How I Plan

A-14-002-How I Plan, me, not everyone

This process is only for longer trips, more than a week.

Here is an idea of the steps I go through

1. The idea – first step have an idea
2. Feasibility – dates and time
3. Calendar plan
4. Create a budget
5. Flight and train time check
6. Day by day plan – itinerary – does it work ?
7. Is this okay for everyone else
8. Book key things
9. Book lesser things if needed
10. Write itinerary in sufficient detail
11. Write information pack

1          The Idea

• Is this a one off trip
• Part of a buckets list
• A revisit ?
• It all starts with an idea
• We need to start somewhere – after talking about the steps I will work through an example

2          Feasibility Studies

• Just like a construction project need to check the feasibility of the whole idea.
• Limitations   Time, how long off work, school holidays, high or low season, weather
  • Money
  • Company
  • Commitments
• Can you ‘do’ the destination within the time and budget constraints.

3          Create a Calendar Plan

This is a quick visual display done by hand to see whether your idea will work with in the allocated time.

4          Create a Budget

No plan is any good if you have no idea how much it will cost.

5          Flight and train time check

To work out the more finer details we need to know when planes leave and how log trains take etc

6          Day by day plan

This is a form of an itinerary, it is a working document that is a basic structure that you add to as you go long

7          Is this fine with every one

• Consultation.
• Checking

No good going any further if your group have different ideas or expectations

8          Book key things

Book the important things, if there is no flight to Timbuctoo, no point booking a hotel

9          Book lesser things

Book any important things that require advance booking

10       Write an itinerary (day by day plan)

Write a day by day in sufficient detail for your comfort and level of planning

11       Write an information pack

This is your choice.  Really depends on who you are traveling with and what you like to know.

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I will discuss these in more details as we go along with a working example.

	Task	Examples
1	The idea	Take a trip to New Zealand
2	Feasibility	Can only spare a week off work Don’t want to spend much money Sightseeing rather than activities Can only do a portion of NZ in 10 days We can always go back Is it worth it – the cost for such a short trip
3	Making it work	The most complicated part
4	Select a leave date	Thursday afternoon
5	Select a return date	Sunday afternoon
6	Check flights, trains, cars etc	Find earliest flight from Sydney and a return flight in time to get a train and bus before dark
7	Look at a route on Google maps	How far in how much time
8	Where to stay	See where the hostels are, that is where most people go.
9	Check that it all works	Draw up a plan and calculate times and distance

Making it work – using a ‘calendar plan’

The calendar plan that I use is make as a table with seven columns and seven rows

Row 1    The days of the week   

Row 2    Date, may fill in later

                Day – I like to use days, day 1 = day you leave etc

Row  3   Summary, eg Sydney to Singapore

Row 4    What’s planned for the morning?

Row 5    What’s planned for the afternoon?

Row 6    What’s planned for the evening?

Row 7    Where you plan to stay

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Date/day
Summary
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Stay

Here is example on how I start

Step 1-fill in days and dates and major fights and trains

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Day	Day	Day	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4
			Orange to Sydney	Sydney to Queenstown	Queenstown	Queenstown to Te Anau
				7.00am flight leaves 10.00 arrive
			3.00 train leaves
			8.30 train arrives

Step 2 – Fill in where you plan to stay.  See below some thoughts and ideas about where you should spend your first night

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Day 1	Day 1	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5	Day 6	Day 7
			Orange to Sydney	Sydney to Queenstown	Queenstown	Queenstown to Te Anau
				7.00am flight leaves 10.00 arrive
			3.00 train leaves
			8.30 train arrives
			Sydney	Queenstown	Queenstown	Te Anua

Step 3 – now fill in how far and how long to drive.  Always give a higher estimate than google maps does, they don’t have to deal with traffic, sheep, breaks and getting lost.  See below how to work out travel times with google maps

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Day	Day	Day	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4
			Orange to Sydney	Sydney to Queenstown	Queenstown	Queenstown to Te Anau
				7.00am flight leaves 10.00 arrive	Explore locally	Drive 170km 2hrs
			3.00 train leaves	Pick up hire car
			8.30 train arrives
			Sydney	Queenstown	Queenstown	Te Anua

Step 4 – Fill in all the other things you think you would like to do

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Day	Day	Day	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4
			Orange to Sydney	Sydney to Queenstown	Queenstown	Queenstown to Te Anau
				7.00am flight leaves 10.00 arrive	Explore locally	Drive 170km 2hrs
			3.00 train leaves	Pick up hire car See Shotover River	Drive up to Remarkables	Walk next to lake
			8.30 train arrives
			Sydney	Queenstown	Queenstown	Te Anua

Step 5 – depend on the type of trip, not this example I shade the travel times to make sure that don’t spend all you time travelling and no time at the destination.  I don’t shade the areas where the actually drive, eg a scenic drive, is part of the experience.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Day	Day	Day	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4
			Orange to Sydney	Sydney to Queenstown	Queenstown	Queenstown to Te Anau
				7.00am flight leaves 10.00 arrive	Explore locally	Drive 170km 2hrs
			3.00 train leaves	Pick up hire car See Shotover River	Drive up to Remarkables	Walk next to lake
			8.30 train arrives
			Sydney	Queenstown	Queenstown	Te Anua

The first night

What ever you do – ALWAYS BOOK YOU FIRST NIGHT, here are some reasons why

Planes are delayed, if you think you will arrive at midday and you flight over the Southern Alps is delayed for 5 hrs you don’t have much time to find a place

• If planes are delayed, the people who are leaving may have to stay an extra night – and fill up the accommodation
• You have not been to this town before, there may be something going on and everything is full !
• When we went to Queenstown a few years ago the following happened.
• My flight was the last flight to land for 4hrs.  Then only larger planes could land due to terrible weather.  The airport was full of people waiting to leave as all smaller planes were cancelled and no larger planes for a few hours.
• A marathon had been run in the area the previous day and ALL the cheaper accommodation was full.  There were queues at the hostel and tired people milling around not knowing what to do !

Travel times with Google Maps

Open up google maps, and select ‘directions’,  type your start place and final destination.  On my example Queenstown and Te Anau are quite close, but there is no road ! so we need to travel along 2 sides of a triangle.  Google maps tells us that it is 170km and will take 2hrs – really ?  If you drove the route everyday I am sure it would be feasible, but

• toilet stops
• coffee stops
• photo stops
• short break stops
• slow in towns
• sheep
• lunch
• other tourists
• unfamiliar roads
• and going slow cos of the views

So let us say we will take 4hrs.  I am sure it will be less than that, but at least if we plan 4 hrs and see something amazing we have time to stop.  It also help a bit to look at google maps as satellite view, suddenly you see that you may be driving though mountains with winding road and fantastic scenery to slow you down – or maybe it is endless paddocks and similarity – speed up !

This way of planning may not work for all, some people have different needs and of course not at all necessary if going on a package tour a using a travel agent

Next see Budgeting- this is all part of the planning process  [A22]