Co-Author: Kankana Debnath
Planning for Foreign Trips, at times, can be daunting given that you would need to arrange for Flight bookings, Hotels, Visas and Forex etc.
If you spend the next few minutes on this article, it would help you to plan your travel without asking for help from a Travel Agent.
Advantages for planning your trip on your own:
1. Greater Control of your itinerary – You can plan your trip according to your needs. If you book a trip from a Travel Agent, you would need to stick to their plan.
2. Budgets – You would be able to manage your finances much better and can plan your trip according to your needs.
3. Eliminate unwanted add-ons – Often Travel agents add unnecessary add-ons to the trips to add on to their revenue. This might be a visit to a store of their choice or an unwanted paid activity. If you plan to skip that activity, you will end up wasting your time because it’s a part of the schedule.
Now that we have established the advantages of the planning a trip on your own, let’s show you how to plan your trip just by using the web.
Visa:
Before you plan for the Trip you would need to check for the Visa Requirements. Just search in Google and you can check on the Immigration Website for the Travelling Country. Some Visa’s take longer to process, so you would need to account for that. A lot of Countries offer e-Visa or Visa on Arrival. These are relatively easier to obtain and take much shorter time to process. A lot of countries offer Visa Free Travel for tourists and in those cases, you don’t need to worry for Visas. Countries like Seychelles, Bali in Indonesia offer Visa Free Travel for tourists of most of the countries.
Flights:
Cost or Air Tickets is one of the most important components of the trip and you would need to plan this part well. Google offers terrific options of getting flight information. Below is a step by step process for choosing Flights between Bangalore and New York:
First, you need to go to Google and Type the origin and destination and then select Flights.
On Clicking Flights, you will get plenty of options to choose from to customize the options according to your needs:
Normally, you will select Round Trip, number of Passengers, Economy or Business Class, the dates of the Travel. You also have the option to choose the number of bags you are carrying, number of Stop Overs you want etc. Connecting Airports is an interesting option for long Distance travels. You can choose to stop over at a place in between and spend a couple of days there. You might need to get a visa for the Stop Over Location, but you get to save of the flight tickets, if you had traveled to this location separately.
One important thing to note is when you Click in the Dates, it gives the prices of all the adjacent dates, thus you can change your dates for your travel if you are getting a better deal.
The reason I prefer Google over Travel Agents Sites or Sites of the Airline Companies is that it offers much wider options. Google doesn’t book the tickets, so it will ultimately, take you to a Merchant Site of an Airline or a Travel Agent, but you get to select the most suitable flight from google.
Please Note: The prices shown here are in Indian Rupees. It will show you in the Currency of the Country from where you are logging in. Once you have selected the Flights, you will be taken the Merchant Site where you can complete the transaction. Normally payments are made in Credit Cards, but Debit Cards are also allowed in many places. You would need to check that based on your Country and Site from where you are making the Payment.
Itinerary:
You have got your Visa and planned for your Flights. I would suggest you spend some time on deciding on your itinerary before booking your Hotels. If you are travelling to foreign country, most of the times, you would love to stay in more than one places. So, you can plan your dates according to your itinerary and then book the hotels. TripAdvisor is terrific place to plan your Itinerary and choosing is pretty simple. Just Select your City to travel in “Where to” Button given below:
Since, in this example, we are going to New York, I have selected New York City and I get the below options:
All the options are useful, but, since, we are planning the itinerary at this point of time, let’s focus on “Things to do”:
The “Things to Do” page gives you all the options that you can do in that city. You can use this page to decide on the things that you want to do and the amount of time you are going to spend on them. Do the same thing for the other places that you are planning to visit. Once, you are done and can finalize the itinerary.
Hotels:
Your Visa is Done and have decided on your Flight. You have also decided on the number of days that you are going to spend in each of the places. Now, you need to select to the hotels. Again, TripAdvisor is a good place to decide on your hotels.
Similar to the Things to Do, as before, Click on Hotels now:
Use the various selections to narrow down your choice:
Try to find your Hotel in a Well Connected area so that you don’t spend too much money and time in Commuting to the places that you want to visit.
Forex:
There are plenty of Money Exchanges and you can choose any one you like. It might be that the Money Exchange in your Country do not have the Forex for the Country that you are visiting. In that case, you can convert your Currency to US Dollars. And when you reach your Destination, you can convert the US Dollars to the Currency of that Country. You can also Exchange the Currencies in the Airports, but the Charges are a lot higher.
Do remember to Keep the Receipt of the Forex Transactions and remember to keep it within the legal Limits.
If you have any question regarding FOREX or any other thing, you can always post them in the Forums in TripAdvisor.
Food:
I know you might have a lot of questions regarding Food in the country you are visiting, my experience is that it is not too much of a problem. You might need to be extra careful, though, if you are Vegetarian or a Vegan. I would suggest you to stick to the staples and not experiment too much. You don’t want to suffer with Food Poisoning in your Travel. Most of the Tourist Places will have McDonalds, Subways etc. and that is a good option since the food is more standardized and it would be easier to manage.
Local Transport:
Check in the TripAdvisor or in Google. Normally Taxis are available everywhere, but if the city has Uber, that’s a cheaper and safer option. If you don’t have a data plan enabled in your place of travel, you would need to use the local WiFi from hotels and restaurants to book cabs.
Now, you are All Set to Go. Bon Voyage!
