*Thank you Vrbo for sponsoring this post. Regardless all thoughts and opinions are my own and I only recommend brands I truly love.
One of my biggest passions in life is traveling, despite the fact the frequency of our trips have been cut down with every new kid we add. It’s one of those things I think about constantly. At any given moment I’m either obsessing about planning our next family trip, or obsessing over figuring out my kids activity schedule. That’s just how my brain works. At the current moment I have about 10 tabs on my internet browser dedicated to each of these.
My husband and I have always differed on our method of planning trips, and naturally I think my way wins. I love planning out every detail of our trips. I like to start well in advance so I can make sure we plan to have the time off and the dates set in stone. This also ensures we have enough time where we are to fit in the stuff we want to do. Tom would rather just figure out a last minute weekend he can take off work, and go to a destination with no plans at all and just figure it out when we get there. His way always ends up with lots of what I consider wasted time and looking at each other saying “what do you want to do today?”.
So here’s how I break it down planning our trips:
1 – Pick the perfect place to stay.
This part is crucial and at least for me takes a significant amount of time. I want to consider all the different places we can stay, compare their different features, reviews, prices, and know that we are making a well informed decision to stay at the best place we possibly can for our trip. Because of the size of our growing family, we also have to find places that can comfortably fit all of us with at least a room for just Millie to sleep in so that she will actually sleep. Vrbo (now pronounced “VER-boh”) is hands down the best way to go for planning our trips because of these reasons. There are plenty of 2 bedroom + places on it that will fit our family, that are great deals, and the Vrbo app makes it so easy to plan and book our family vacations!
Currently I’m planning a trip to Panama City Beach for our family and love that I can use Vrbo to easily filter places to stay by the bedrooms, and then go through and add my favorites to a Trip Board. You can see mine for our upcoming trip to PCB here! I carefully pick the ones that are in our price range and meet our needs and look like what we are looking for in the pictures. I can even use the Bang for your Buck index which identifies the most cost-effective destinations. I also love that I can read all the reviews to pick out our top contenders, and then add them to my board to easily compare when making my final decision. If you are planning a trip with friends or family it’s super easy to share a link to your board so that they can give their input too – they can even vote, comment, and ultimately choose the ideal place to stay together. And with the VRBO app users can stay up to date on Trip Board activity in real time!
2 – Research and Make an Itinerary.
I like to have our different activities planned and booked well in advance so there’s no chance of anything selling out. I go through blog posts, travel websites, and ask friends for advice on what the best activities for families at whatever destination we are going to and then plan out a schedule for every day of our trip. I do intentionally leave some downtime and try to be flexible for weather and etc. if some of these need to be changed around.
3 – Budget.
If you keep up with my Instagram stories you know how into budgeting I’ve gotten. I love planning trips in advance because it gives us the chance to budget for them and then pay cash for everything. We figure out how much we need and how much we need to set aside each month to have it prepared. I also go to great lengths to find good deals, coupons, and specials for the places we are going.
Hopefully this inspires one of you to get a start on planning your next trip because it’s the best way to make family memories that will last forever! Make sure you check out Vrbo when you do. Where’s your next trip and your best planing tip? Let me know below!
Leave a Reply