just

I have tickets to Europe this Fall (Oct). How far in advance do you all start planning and reserving hotels, etc.

jb

I like to start pricing at least 5 months ahead of time and when I feel I have the best deal - and exactly what I want I book - no matter how far in advance. I am a little psychotic about my travel planning - but it has always turned out good. Better lots of info and knowledge goes into planning than just getting something just OK because you didn't do research.

This website is very good in providing opinions - but check out hotel web sites, restaurant reviews, etc. Then you will have the best vacation possible!

Good luck!

Rex

I think that it depends on this:

multiply the number of people traveling by the number of weeks, by the number of destinations.

1 person for 1 week (or less) to one destination: 1-2 weeks in advance might suffice.

2 persons for 2 weeks for 3 destinations: 6 weeks is a reasonable (minimum?) timeframe

10 persons for 3 weeks for 6 destinations? 6 months is closer to the right lead time.

I have had a broad cross-experience with long and short lead times planning. Depending on where your trip fits in this matrix, the right answer might be yesterday, today or tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Rex

x

If you already have your air tickets, you might as well start reserving your hotels in order to get the pick of the litter.
I tend to be a last minute traveller, air tickets and all. I dont think I could stand the anticipation of a trip 5 months in advance!!! : )

Harzer

My planning is in three phases: two months ahead I buy the airline tickets and book the car; one month ahead I work out a rough itinerary; two weeks ahead I organise accommodation on the Internet for a couple of focal points of my trip, namely the first and last stopovers. For the rest I gather useful information, but leave the actual details to chance.

I should add that I always travel in the shoulder season, and my average stay in any location is six to ten days.
So in a seven-week vacation I might have
only five or six accommodations. I almost without exception stay in smaller towns and villages, and I do not use hotels, preferring b&b or apartment-style living.

Harzer

Dale

As for me, I start planning my next vacation immediately after my return home to help with the post-vacation blues. Since I try to take a trip every 12-18 months, that means lots of time for planning. I usually start with a few destinations and itineraries in mind and then do some very general research (books, tourism literature, videos, and this forum). Then about three months before I want to go away, I’ll assess my family, work and financial situation and then pick one of the itineraries. Once I’ve bought my tickets, then I’ll zero in on some accommodation, or at least have a pretty good idea about where I want to stay. I’ll usually book a hotel/cottage for the place where I’m staying the longest, but then leave other places until about 2 weeks before departure to allow for some flexibility. Sometimes, when I’m traveling on my own, I won’t have every night booked so I can have the thrill of finding that perfect place by just stopping in at the local tourism centre.

It’s not that I purposely sat down and wrote out this schedule – things just kind of worked out that way since I caught the travelling bug in 1977. Some of my fellow travelling friends don’t believe in planning at all, and just get on the plane and go. I’m sure that has its pluses, but for me, there is nothing like the planning and anticipation. It’s what makes my life a little sweeter. Right now I’m in phase one – still getting over the post-vacation blues, but doing some research to see what looks interesting for next time. This is a nice thread; I would love to hear how other people either plan or don’t plan their trips.

Have a lovely evening everyone,
Dale

xxx

If you have your tickets why are you waiting to find a hotel? I would start looking now that way you have more options, I hate to leave anything last minute.

gary

I've learned through experience. The more popular the destination, the more I'm inclined to book everything ahead. I just purchased tickets for San Francisco to Milan for October flight dates. (5 months away!) One advantage of booking flights early (at least in this case) is that I was able to save several hundred dollars per ticket. $475 round trip instead of over $850. Some of savings may have something to do with waiting a little past peak travel times to go. But on the other hand, it may must be luck and good timing! It definitely helps to "shop" on the internet prior to purchase. Get a sense of the going rates.

With regard to accomodations, I also have learned to book ahead. I've spent a lot of time at tourist offices in a brand new city "searching" for the right priced accomodation. It can be very frustating, tiring and most importantly, time consuming. If you're more relaxed about it, fine, I'd just rather know I have a place to stay when I get there and have the extra time to see everything. I've had some great spontaneous discoveries by being more cavalier but I think as I've gotten older I like to search out the inexpensive, popular places and book ahead. The more money you have to spend, the less of an issue timing is.

Bob Brown

My planning process starts immediately after I decided if I am going to Europe in the coming year. I have some definite preferences where I stay and when I go. I much prefer early September because the tourist surge has abated somewhat, and hopefully the weather will still be decent.

The amount of lead time I give to reserving accommodations depends on where I am going, and when I will be there.

This year, I will be in Paris in early September. The better hotels tend to book quickly in September, so I reserved my room in March. I checked the other day for a friend, and the hotel I like is already booked for the time I will be there, so I was glad I had my reservation secured with my credit card.

I also reserved an apartment in Switzerland at the same time, mid March. The apartment building I like is popular, and, as of now, it is fully booked for the period of time I will be there.

Munich in Oktoberfest is a major challenge. I reserved in March, and had to take what I could get at my hotel of choice, which is not in the cental city.

Salzburg is another city that can be full of tourists in September. Last year I stayed at the Sallerhof in the suburb of Grödig. The place was booked solid for early September by August.

Also in Salzburg, the Gasthotel zur goldenen Ente, which is in the old town on Goldgasse, usually books well in advance, particularly after Rick Steves added it to his book.

Vienna in September is a little looser. I did not book there until about 4 weeks before I left home for Europe.

Airfare is another story. I usually keep an eye on prices in advance of going and when I see good prices I order the tickets. This year was different, however, because I used frequent flier miles. One year, I made the purchase in February for September because I knew I wanted to go and I did not think I could beat the price.

This year was a little different because I wanted to use frequent flier miles to upgrade to business class. Only a limited number of seats are released for that purpose, so if I wanted my choice of dates I had to move fairly early in the planning process.

Usually the last thing I reserve is my rental car. That can be done within a month of arrival, except in Munich during Oktoberfest.

I hope these ideas help. I think the main point is that you need to know the demand conditions at your prime destinations, and decide if you want to take second choices, or if you want to reserve a room at your first choice accommodations. I know in Munich I have a favorite hotel, and a favorite room in that hotel. Although I am not sure if I moved soon enough to get my favorite room, I at least have a place to spend the night before I fly home.

carol

about 6 weeks, unless it's a last-minute trip

Julie

We have a list of possible destinations and itineraries always available to start from. Each year as we get started planning, we select a specific destination and start plotting a general itinerary around it. Although we are retired, we usually travel with another couple who still work. We most enjoy travel in Sept.Oct. and work around their work schedule to select the flight dates in those months. Since we try to fly frequent flyer business class and those tickets get gobbled up quickly, we book way ahead--sometimes as much as 7 or 8 months--for the tickets. We then start working on route with yet greater specificity and identify number of nights at each planned stop sort of simultaneous with a review of hotels only the planned route. There follows actual selection of hotels (typically a first, second and third choice) and booking--by then about 5-6 months out. From there I begin plotting daily itineraries and restaurant selections and booking them. Right now I'm working on that phase for our 2002 Sept. Oct. trip. Then the only thing left is the building anticipation. For trips of multiple destinations, half the fun is in the planning and anticipation.

For short stays of a week or so, usually in a single destination, we just wait for flight deals and book hotels asap after we book our flight.
If the destination has high foodie content, the restaurant booking phase begins immediately.

Patrick

Well on June 4 I will need to call American Airlines and set my first flight for next summer's trip on May 1 -- since I am using FF miles and want to be sure of getting the flight I want. I have already started mapping out an itinerary for next summer. Actually I will probably start reserving hotels in October for next May to August. I did the same for this summer's trip, and by November I couldn't get a couple of the hotels I wanted for this August -- both in Sardinia and in the Dolomites, already booked.

M & J

I love the planning. Right now, I am gathering information about destinations in Spain, Turkey and Chile.
So, months ahead of time I have started files with ideas and suggestions from this board and others. We hope to take our nephews (ages 15 and 21) with us for their first trip out of the USA. Unfortunately, we both work and my micro-managing supervisor will only consider a 30 day notice. But soon there will be retirement! My darling wife, on the other hand, will look at the mounds of material I have gathered and say "that is the place" and I will redoubled my searching, which I greatly enjoy.

linda

I agree, the fun is in the planning. I think it's a personality issue though - some people want to be spontaneous, but I relax and enjoy it more if things are planned. We are still free to deviate from the scheduls...

Plus, if you spend time learning about what you will be seeing it is so much more enjoyable. Thanks to the friendly folks on this board, we are all booked for Scala Reale and Scavi tours in Rome in July. Things like that definitely need pre-planning.

Matt

If you're cashing in frequent flyer miles, book the flight(s) as soon as you can. Because I redeemed my miles for a business class seat on a June flight, I literally called up Delta the first day the seat was in the computer -- 11 months in advance. This means that I had to have at least a rough idea of where I wanted to go, just so that I could figure out where I needed to fly into and out of.

I'm staying in an apartment for a portion of the trip, so those reservations were made in January. Hotels in high-demand locations, like Italy's Cinque Terre, were next on the priority list, and I had all of my hotels booked by mid-March. Some of my first-choice hotels were already booked.

Probably if you're staying in some place way way way way off the beaten tourist and/or business/convention path, you can make reservations much later. But if you're staying in a touristy area or in a city with lots of conventions (such as Bologna or Turin, neither of which is a major tourist center), the better.

The short answer is that anything that will require significant coordination or lead time, like redeeming frequent flyer miles or staying in a villa, book it as soon as you can.

annv

Usually I start palnning in 5 mnth, but this time a had to sudden change of plans, so I put my vacation together in 5 weeks before. Admitted it was relatively simple - one city only and I probably could fond better airfare, if I couple month earlier.

wes fowler

Probably not the kind of answer you're looking for, but most of my European travel planning begins two years before the travel. I've got an extensive "wish list" of places I'd like to visit or revisit. The first and major step in culling and whittling down the list to the final destination is to determine "Why there?". Doing so invariably leads to extensive research into the history, culture, arts and customs. Time consuming, yes, but the research makes the trip doubly rewarding and meaningful, both educating and entertaining. While for me determining where to travel and why dictates and consumes endless hours of research, the logistics of travel take little time to develop. I don't plan every minute of every day and where and when to spend every night when traveling and am more than satisfied if I accomplish only half of what I plan.

I'm far more interested in learning of the historic, cultural or artistic signifigance of a place the place I've chosen to visit than whether its hotel has heated towel racks or is immediately adjacent to a Metro stop.

Bob C

Trip to France in 2003 has been planned and a trip to Ireland for 2004 has been planned. Will book hotels 6 to 8 months in advance. For Paris 8 months. At present I'm getting ideas together for Italy in 2005. Normal is to start planning the next trip on the plane home from the current trip.

xxx

As soon as we decide where we would like to travel. We are like you. We booked our air tickets in March for an October trip to Paris. The hotels followed after researching which ones fit our needs. But they're reserved already.

Ty

For international: using FF miles, I follow the 330-day rule, and book at first opportunity. I get seats then too.
I use 330 for domestic too, i.e., as soon as I decide on dates, I call the airlines!!! Regardelss of whether I'm using miles or dollars. And get the seats.

If I am serious about going, I NEVER procrastinate.

Next, hotel: reserve immediately after air ... same day.

Then I start with sites and restaurants, plus transport to and from.

And I start on language, at least 6 months before leaving.

Packing list at least one month in advance.