Traveling can be a great fun as it gives you a chance to escape from your monotonous life schedule where you go to work, spend your time in front of a computer or attending to your clients and then heading back home. Everyday it is the same atmosphere, same people you meet and you tend to get bored with it. You want to discover something new, vibrant and experience some joy and a trip to places of interest can give you that refreshment and bliss.But for enjoying a trip in a far-off destination in your own country or in a foreign one, you have to do some bit of planning. This will make your stay at a far off location much more comfortable and enjoyable as you will encounter much less problems and even if you experience any, you can better handle them.
These things you need to focus upon when you are planning for a trip to famous and popular locations around the world.
1. Time
You need to analyze on how much time would you need for visiting a specific place in specific part of the world. You can make an assessment of time that you will need for traveling to a place and for visiting places of interest like beaches, monuments, temples and others. You also have to calculate time spent in boarding and lodging. You also need to consider time spent over flights, buses and other mode of transport as you travel from one place to another. You can consult your friends about this who went to a specific place which you are planning to visit. You can also read people’s comments on the net which will give you an idea how much time is needed for the same. But it also depends on which activities you are planning to perform during your stay there. But do try to make a balance between what you want to do there and the time available with you.
2. Budget
Once you are done with the time part, you ought to focus on your budget. You have to ensure that you have enough money with you so that you can better enjoy your trip. You have to decide whether you are planning to stay in hotels or in less costly accommodations. Then it all depends on your paying capacity and your priorities. You have to take into consideration the cost incurred on arranging flights, bus and other type of transport. The visa charges have to be taken into account. The money spent over enjoying your pastimes have to be focused upon. You have to consider how much cash you have to take with you. Your ATMs should operate in places you are going to visit. So you have to make a fair assessment of the budget for the success of your trip.
3. Safety
Before you plan on visiting a place, just make sure about that there is no law and order problem in that part of the world. Anti-government protests, workers’ demonstrations and similar problems can snowball into big problems and can easily turn your stay there into a nightmare. Even if you are adamant on going there, do work out on a pullout plan if things get worse and you want to escape from there. Do check about credible news channels to know if everything is fine there. You also have to be on guard against pickpockets and muggers as some places are infamous for pickpocketing and thuggery. Take necessary precautions as advised by fellow travellers and locals.
4. Weather
Do check out weather updates for the places you are visiting. You have to ensure that if you are going to some place for participating in some fun-filled activities, you are able to enjoy them at that time. As some activities are season specific, they cannot be enjoyed all the year around. They can be enjoyed at a specific time in a year. So make sure you visit the place when you can enjoy things you want to. Also tune in to weather reports if some place is witnessing a flood, excessive rainfall, drought or similar other situation that can affect our pleasure as it can land you in a soup.
5. Good knowledge of rules and regulations
As you are planning to visit a different part of the world which is not your home, you have to be crystal clear about rules and regulations there. Lack of awareness about them can complicate matters and land you in serious trouble. In instances where you cross from one country into another country through a common border, you should follow the rules and regulations stipulated.
6. Fair Knowledge about local culture and language
Visiting a different place gives you a chance to see a different way of life. The people there might be speaking different language, have different customs and even practice a different faith. So it would be better if you know something about them in advance. Picking up their language can be hard, but you can learn some local words through a book or net that can prove to be helpful for communicating with them like asking for a bus or a hotel. Even sign language can be beneficial in such situations. If you know some words of their language, you can better bond with them and they will be ready to help you out in every possible manner.
7. Flights and travel arrangements
If you plan on visiting many countries and places for enjoying your overseas vacation, choose the best route which saves your costs and which is physically less taxing. Go for round the world tickets for a smooth travel experience as you can visit more places at relatively less cost. You can choose in those airlines who are part of an alliance and who are offering such tickets. You can get in touch with your tour and travel operators for more knowledge about these. This would allow you to visit multiple countries and enjoy your vacation there in a smooth and hassle free manner.
8. Packing list
Before you head for a trip, you have to plan what clothes and accessories you have to keep with you. You should not overload yourself with too many goods as it can create problems for you as you have to constantly focus on your multiple bags which can affect your pleasure. Try to keep things in a rucksack with bare minimum goods, so you remain mobile as too much load on your back can get physically demanding at times. You can buy things locally which you need and even sell them or transport them back to your home through shipping. You can keep your guidebooks with you like Lonely planet and others for more knowledge about lands you are visiting. You can keep your camera, mobile and other basic but important commodities with you. Keep bare minimum cash in your pocket and the rest of it in your bag. But do not put all the cash at the same place in your bag, also put your ATMs in the same way. Even if some of them get lost, you have something to bank upon.
These things will help you to plan your trips in a better and smoother way and you would be enjoy more and worry less by focusing on these important points.
But focusing on so many things and ensuring that you have done justice to each one of them is not an easy task. You will come across situations when you will discover that you forgot to consider and execute some important things which featured prominently in your trip plan as these slipped away from your memory. These could be consulting your travel agency or your visa arranger over an important matter or it might be simply asking your friend for an advice. But these did not come across your mind at right time and you failed to perform them. Such inconsistencies can drastically affect your travel plan.
So you need to use an enterprising solution which helps you remember everything important about your trip right from putting accessories into your bag to consulting your friends and other people who matter. So you can better track them and get them accomplished without forgetting them. So you can save yourself from unnecessary lamenting over not performing them rightly and timely.
A web based project management tool like ProofHub helps in proper planning over your trip matters and ensures that tasks and activities related to your trip are properly tracked and timely conducted without ever getting missed. You can better communicate and collaborate with your friends, travel agents, flight operators and other important individuals and agencies over important matters and resolve them fast with least time and efforts. You and your co-planners all can get access to same and latest information, data and files as these are located at a single centralized place. So you remain on the same page over trip matters.
This project management system enables better task description, documentation, assignment, execution, tracking and control. Thus every individual who is part of your team including yourself knows which task one has to perform at a specific point of time. Every time your task approaches its due date, you are sent an email notification making you aware that you need to perform the task by a specific time. So you can timely and satisfactorily perform them without missing or skipped them. There remains no chance of missing a task just as it slipped from your memory. So tasks can be better tracked and it can ensured that they have been done in the desired and timely manner. Every activity featuring in your traveling plan gets due attention and gets timely accomplished.
This tool is also helpful in those instances when some individual decides to go for a vacation, but he is part of a team which is working over a project and this project has to be completed within the stipulated time frame and within the allocated budget and other resources. If this person heads for the vacation, the work will suffer as he is playing an important role in the execution of the project. So there are two options for him. One is that he will sacrifice his vacation for his work and the other is he will say goodbye to the work and enjoy the vacation instead. But the need here is to balance the both, so the work also goes smoothly even if the person is busy in vacationing and even he can contribute in it if there is a need for the same.
This enterprising tool enables him to enjoy the vacation and check with everything important happening in his project through the mobile in his pocket. He can check important activities happening in it from the airport or the beach. He can read old comments as well as add new comments. Thus he remains connected to the project even on the go and remains updated about its progress. So his company’s work does not suffer as he can maintain a perfect balance between his work and pleasure. The physical distances between team members working over common projects simply vanish as they can communicate in a fast and accurate manner from anywhere in the world.Another benefit that this tool has that progress over projects and plans can be better assessed and tracked. Through its Gantt chart project management feature, a project manager can easily make out how much progress has been made over a project by seeing progress over individual tasks being performed by various team members. He can share this feature with his team mates to let them know where they stand over their tasks. They can self assess their progress over them. Any tasks can be easily rescheduled if required. Dependencies among tasks can be easily established. In case a task gets rescheduled, all tasks dependent on it can be easily rescheduled. The comparison between planned progress and achieved progress can be easily done. All tasks are presented in graphical form and in a color coded pattern which makes it easy to check progress over all the tasks and activities in projects. A project manager need not inspect each and every task to know their progress as all can be viewed in a Gantt chart at the same place in a concise and clear manner.
This feature can be immensely useful for an individual who is planning to go for a trip and he knows how the project in which he is a part of is progressing and how much progress he has achieved over his tasks. Thus he gets clarity over its tasks and can enjoy his trip in a more relaxed manner and even contribute in his work from his place of pleasure from his mobile, tablet, laptop or any other device as per their availability. He can thus balance both his work and merriment with much more flexibility and control.
Similarly a tour operator can see the progress over his clients’ traveling plans as they plan to visit different destinations around the world. It can also prove to be helpful for the government authorities to check the status of visa applications of various applicants and better update these men over their individual status over their visa formalities.
This enterprising tool enables better planning of your trip and ensures that you are able to focus on each and every task and activity that feature in your travel plan and perform them in a timely and desired manner without ever missing them. Thus you can better enjoy your trip and even do justice to your work while you are away from your workplace for merriment or for any other reason.
SharonGuest Writer
