Deciding where you want to spend your money and time visiting can be one of the more stressful decisions that anyone can make before traveling. There are many ways to make that decision and some of those might be determined by your personality. Some people are willing to throw a dart at a map and randomly go wherever fate might take them and other people use very rigid logic in making that decision. There are times when you pick a location because it has always been on your bucket list and there are other times when you have a fixed budget and you find a place that fits within it.
We choose our destinations based on a mix of all of those styles. We generally start with a relative date in mind and definitely have a budget in mind. From there we generally start searching airfares for a variety of locations as that is often the bulk of the expense and there aren’t always as many options. We try to go to someplace that we haven’t before and we basically start with several cities across those locations and then look for airfares using different apps. A good example of this was our first trip to South America where we looked at Peru, Columbia, Chile, but ultimately ended up choosing Bolivia.
During our time in Europe, choosing a location was far more random, but basically followed the same pattern. We would sit down for dinner on a Wednesday evening and toss out ideas of where to go that weekend and then check prices. Because we were traveling on fairly short notice, availability of transportation and hotels was usually a bigger deciding factor. If there was limited availability, it would normally drive prices up and we would decide to go someplace else.
We are currently trying to figure out our next big trip that will take place in the near future and are struggling with making a decision. Part of that is due to our own schedules and nailing down a time window and part of that is finding reasonable prices for the places that we are considering. We are leaning towards some place in Asia, but who knows if that is where we will end up traveling. This might sound insane to some people who plan things out years in advance, but for us, picking a destination can be as much a part of the adventure as the actual trip. How do you pick the places that you visit?
Great post
I’m more like you were in Europe…seeing as how I’m in Europe 🙂
Well put. We go through these thoughts when we choose countries to visit. We like authentic culture, amazing landscape and scenery, culinary experiences, availability of outdoor activities and affordability. Having some mix of those is preferable.
Totally agree 🙂
You’re so right about the planning and deciding being as much a part of the excitement as the actual trip. We love thinking and researching all sorts of different locations but ultimately it often comes down to finances unfortunately.
Unfortunately it usually does.
Thats a great question. I visited more than 50 countries so far and for me choosing the next travel destination is a hard decision. However this year I decided to focused more on latin America ☺️
We usually have a destination in mind. Which road we’ll take, stops along the way, places we choose to visit, and where we go after our selected destination are all up in the air. This allows us to be flexible and make changes as needed without being tied to a schedule.
We love to be flexible. We have seen some incredible places that we may not have seen if we planned every little detail.
Impromptu 🙂
I did a post with much the same title. I have a list in my head and I look at flight prices …and that often helps me decide!
We tend to start with flight prices as well 🙂
Mine is always time and money related – hence why I never go too far.