How do you "organize" your trip ideas?
 

How do you organize the hotels, sites, interesting info that you find on a place, even when you are not (yet) planning to visit there? How do you divide the info that you collect? How do you search/find it when the time has come to look at it again? Do you cull anything after a certain number of years has passed?

I collect articles etc I see on the internet and paste the parts I care about into Notes in Outlook. I label the title with Country (Croatia) or if there are many sections then Country: section (e.g. USA: Hawaii or France: Paris). I can search by "Hawaii", "Croatia" or (because it's Outlook) something inside the note, like D'Orsay. I separate the sections within a note into RESTAURANTS, HOTELS, SIGHTS, CULTURE TIPS, SHOPPING.

I also collect travel magazines that list the places mentioned in the spine. I actually do go back and read those sometimes but if it's been too many years, then I toss it. Occasionally, I have an article that I file. Sadly, the articles rarely get seen again.

I'm trying to decide if I want to keep this system (which feels all over the place) or move to something else. So...what do you do?

My wife wants to go to Ireland this time, as she is of Irish background.

Once a country(ies) is chosen, I will give a general outline of where I might want to stay and then review it. Depending on airline schedules (I'm using FF miles), I will rearrange the schedule.

From there, I review my plans several times, before I even think about booking places to stay, etc...which I'm doing right now.

Once the places to stay have been confirmed, I will fill in the activities for those days at a particular location. I won't necessarily do them in exact order, but I have an idea.

After that, it's iteration after iteration, to make sure I haven't forgotten something.

I leave dining options to when I get to my destination. Only in a rare occasion will I book ahead, but only if it's a special place, such as Arzak in San Sebastian, a few years ago, or our wedding anniversary in Paris.

Once there, I play things by ear, by weather and what is open.

Every night, while at the destination, I will kind of map out the next day's adventures.

It works for me.

I don't do anything like that. I hate clutter. When in the past I've kept travel magazines, clipped articles, etc. I never once used them. So I stopped. Actually I do have one file drawer with old stuff, this reminds me to go clean it out -lol!!

When I want to go somewhere, I simply plan that trip using online forums and travel websites, and maybe a guidebook. And go. I'm not big on itineraries. I only need a plane ticket and hotel reservation(s).

I am pretty much with suze on this. I don't collect a lot of travel info for places for which I am not in the active trip planning stage. I might bookmark a site in Favorites or something though.

I do have a portable drive that use to collect stuff when I am planning a trip. I put all our confirmations in there, have a spreadsheet with our itinerary, and that sort of thing.

I don't really collect things for possible upcoming trips though. I used to save travel magazines, but gave that up.

No suggestions, but love your screen name.
A teaching friend and I go into hysterics everytime we watch the honey badger video. (Without the students being around of course!)

I'm like suze about collecting information when there's no trip on the horizon.

OTOH, I love a detailed itinerary.

I organize my internet "Favorites" by country, then break that down into the cities or areas I'm traveling to. Everytime I find a hotel, restaurant, map, etc., that I might be interested in, I save the website under the appropriate bookmark. Then I can refer back to my saved websites as I build my itinerary.

I only take German Life magazine so I will go back thru my back issues to see if there is anything pertinent to my planned itinerary.

hmmm - I dont have a planned itinerary even with all the saving of materials. I just use them as ideas I might want to see/do. Some need reservations, some might not. For instance, I have an article that is for different udon shops in Japan. I probably won't see all of them but if I happen to find myself in one of those spots and feel like eating udon, then I know where to go.

I dont know if I could lose all those small tidbits about places. I know I won't find them just by searching the internet at the time I'm trip planning. Scanning into my computer seems like a waste too. Still hoping that there are some planners/savers out there who will share their organization.

bettyk - have you found that the bookmarks break over time?


nanabee - the moniker has been mine for quite some time, way prior to the popular video and Glee associations. Actually, it is a pet name that my husband gave me...to, shall we say, "gently" let me know when I was being cranky (usually when hungry). He would say "I think the badger might need feeding..." or something along those lines. It would be just enough to make me laugh and realize that I was being b*tchy. In a lot of ways it suits me: I'm small but tenacious and very determined when I want to be.

<<I have an article that is for different udon shops in Japan. I probably won't see all of them but if I happen to find myself in one of those spots and feel like eating udon, then I know where to go.>>

And I'd just stop into whatever udon shop was in front of me when I was hungry!

My life is much simpler as we don't give ANY thought to restaurants or shopping.
Hotels are chosen when the trip is being planned.

I do keep a small notebook by the computer and make a note when I come across info like the cost/terms of a museum pass or transit pass. Or how far ahead to book train tickets.

It would seem exhausting to me to research that many future trips, but it sounds like you like doing it. Maybe just do away with dated articles and keep websites that will always have current info?

Well I confess I'm a paper person. So I have file folders that are labeled such as "South America" or "Europe" and I throw anything in there I think I might use in the future for countries we're interested in seeing. When a specific trip is being planned, I go to the folder and see if there is anything there that might apply. They are actually not that thick

Once I start booking an actual trip, I have a folder in my e-mail that I move all confirmations into and then I have an itinerary. I keep those for a while so that I can offer referrals to people on forums for places we've stayed or private guides we have used. After a couple of years I delete them as I have found that things get pretty dated at that point.

Works for me

patandhank - This sounds quite like me. My paper files are also slim.

Interesting that no one has digitized or scanned (or at least no one that has commented yet. lol) their paper articles. That surprises me.

Print articles are most often very soon out of date. That's why I don't bother to save travel magazine articles in print in the first place and certainly wouldn't bother to scan them.

Much of the same information in printed articles can be found online. Sometimes I will copy and paste interesting info such as sites, restaurants, etc., into an ongoing Word document that I have labeled Scotland or Edinburgh, etc. When considering where to go, I can refer back to these documents as well as other websites I have bookmarked.

I'm a very organize person, when it comes to traveling I want everything to be in place and in order. So I do a thorough research about the country/place that I'll be visiting by reading from the web about different attractions, I also read frequent travelers interview from Travel Explosion, so I can have a first hand idea on what to expect from the place from a first hand experienced by travelers. I also joined different traveling websites, forums and blogs to widen my resources.

Evernote sounds like the best thing for you to organize all your trip ideas.

It's available across multiple devices.
You can clip stuff from your browser, or snap pics of the mag articles you've seen.

If you get the Pro version, it will detect the words on the pics so it's easily searchable for you in the future.

I plan the upcoming trip in a variety of ways... I have internet favorites (sorted into a folder for each trip), have a folder in the "My Documents" folder for all of the invoices, confirmations, etc and sometimes add an excel spreadsheet if I'm going to be detailed. The trip to China had a spreadsheet with tabs for a packing list, translations, a very loose schedule (based on what days I was in each city, what days things were open and what places were close together), and a few others I think. I haven't done that since because I haven't needed/wanted such detail.

I don't get magazines so nothing to keep that way. I generally try to avoid looking at too much for future trips because then I'll start trying to figure out how to go before my budget will allow. :) If I start looking at photos for a 'future' trip then I get all antsy to go NOW.

The main decision for where we go is made by the art and architecture. After that I start creating a folder for that place in my travel folder and we get out my favorite part; the maps.

It's cut and paste for the itinerary and museum times.
Hotels are easy, our needs are simple. Our food is whatever looks good at the time.

Then it's time to shop for the basics, hotels, air and ground transpo.

It's off to the library to brush up on the langauge as soon as we pick the country.

I don't start planning until I know we are definitely going somewhere. Once I know where we are going I pick a hotel first and then I will figure out the activities we want to do when we are away.

By the time the trip has come around I have an itinerary for each day just because I need a PLAN. I have learned over the years that we do not have to stick to the plan, but I do have one.

I choose restaurants for each day because I'm a wanna be foodie and I check Food Network and Travel channel for interesting restaurants in the area. Then I will print information and menus for each restaurant we are going to.

I print an overview and pertinent information about each attraction we plan on going to as well.

I put all of this in a binder and we have both a reference guide for our trip and a book I keep to remember the trip. I travel with my parents quite a bit and if they are going, they get their own book. We all enjoying reading it to prepare for our trip and we keep them as a memento. This system works well for me.

In reading this and thinking about how I've been copying bits and pieces of threads to help in planning our upcoming trip to London and Paris, I realize I have not been using the one tool I have come to love over the last year at work- Microsofts OneNote. I love being able to create different electronic notebooks for each of my projects organizing each of those into sections and pages.

For travel, I could see doing an electronic notebook for each destination I come across that I might be interested in with sections for things like accommodations, dining things to do, etc. For including printed articles, it would be a matter of scanning and then 'printing' to one note. Dang, now I need to go redo my notes!