Flexibility is my travel superpower. What's yours?
Take time to understand what would make travel the most enjoyable for you
Dear reader,
I’m planning ahead for a work trip in April at the same time that I’m getting ready for a solo weekend getaway followed shortly after by a gaming trip with friends. And boy oh boy does each trip have a different personality… and guess which trip is the easiest for me to prepare for.
(It’s the solo trip.)
The work trip is filled with logistics for a tradeshow my team is attending. I need to make sure everyone arrives and departs on the correct days and books into hotels within our company budget and fits into the show staffing schedule. Coordinating tradeshows has been part of my job in marketing for years, and while I’m used to all of this and good at coordinating travel, dealing with logistics is not my favorite part of travel. The gaming trip has a similar personality: who's arriving which day, and who wants to play what game and when?
It’s in stark contrast, in fact, to how I travel when I’m on my own time and dime. Flight and hotel - check. Everything else? Typically happy to wing it.
I find it to be more comfortable to roll with the punches than to overprepare in advance. And when I say overprepare, I recognize that this might be what other people just call preparing.
I’ve even been able to manage when that doesn’t fall into place, dealing with day-of flight cancellations and showing up to a cancelled hotel reservation. When I arrived in Barcelona only to find out that my credit card authorization declined and therefore my hotel reservation was cancelled, I knew there were options, including trying to leverage my hotel elite status to book a last-minute room at the prepay rate or finding a hotel with the same chain in a different neighborhood - or, as it turned out, being patient and waiting for another guest to cancel last-minute and free up a room.
Stressful? Sure. But also a lesson learned in patience and flexibility.
In the years since, I’ve come to see this flexibility as a superpower that makes travel an enjoyable hobby. Things tend to work out while traveling and only become stressful when I go in with too many expectations that have the possibility to go awry.
It’s about relinquishing some control and understanding that travel is about new experiences; trying to overengineer the experience is falsifying it. Even returning to the same place or a place you used to call home does not recreate an experience.
In a recent newsletter about traveling with a friend for the first time, I wrote about setting expectations with your travel companions and picking the right kind of trip for everyone involved.
For that trip, we agreed to take things day by day, except for one ticketed dinner that we needed to book in advance. And this is exactly how I travel, although the friend I was with acknowledged that this only worked for her because we were staying at a resort, but she would have planned ahead if we were doing a traditionally “tourist” vacation. (Which I anticipated, and is why I chose to ask a friend along to a resort and not, for example, on either of my trips to Paris last year.)
So I know that what works for me while traveling, won't work for everyone. And that's partly why I love being a source of information for friends and family (and others!) traveling to places I know, who want to make plans in advance. I also want to encourage people to travel how they want, and if that means booking a trip and departing the same day, or not deciding what to do until each morning, that's also okay!
Regardless, I would argue that stressing about your trip is the opposite of what most people want travel to be. Loosening up on the requirements for your trip will help.
So try one of my favorite “spontaneous strategies” on your next vacation:
If you’re unfamiliar with a city, take a bus tour or ride public transit around to get a feel for different parts of the city. Then, go back to your favorites on subsequent days of the trip.
Don’t make a reservation for dinner every night. Instead, find a neighborhood to browse or ask your hotel concierge for a recommendation. You can even do snacks/appetizers at one place and then move on for dinner and again for dessert.
Solo travelers, don’t pass on nightlife! Sit at the bar and chat with fellow travelers and the bartenders. Both neighborhood and touristy bars are equally fun for this!
What’s your travel superpower? Let us know in the comments.
P.S.: Did you know I am available to plan your next trip? I specialize in travel planning for busy young professionals. Learn more!