Do I Need to Plan?

The extent to which you plan your trip ahead of time depends on you, your budget, your time limitations, your destination and how busy your destination might be during the time of your visit.

It is entirely possible to fly into a foreign continent for months of travel without a single reservation. Many travellers embark on their journey with only a few ideas of which countries they might want to visit. Weigh the balance between your piece of mind and your adventurous, risk-taking spirit. Consider the consequences of not planning and how they might affect you. Trust though, that travel is completely possible, likely less expensive and definitely more spontaneous and fun when practiced on the fly. If you are nervous about your first independent travel experience in whatever foreign destination you are heading for, try booking accommodation for the first night or two. It will likely cost you a little more money but will give you a couple of days to get your bearings in a new city, country and culture, and to formulate your first plans. It will also give you an immediate direction in that overwhelming moment when your baggage shows up on the carousel and it dawns on you that you are about to leave the safety of the airport behind.

Your budget will affect the amount you want or need to plan, both beforehand and once you are on the road. Lower budgets usually call for less planning. Hotels, services and activities that accept or require reservations are usually more expensive in nature, and in some cases, the reservation itself will cost you. Holding reservations or prepaying for things can inhibit you from taking advantage of lower cost or more attractive options as they present themselves. On the flip side, making a reservation at a budget guesthouse could save your wallet if all of the budget accommodation and park benches in town are full and the next best option is a pricey hotel.

If your time is limited, reservations can be handy. Without reservations, you risk finding yourself on tomorrow's train rather then today's, or you may have to spend a whole morning searching for a place to stay when you would rather be climbing the Eiffel Tower or the limestone cliff on the other side of the bay. Consequences of this nature mean little to the traveller who has all the time in the world, the traveller who may want to consider advance planning only for things that are really important to them, like maybe a stay at the Pink Palace in Corfu. Whether or not these risks even need to be considered depend on how busy your destination is when you are there.

Destinations popular among the regular tourist set are ones that may present problems, more so at some times of the year than others. Busy seasons exist for backpacker hot spots too - check with your guidebook. Depending on your standards, you will more than likely be able to find a budget room in a city, but you may encounter more difficulty in smaller towns and resort areas. In less touristed areas, you shouldn't find problems getting a room if accommodations indeed exist. Don't forget to consider local tourism that may fill up hotels, seats on buses and trains and local attractions in the same way international tourism does.

Some destinations are simply of a culture and lifestyle that do not allow for us to practice our Western-world styles of organization and planning. Things such as reservations and buying tickets ahead of time may be unheard of or difficult to secure. A small group of us telephoned ahead and reserved a cabin in a campground in the outskirts of Prague one time, only to show up and find the campground had no cabins at all. Another time, language barriers prevented me from reserving a room for my first night in the busy, well-touristed Cancun, Mexico. Out of frustration at my lack of Spanish, the poor man on the other end of the line eventually just hung up on me!

If you decide to plan some (or all!) of your trip ahead of time, good luck! Your travel agent may be a somewhat costly source of help. But in the interest of expecting the unexpected, be prepared to go with the flow at times and enjoy the spontaneity of travel happenstances.

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