You are one of two adults in a househould (with or without kids) that takes regular vacations together. What’s the planning process like? How do you decide on a destination, and activities while there? Who does the research on things like hotels and restaurants? Do you work together, or is one of you (you or your partner) far more fussy/industrious, and the other is just along for the ride?
We have several theoretical vacations in the works all the time… periodically the topic comes up and we fantasize about places we’d like to go. Often, they are places that one of us has been before and would like to show the other; more and more these days it’s a place we’ve been and would like to go again, or an extension of a trip we’ve taken before that goes farther into a certain region, etc.
Sometimes in the winter we just need to go somewhere warm. My husband is familiar with most of the Caribbean and I know a lot of Florida/the Keys/the south. We’ll both state our bare minimum requirements (“one week, heat, a low key beach” or “three days, warmer than here, cheap and not booked up”) and it’ll be obvious which of us ought to plan the rest.
Then we start researching affordable but livable hotels and flight schedules, and send a lot of emails back and forth about what we find. We’ve both got a few travel requirements (like arriving at our destination as early in the day as possible) and by the time we’ve got those covered, there’s often not much choice left.
We’re less good about deciding what to do once we’re in a place. We often leave it to decide until we’re actually there. The person who knows the place better is the “tour guide” and the other person goes along with it… until I get tired and start to whine, or until he thinks I’m rushing him through an experience. Possibly some planning ahead would prevent these problems, but having a pre-programmed vacation doesn’t sound quite like a vacation… hmmm.
Together we decide where we want to go, based on our list of places we want to visit, time of year, schedules of everyone involved, finances and how much time I can get off of work. I usually look into airfare (if flying is involved) and my wife works on lodging, car rental, daily excursions/local attractions, kid-friendly options, and holding the mail. She’s a SAHM so has more time in her day to spend doing that research. Periodically she shares with me what she’s learned, we whittle things down and zero in on the best options, and then we sleep on it for a while. After a couple weeks we pull the trigger and book things.
One or the other of us will decide where we should go. Then I do the research on what we should do while we’re there (I say it’s because I’m better at finding information on the internet, while my wife maintains it’s because I have more free time at work), and then my wife organizes the details (reservations, plane tickets, etc).
We start out by checking if any family needs visiting and if we can plan a vacation around that. This year, we’re going to visit his mother for the third time. I like her, she lives in an beautiful area in sunny Spain, with a good guest room, and she enjoys babysitting her grandchild, our toddler, while we can go off and see the sights.
My husband is far more well-travelled than I, and we also tend to plan around his business trips, so he takes charge of the details. I give my input when needed and take care of what we’re leaving behind (kids, dog, cats).
The usual vacations we take are short (<200 miles) trips to see my family. Not everybody goes each time, although it’s usually some combination of kids & hubby. Sometimes I go by myself.
I do all the research on hotels & restaurants. My husband is not keen on fancy stuff so I try to find things as low key as possible. He trusts me to pick out things he can live with, and I do my best to honor his preferences.
When we went to NYC a couple of years ago, some of the planning was done for us by my sister (whom we were visiting). But usually I do all the planning.
One of us will usually say something like: how about goint to Istanbul? and if the other one is on board, it is up to the proposer to put together a rough itinerary and then discuss it with the other person. We both like to travel, so we’re usually up for anything.
One or the other of us comes up with an idea of where to go (usually me, I think, but there are occasionally trips to visit his family, which are done at his suggestion).
I do all the research and make all the reservations.
We generally take one big trip per year around our May anniversary. We kick around ideas all year long, just whatever comes to us: “That new Hotel in Vegas looks awesome!” or “I’d really love to go back to that resort in Mismaloya.”
Then sometime around January, we gather up all the ideas, talk about what each of us wants to do, crunch budget numbers and look at lodging and flights together, etc., and usually have everything booked by February.
We tend to have fairly compatible ideas about what a vacation should be, and neither of us is a hyper over-planner, so it’s usually a pretty easy process. This year there was a bit of debate. I’ve been wanting to do a Southern California trip including Hollywood and Disneyland, but she pushed back on that. She’s been unusually stressed out at work lately and didn’t want anything that included schedules or driving or any running around. So we settled on a nice-looking all-inclusive south of Cancun. (She didn’t have to twist my arm too hard.)
Otherwise, we do a handful of smaller trips, long weekends and whatnot. These usually have a much shorter lead time and are often planned by one of us, with the other just going along.
Usually one of us “owns” the trip – my husband by default, but for example the last vacation we took was primarily to see several of my friends so it was “my” trip – and that person makes the bulk of the transportation and accommodation arrangements. If we’re camping my husband plans the food; if not I do. I usually do the bulk of the sightseeing-research-and-planning as well, though my husband often does a lot of research and planning if it’s to be a hiking-heavy trip.
First we figure out when we can go and for how long. That involves checking each other’s schedules and time-off accruel.
Then once we’ve generally settled on dates we start tossing around ideas about where to go. Nowadays we usually go to visit family, because both our families are spread across the North American continent, and we have a baby son whom everybody wants to see.
First we get a budget. Then we go over the HUGE list of places to go we haven’t been yet. We research weather for that time of year, nearby attractions, proximity of a Starbucks, etc. We’ve never had a problem on agreeing so far. But we do try to make sure NO relatives are nearby and if they are we don’t mention it to them.
We take turns. One picks and chooses, the other arranges the schedule, tickets, etc.
We usually decide together. In the summer we always visit his family in Belfast, so our vacations are planned around that. He’s better traveled than I am, so I usually let him make suggestions.
I have a live-in boyfriend of 2ish years, no kids. We both start talking about taking a vacation and throw around a few ideas, then settle on a location we both want. Last year was Ireland, the year before France. We’d both been to Ireland before, but France was new.
Once we decide that, I start looking online for hotels, areas to stay in, what to do, where to go, etc. I pick hotels based on what we’re looking for (AC! Mini-fridge! Iron!) and price, then email a bunch to him with my best choice. He picks my choice, then I book the room. I forward all the interesting stuff to him and we talk about what we want to do. Buy whatever we can in advance, get local currency, hop a plane and enjoy our trip. When we’re back home, we look at what we’ve spent (mainly use my credit card cause I like the points) and divy it up 50/50 minus stuff that’s exclusively his/mine.
I love the planning, the researching and all the little details. He’s very easy-going about the whole thing.
This is us, as well.
I’m shocked that I’m posting here before Dangerosa.
We have two kids, vacations are usually family affairs. We try to do one big trip per year, and a shorter get-away in the cold months somewhere warm.
If the big trip is Disney (which it is roughly every other year), we can do that one with existing templates, with a couple of family discussions about which restaurants we want to eat at.
For new destinations, planning is usually her up-front, bouncing ideas off me and the kids. She then does a deeper dive for information, often including buying reference books for the possible destinations, and gives us some general guidelines.
We have a planning stage where we work out some kind of day-by-day event schedule, and then assign out tasks for booking specific stuff. For this year’s big trip, I booked plane tickets and our volcano tour. She booked the hotels. Our son researched surf lessons. Our daughter researched… something or other, I don’t remember right now.
Basically, she does most of the up-front work. When things are in motion, though, I take over - I’m the run-time operations guy, because I stay calm when things are not going according to plan.
Usually vacation planning is started by me, but starts out as a joint effort. We start with what kind of vacation (boating, camping, sightseeing, relatives, etc.) and once that’s settled we start narrowing down the destinations and times.
The destination is always a trade-off between travel time and “there” time. We both loath public transportation, so we almost always fly ourselves, or drive. This means we have to account for more travel time than most families, but that’s our preference. Most driving trips are in our RV, which is a little slower than a car.
After times and destinations, the details are completely up to me.
If a road trip, I select interim destinations and figure roughly how much time I’m willing to spend behind the wheel each day. I prefer moving almost daily, while my wife prefers to spend several days at each stop. We usually compromise with trips of 4-5 days meandering to a main destination, and spend a week there. Some discussion of routes takes place if someone really wants to see something along the way, but I have the majority vote since I do all the driving (she doesn’t like pulling the trailer).
If it’s a boating vacation we usually spend only one day on the road, just to get to a pretty lake. Dealing with the boat at a hotel parking lot is more trouble than it’s worth so I try to limit us to a one day journey. I end up researching all the lakes/parks within a 500 mile radius and the family sort of votes on the finalists. Sometimes we pull the boat along with the camper and stay in a park, sometimes we rent a cabin.
If we take to the air, we’re usually constrained by range and weather. I split long trips into two days sometimes, but this is rare. For example, our trip to the Keys needed about 8 hours each way, so we stopped enroute and spent the night. I end up making these decisions based on range, etc. Small planes are fun, but I reach my dailly limit after 4 or 5 hours.
Looking back on this, I guess I could summarize by saying that choosing the destination and type of trip is a group effort, but I do all the planning from there. She just rides along and either sleeps or reads.