You’ve finally chosen where you’ll spend your next vacation, or perhaps just narrowed it down to a region. Now it’s time to plan what you’ll do there to make the most of your trip and avoid wasting time!
Indeed, planning ahead is always beneficial, especially for travelers who don’t have an endless amount of time 😉 In this article, we’ll share some tips that we put into practice before each trip to optimize our family road trips as much as possible. Let’s get started 👇
Where to go and what to do? Find inspiration on online booking sites
Some websites offering ticket purchases for tours or activities can guide you toward what there is to discover in the area. It can be a great source of inspiration to quickly see everything there is to do. Are you, for example, considering a more cultural visit? Checking out this page will give you ideas for monuments or museums to visit, and you just have to pick!
GetYourGuide and tiqets.com: leaders in activity booking
If you’re a travel enthusiast, these platforms should definitely be part of your toolkit! They make ticket booking incredibly easy for a wide range of cultural attractions and events. You can book tickets for museums, exhibitions, or even amusement parks, all from your couch or directly in the queue when it’s way too long—it’s a real time-saver! That’s what we did in Verona during our visit to the arena! The line was endless, so we bought our tickets on our phone and went straight into the “ticket holder” line!
They offer a super user-friendly interface where you can purchase your tickets in advance and receive them directly on your smartphone, allowing you to skip long queues at the entrance. No more stressing about paper tickets or hunting for a ticket office on-site! With detailed information on each attraction, they help you plan your days, and as a bonus, their customer service is there to assist if needed.
The popularity of these services has skyrocketed in recent years. GetYourGuide, for example, now allows you to find activities in more than 11,000 cities. Since its inception, it has claimed to have sold over 150 million tickets!
Funbooker: the French alternative
Funbooker stands out with its specialization in local leisure activities in France, offering a particularly rich selection for family events and birthdays. Unlike GetYourGuide and Tiqets, which focus more on global cultural attractions and tourist visits, Funbooker emphasizes local experiences accessible to everyone. Additionally, Funbooker offers personalized services for businesses, especially for team-building activities and custom events.
Planning your itinerary
Once you’ve chosen your destination and planned the activities, it’s time to look into how to get there. Here’s a bit of insight into our process for planning the various routes of our trips.
Scout out the roads and area layout with Google Maps
When traveling in a converted vehicle, like a motorhome, it comes with a few constraints, particularly related to the vehicle’s size. We’ve actually already written an article on things to know when driving a motorhome. Indeed, whether it’s for driving around or parking, we prefer to plan ahead so as not to waste time during the trip or when looking for parking! Yes, transporting your rolling home has its downsides 😅
For our part, we use the Google Maps app for pretty much everything: getting a quick overview of which roads to take, finding parking spots, and even locating places to sleep. We try to avoid small country roads as much as possible and prioritize smooth-running main roads.
The public transportation puzzle
The Google Maps app has a very handy feature: you can access all the public transportation schedules for the city. We’ve tried out apps developed by cities, like the one for Paris, for instance, but once again, Google’s app stands out with its simplicity and the ability to mix different modes of transportation like bus, train, and metro… it’s impossible to get “stuck”.
Finding places to park and sleep in a motorhome with Park4night
Park4night is an app that lists spots where you can park and sleep nearby (or along your route with the premium version). We’ve already written a detailed article about it, and it’s still our favorite app to use today. Its numerous reviews and user feedback provide up-to-date information on the stopover points we use.
Combining Google Maps for the Route and Park4night for Overnight Stops: The Perfect Duo for an Efficient and Optimized Itinerary!
Using new tools: ask an AI assistant
ChatGPT recommends
We use ChatGPT very often! It can plan a whole trip for you if you provide your preferences, interests, and budget… It’s up to you to mix its ideas with your own, but it often suggests hidden gems that you might not have thought of!
We also use it abroad to get information in our language about what we’re visiting, because if you follow us on YouTube, you’re already familiar with our wonderful level of English 🤣
Perplexity generates a map for you!
Continuing with AI tools, Perplexity.ai goes even further than what ChatGPT offers: it places points of interest directly on a map. It’s a convenient way to quickly locate them and get an idea of the best route to take.
A flawless organization
Create your departure checklist
Planning a trip that lasts several days or even weeks means remembering a multitude of things to prepare. So even if you’re not forgetful, it’s hard not to miss something. On our end, we use checklists to make sure we don’t forget anything! Usually, you only need a single list that you can refer to before each departure.
Planning and anticipating expenses
A road trip spanning several weeks with numerous visits comes at a cost, especially for a family. Here are our tips for managing your road trip budget effectively:
- As with many things, booking well in advance, over several weeks or even months, can save you a lot! This is particularly true for many campgrounds, which often increase their rates as school holiday dates approach. Booking these well in advance can save you up to 20%. The same goes for ferries!
- Planning ahead will give you time to look for discount codes online for booking your visits. Many tourist sites offer promotional deals throughout the year, so keep an eye out! This is true for places like the Châteaux of the Loire, the Zoo of Beauval…
- Spread out your expenses: Generally, we start planning our road trip several months in advance, which allows us to spread out our expenses by booking activities little by little each month. This not only helps to get better rates but also prevents a large cash outflow in the month of your road trip.
We hope these few tips will help you plan your trip! If you have other tips, feel free to share them with us in the comments!
