You want a vacation, but you don’t know where to go, and you may feel overwhelmed by all the choices. No worries, this article is for you. I was once in the same boat, so I know how you feel. Below are a few tricks to help you find the right vacation destination. I hope this makes your decision-making process easier, and maybe even fun.
Before you start randomly searching on websites or browsing on social media, let’s think about some basic preferences about what you like for vacation. This will help your research become a lot clearer.
5 Easy Questions to Narrow Down Your Search
1. What Kind of Vacation Style Do You Prefer?
Think about what you dream about doing for vacation while you are at work. If you don’t have time to daydream, think about what makes you feel relaxed and comfortable.
- Family-friendly Beaches or Island Charm
- Museums, Theaters, or City Sightseeing
- Historic Districts and Architecture
- Mountains, National Parks and Outdoor Adventure
- Sports Fan, Foodie or Beer lover
2. Who Are You Going to Travel With?
- Travel solo
- Just the two of you
- Travel with family without young children
- Travel with family with young children
- Travel with friends
Unless you are traveling alone, the best way to plan a successful vacation for you and your companions is also the easiest way: communicate with everyone who is going to travel with you about each step of your planning process. Communication can start from the very beginning of your vacation planning idea, like what time you want to have a vacation and what kind of vacation style you like. Open, abundant communication can make the entire journey go smoothly and ensure everyone in your travel group has a wonderful experience. Good communication will ease a lot of pressure on the trip.
3. How Many Days Do You Have for A Vacation?
How much time you have will definitely affect your choice of vacation destination. Well, it also depends on how far away your dream destination is from where you live. Proximity makes some destinations more suitable than others.
- A long weekend getaway
- A 9-day vacation (take a week off with two weekends)
- A two-week vacation (can be 14-16 days)
- An extended vacation (longer than two weeks)
4. Timing and Weather Preference
- Peak season
- Shoulder season (in between peak season and off season)
- Off season
- Prefer warm & sunny weather
- Prefer cooler weather
Sometimes you cannot treat timing and weather independently. Peak season is usually the best time, with the best weather, to visit a place, but you will be affected by crowds and you end up paying more for flights and hotels. I, personally, prefer traveling at shoulder season so you can avoid heavy traffic and save some money on flight and hotel. Off season is also a great choice if you are planning to tour museum, theater or city sightseeing.
5. Convenience of Transportation
The time it takes to travel to your destination shortens the time you have to enjoy it. How easy it is to get where you are going will kick your vacation off in a good way. You may not want to start any vacation less than two weeks with an exhausting journey. Choose some destinations which are relatively easy to access by a convenient mode of transportation, such as direct flight.
- Road trip
- Direct flight
- Transfer once
- Transfer multiple times
Combining Your Answers
As an example, suppose your answers were:
- Beach lovers
- Family with young children
- One-week vacation
- In June
- Direct flight or road trip (within 8 hours one-way)
Using Your Answers to Find the Right Destination
- I always suggest starting with one of the most frequently used search engines, such as Google or Bing, because they can lead you to different social media platforms to explore more details. At this point you can type in
“Best beaches for family with young children to stay a week in June”
and the results they give you will be more specific instead of that random information that was drowning you.
Once you have some initial ideas, you may want to dig into some details to make sure that it is the right place. Search on travel blogs to see what you can do there and whether it fits your preferences.
Taking the search results above, let’s continue an example. Click on the top article that shows 25 beaches worldwide, and the Coligny Beach at Hilton Head, SC caught my attention.
It is easy to travel to for a family with young children, and a good choice for a week’s vacation. So, you may want to explore more detail about Coligny Beach. One of the best sites to search for details on a travel location is Pinterest. Open Pinterest and in the search bar type in, “Coligny Beach, Hilton Head.”
Then you can browse through the pins dig into articles about Coligny Beach.
Once you have decided on your vacation destination, be sure to check out the flight and hotel prices for the time you plan to travel to see if that fits your budget.
Plan your trip and enjoy it!
Some Tools to Help Your Research and Book Your Trip
For Searching Your Travel Destination
- Google —initial ideas and inspiration
- Instagram — visual information (a picture is worth a thousand words)
For Searching What You Can Do
- Pinterest — suggestions for things you can do at your destination
- TripAdvisor — things to do, fun events; offers a lot of tours
- YouTube — visual information may offer you a real feel for the place
For Searching Travel Logistics
- Expedia — offers flights and hotel bundles which can save money
- Skyscanner — finds you the cheapest flights on the date you plan to travel, most of the time. It also has a great feature that helps find the cheapest time to fly if you can be flexible
- Booking.com — member-only hotel price, reliable reviews, and many free cancelation choices
- Hotels.com — member-only hotel price, and stay 9 days in a year get the 10th for free
- Airbnb.com — home like vacation rentals
I hope this article makes your vacation search easy and fun. I will see you in my next post.
