How to find and choose your next Travel Destination
Close your eyes and imagine where you want to be right now. Are you dreaming of a place on your bucket list? That white sandy beach you’ve been dreaming about? Those picturesque mountains as far as the eye can see. Maybe you’re dreaming of that lake vacation, relaxing on a boat or on the shore. Let all of those feelings inspire you. Whether you are looking for that once in a lifetime vacation or just a quick getaway there are plenty of ways to plan and find your next travel destination.
How do you find your bucket list items?
In order to find that dream travel destination think about what moves you and what inspires you. This is where creating a dream board or dream destination sheet can come in handy. My wife and I have a long list of bucket list items all over the map. We chose some of these bucket list items for specific types of experiences (seeing the northern lights, observing certain animal species) while others are based on locations. Let me give you an example. One of our dream trips is to visit and hike in Patagonia in Chile. We have this on our list with set times that we would like to target to visit. Since we know that the high season is December to February (in Chile’s summer), we will try to target the end or beginning of the high season on into the shoulder season. For Patagonia we are targeting going in late October - November or possibly in early March to end of April. Normally, during the shoulder seasons you can find better deals and less crowds, although you may have to sacrifice some of the nicer warmer weather. In planning this trip we would normally mesh this together with a trip to visit Santiago, to visit the cultural highlights, and because we both enjoy wine, try to target a trip to the Maipo valley.
We will start with our interests, for example hiking, and mix in cultural activities, and gastronomy. From here, we will normally start with a Google search, say the top 10 things to do in Chile. This will normally lead you to TripAdvisor, Lonely, Planet, or a whole host of travel blogs (like this one!). You can also use ChatGPT or another AI chatbot to help you plan an itinerary [I will demonstrate this in a different blog post]. We like to use all of these resources as a baseline and then conduct our own research. Another alternative is to plan your trip around an event, perhaps you want to check out Coachella or Tomorrowland, or you really want to go to an F1 race, or the Cannes Film Festival. You can use that event as your starting point to plan travel. For example, say you’ve always dreamed of going to Thailand, but the flights from the USA are too long for your liking in one sitting. If you combine that with a quick getaway in Europe as a “stop over”, such as attending an F1 Race in Monza, Italy, outside of Milan, you can then find much better and cheaper flights to Thailand and combine some epic adventures!
If you have no idea where you want to go, you can start with a broader search. Perhaps you enjoy snorkeling or relaxing on a white sandy beach or want to see all of the different colored sand beaches in the world. You could search for the top 10 beaches in the world, or in North America, or in California, whatever your target travel area looks like for you. Then pin these items, put them into your notes section on your iPhone, or find whatever app or document (or good old fashion pen and paper list) to write down all of the places that interest you. Instagram and YouTube can also be great sources of inspiration. Another thing that we like to do is simply pin areas we want to visit on Google Maps. It is really simple to create a new list on Google Maps. Once you have your list, now you can put together plans, alerts, budgets, and find ways to make your ideas come to life!
How do you actually choose where to travel?
When choosing where to travel we like to start with a few key questions:
What is my budget?
What type of vacation am I seeking and what type of experience would I like to have?
How much time off do I have or am I willing to take?
What are my must sees and what are my like to sees?
Which activities excite me at this destination?
Is there a specific time of year I would like to visit and is there something specific I want to see during this time?
How much will crowds annoy me? [Now I say this in jest, but if you are not a planner and waiting around in a line or queue for hours does not sound like your idea of a good time, this should definitely be a consideration. If you're a patient person or a people person and don’t mind waiting around and striking up a conversation, then you can completely skip this question. For other folks, this could really impact your overall experience in a positive or negative way. Just be mindful.]
We choose travel based on our time available (since we both have full time jobs), the time of year, budget, and lastly the season. For example, we really want to snorkel with the Whale Sharks; however, we know that this is based on seasonality and their migration patterns. If we wanted to go snorkel with them in La Paz, Mexico for instance, we know that we would have to target visiting sometime between November and February. This means even if we really wanted to visit La Paz, we wouldn’t target visiting in May knowing that our likelihood of seeing Whale Sharks is very low during that time. This does however, allow us to set up price alerts and targets in advance between November and February so we can monitor prices.
When we are looking at planning vacations throughout a year, we try to mix it up. We may target a road trip locally, and then target a beach trip for relaxation, and then try to find something cultural and adventurous. The other things to be mindful of is targeting holiday weekends or weeks. This is where you may need to make a trade-off between budget and time. Holiday weekends are typically going to be more expensive, but if you don’t have a ton of time off, it may be worth it to save that extra day of vacation time and pay extra. On the other end, if you have more vacation time, and are on a budget, it may be best to avoid Holidays and opt to go the week or two before or after a holiday when the prices may be more favorable.
If you still aren’t sure, you can use different travel sites to help you find a destination.
Below is a an example on how to search using Momondo when trying to figure out where to go:
Step One: Select your home airport or the airport you are interested in leaving from.
For this example we will plan to travel during the month of June, leaving out of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
Step Two: Select the you don’t know where you want to go, explore option
Step Three: Review the travel destinations either by type of trip or price to help find something in your budget.
Here you can start to customize and narrow your search a bit. On the left hand side you can choose how many layovers you are willing to take. In this example I decided to choose “Nonstop Only”.
You can also set your budget parameters here.
As well as your flight duration.
You can also narrow down your search by selecting the type of trip you are interested in taking.
Step Four: Identify the price and time that peaks your interest.
In this example, I really liked this price to Guatemala City. When I click on the city it pops up with a “check prices” option and gives a quick overview of the destination.
Step Five: This is where you can start to plan out your trip.
We can see the price trends from LAX to Guatemala City, so if our dates are flexible we can start searching around to see which days offer the best flight times and prices.
Additionally, we see the available airlines that fly directly to Guatemala City from LAX. We can search to see if we can use points, transfer points, or see if there are any deals with any of these airlines directly.
Next, we want to select “Check Flight Prices” .
Step Six: Conduct Travel Research
This is where we can start changing dates to find the best deals that work for our schedule. For example, the cheapest flight I found was an overnight flight, but I really wanted a flight during the day. The cheapest one that met my criteria is the Avianca flight for $350 per person.
You can of course adjust based on the specific Airline or airline alliance you want to take, take-off and landing time, etc. to find the flight that works best for you.
Step Seven: Book that flight!
Generally speaking, we recommend booking directly through the airline if possible. If you book with a third party, just make sure you do your research ahead of time.
Another example, when we lived in Europe, we used Ryanair Fare Finder weekly to find out where we could fly to from our closest airports. You select your home airport or where you are departing from and select Anywhere for where you’re traveling to. It will generate a list of all of the locations you can fly to within the budget that you set. You can also refine this even more by filtering specific months, date ranges, or locations after the initial search. This is also a great tool to use if you are flying to a city within Europe and want to use that main city as a launching point to other destinations.
Once we decide on what type of trip(s) we want to take and the destination, we start our planning process. One example of how we start that process is shown above. There are numerous other ways to choose your destination as well, so find the one that works best for you within your time and budget constraints.
Side Note: if you are more of a spontaneous traveler and prefer to just wing it (totally fine, we’ve been there too!), there are some good last minute deal website and newsletters to check out: Travelzoo, Secretflying, or Going (previously Scott’s Cheap Flights).
If you have an idea of where you want to go, then set up price alerts and use websites like:
Your Credit Card Reward Program of choice
How do you plan for it?
Planning for our travel means planning in advance and researching the best times to go with a hope of finding an ideal shoulder season time for our bucket list destinations.
When planning for travel and trying to find the best deals we go back to identifying the time frame we want to travel and our budget. From there, we normally set up price alerts for flight deals and look for refundable hotels or AirBnBs in case our plans change. If we are still researching, we may use the flexible search option on Kayak, Skyscanner, or on Momondo to find potentially good travel destinations. You can use the open jaw flight search features as shown above by inputting your closest or home airport and then searching for anywhere in the World. Even though I demonstrated how to do this using Momondo, Kayak and Skyscanner have similar functionality and search features if you prefer using those websites instead.
When planning your travel, you can follow a pretty simple plan:
Ask yourself, what would make this fun and easy? [Should I plan this on my own? Book a guided tour? Buy a train pass for flexibility?]
Research the best times to go as well as the shoulder seasons for your favorite destinations.
Combine destinations and experiences, if you can.
Maximize the use of points (if possible) - although for us this is normally a secondary thought
If you have the freedom, find that last minute deal and take it!
Find a fun itinerary that you like and then customize it to your liking.
What experience would you like to have or look back on?
This is a question only you can answer. What experience would you like to have at the end of the trip? Is it that epic zip lining adventure you dreamed of? Or maybe just a really nice tan? Or maybe it was the accommodation you always dreamed of or saw on Instagram? The epic AirBnB with the amazing views? Or that Hostel where you may be able to meet new friends and practice your new language skills? Whatever your hopes are, set that intention for yourself and let it guide you to your next amazing adventure.
Want to learn more about acquiring and using travel points, check out our blog post!