There is a version of you who exists while planning a holiday who is remarkably energetic.
This person wakes up early without any difficulty, walks 20,000 steps before lunch, visits three museums in an afternoon, has dinner somewhere across town and still has enough enthusiasm to go looking for a bar afterwards. They also apparently have no problem carrying a camera, a day bag and whatever else seemed essential when the itinerary was being created.
Then the actual holiday begins.
You wake up at 9am. You are hungry. Your feet hurt slightly. The museum is on the other side of the city. And the only thing you really want to do for the next hour is find coffee.
It is a familiar problem, and it has less to do with poor planning than with planning for an imaginary version of yourself.
The Holiday Planner and the Holiday Traveller Are Not Always the Same Person
At home, everything feels possible. You have not spent the previous day travelling, you are not adjusting to a different time zone and you are not standing in the middle of an unfamiliar neighbourhood trying to work out which direction to walk.
That makes it very easy to build ambitious itineraries.
The better approach is to think about how you actually travel once you arrive somewhere. If you normally like slow mornings, do not schedule an attraction for 8am simply because the opening time makes it possible. If you know you get tired after a full day of walking, leave some room in the afternoon.
A realistic itinerary can look less impressive on paper and be much more enjoyable in practice.
Think About Your Energy, Not Just Your Time
Two travellers can have exactly the same number of days and use them completely differently.
Someone who loves being outdoors may happily spend an entire day walking around a city. Another traveller may prefer a morning of sightseeing followed by a long lunch and an afternoon indoors. Neither person is making better use of the holiday.
This is worth considering when choosing the destination itself. A place with excellent public transport and compact neighbourhoods may suit one type of traveller, while another might be happier somewhere where the main attractions are spread out and the journey between them becomes part of the experience.
The destination should fit the way you like to spend your days, not just the list of things you want to see.
Be Honest About Your First Day
The first day deserves its own category.
Even if your flight lands in the morning, you may not feel ready to launch straight into a full sightseeing schedule. If you arrive late, the argument becomes even stronger.
When comparing flights on Skyscanner, it can help to look at the departure and arrival times as part of the itinerary rather than as separate travel details. A flight that gets you there at a useful hour may give you a gentler introduction to the destination, while a late arrival could make the following morning more important.
There is no universal best flight time. It depends on what kind of traveller you are and what you want the first day to feel like.
Build Around One Thing You Really Want to Do
A holiday becomes easier to plan when you have an anchor.
It could be a football match, a particular restaurant, a concert, a famous museum, a hike or simply a neighbourhood you have always wanted to explore. Once that is fixed, you can build the rest of the trip around it without trying to make every hour equally important.
This also leaves room for discoveries.
If you find an interesting market on the way back from your main activity, you can stop. If someone recommends a restaurant, you have time to try it. If you wake up and realise that the perfect plan for the afternoon is doing absolutely nothing, the itinerary can survive.
Don’t Give Every Day a Job
Travel itineraries often become strangely managerial. Day one is for sightseeing. Day two is for museums. Day three is the day trip. Day four is shopping.
That can make a holiday feel like a project with deadlines.
Instead, think of each day as having a general shape. You might have one planned activity in the morning and leave the afternoon open. Or you might reserve one evening for dinner somewhere special and let everything before it happen naturally.
You will still see things. You just will not have to constantly check the time to make sure the next thing happens.
Leave Space for the Person You Become There
This is perhaps the most useful part of planning a holiday: you do not know exactly what you are going to like until you arrive.
A neighbourhood may turn out to be far more interesting than the famous attraction you researched. A restaurant may become the place you want to return to. You may discover that you enjoy wandering much more than you expected, or that the activity you were most excited about does not actually appeal once you are there.
A rigid itinerary has no room for those discoveries.
A good one does.
Your Search Can Be Flexible Too
This is also why it can be useful to keep some flexibility while choosing the trip itself.
Skyscanner’s Everywhere search can help when you know the kind of break you want but are open about the destination. Whole Month can be useful when your travel dates are flexible, while Price Alerts can help you keep track of a route once you have narrowed things down.
Used together, these features allow the planning process to stay open for a little longer. You can explore the possibilities before deciding exactly what the holiday needs to be.
And that may be the most important thing to remember: you are not planning a holiday for the person sitting at home with a laptop and a cup of coffee. You are planning it for the person who will actually be there, slightly tired, probably hungry, occasionally distracted and hopefully having a very good time.
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