. Who are early risers and night owls? Will some small children need to be in bed early?

Considering the answers to these questions will help you choose a destination everyone will enjoy.

Planning for Inclusion: Making Sure Everyone Is Heard

Once you choose the destination, use the information you’ve gathered to pinpoint the available activities.

Share the information about the activities with your friends or family members; duration, cost, and level of difficulty. Then everyone can provide feedback.

Do the same with hotels, flights, and transportation.

Talk about eating options. Will you get hotels with breakfast included? Do you want to go to a special restaurant and get reservations before you leave?

Put all of this information in a shared document, we use Google Sheets, but you can use whatever works for you.

Structure your plan so that you can easily see, where you will stay, what activities will you be doing, alternate activities, and the cost of all of it.

Together, refine and tweak the plan until you are sure that everyone gets to do something they enjoy.

Tips on How to Plan to Include Friends or Family Wants:

• Ask everyone in your party to pick the one thing they really want to see or do in the place you’re going.
• Remember, you don’t have to be together all of the time. You can break up into smaller groups and do activities with shared passions. Some can visit a museum while another group is shopping, for example.
• Don’t allocate all of your time. Provide time for discovery and for unexpected things.
• Have some alternate options in case it rains or some venue is closed.
• Establish what places will require reservations for groups. Many restaurants don’t require reservations for two or three people but do require them for bigger groups.
• Purchasing tickets in advance for places like museums and sports venues helps with avoiding lines.
• Be flexible.
• Communicate. Don’t assume everyone knows what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling, or what you would like to do. Speak up.
• Be ready to compromise.

Tips for Planning Family Travel:

A common challenge when traveling in families is the wide range of ages that need to be taken into account.

Here are some ideas that have made our family vacations smoother. We hope some of them might help you too.

• Traveling with small children (not babies):
  • Prepare a small backpack where they can carry their things: a coloring book with crayons, a favorite blanket or stuffed toy, water, or juice.
  • Plan for lots of downtime: whether taking naps or cooling off in the pool.
  • Include outside activities: little people are usually very active so find time to play in a park.
  • Visit a zoo or aquarium.
  • Have alternatives for a rainy day.
• School-age children:
  • With this group interactive is the name of the game; check out science museums, a music museum, and interactive exhibits.
  • Check for classes in areas of interest like art, and cooking.
  • If they like sports check out stadium tours and city museums.
  • Check for cool bookstores if you have a book lover.
• Teenagers:
  • At this age please make sure you involve them in the planning stage, this helps with their feeling heard and valued.
  • This group also benefits from classes like cooking and photography.
  • Arcades and game rooms.
  • Concerts or films in the local language can be an interesting experience. Who knows, they might get motivated to learn a new language.

• Older adults:
  • This group may benefit from hop-on hop-off options where they can appreciate the major attractions without necessarily walking too much.
  • Plan for downtime.
  • Make sure you have a list of all their medications – when traveling abroad having the generic name is more important than knowing the brand name.
  • Hanging out by the pool one afternoon on their own is a valid vacation activity.
• Special Needs
  • Food allergies require special planning, make sure you have alternatives for eating time.
  • Also for allergies; have the allergies written out in the language of the country you are visiting. Google Translate can be an alternative. If you don’t have internet access make sure to screenshot it before leaving.
  • If you have a medical device or machine that needs charging make sure to bring the correct travel converter. You don’t want to end up with a burnt machine or device in another country.
  • Will you need a hotel with room and facilities with accessibility?

Additional Tools for Planning with Friends or Family

A challenge of planning a trip with friends or family is that we might be spread out across different parts of the city, the country, or even the world.

But today, there are tools that we can use to help make planning and the trip itself easier. Here are a few to explore:

• To share the plan use Google Sheets or a similar planning tool.
• To manage shared costs and keep control of spending use Splitwise, or any similar expense management app.
• If you have a tech-savvy group you can use Travefy, which allows you to keep your flight, rental car, accommodation, activities, and restaurant reservations in one place.

Traveling with Friends or Family

Planning travel with a group, whether it’s of friends or family, can be a challenge.

Nevertheless, the experiences gained during a trip can bring you closer together. The memories can be shared and relived for years to come.

Including everyone during the destination selection and planning processes goes a long way to making the final experience more enjoyable for everyone.

But remember, even the best plans can have challenges or may go wrong. In those cases be patient, be flexible and overall be kind. Have fun planning your trip with family or friends!