14 Apr 2014

Where am I heading to next: Tips on Trip Planning within a group of people



Whoa after three months of intense planning and finalizing ALL our flight and accomodation details, everything all seems so surreal that I'm really going to be on a plane without any parental/teacher supervision to South Korea with my junior Min and her classmate Liying! I'm immensely nervous yet so excited to seeing how this 2 weeks ++ trip will turn out to be as we spent so long planning the itinerary and sourcing for accomodation. Min painstakingly monitored the air ticket prices almost every single day and we. finally. got. SQ. seats. today. at. a. whopping. price. AT LESS THAN SGD700.

Like wow. I didn't even get a chance to pray about this and such a deal just landed right in front of us. How God provides ^^

Hence with me in a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally good mood, let me share some tips on how to facilitate trip planning within a group of people!

1. Use Google Docs



Google Docs. Google Docs EVERY SINGLE THING. I swear Google Docs is the BEST INVENTION EVER like it's just the best. We have our itinerary, to-do list, shopping list, grocery list, budget, e.t.c all in ONE file, just that they are under different tabs, or sheets.
Any edits by anyone are seen live by others viewing the spreadsheet and you can even edit/comment on whatever that's written there.

How it helped us: All three of us are currently working part-time to earn our trip expenditure, hence we are only free on weekends to meet. Google Docs is really a great platform to help us consolidate our ideas, organize them properly and then formulate a final itinerary via the spreadsheets option! Now, we only have to keep our meet-ups once a month max to pass each other hard copies of important information or travel pamphlets for reference-use. Since we get most of our travel information online. we can easily leave comments to notify each other of new attractions or eating places that we can go to while we are there. Just copy and paste the name, address and phone number of the place and the rest of us can go Google it up!

2. Try renting an apartment instead of booking a hotel room



There's way more variety for breakfast than just the usual, sometimes even bad, hotel breakfast. Renting an apartment is sometimes, or most of the time more worth it than putting up at a hotel! My mum and I almost went to Seoul last year for the June holidays and booked a hotel. It costed two of us SGD900++ for a week alone, and that did not even cover breakfast. Whereas, the total cost for our accommodation this trip is SGD 573 for each person, and that is for more than two weeks of apartment-living in South Korea! $573 for two different loft apartments in South Korea for more than two weeks is already a really good deal. Mind you, the apartments that we booked are not at all shabby-looking. In fact, they are chic-looking loft apartments housed in new buildings! There's free wifi, washing machine, stove, kitchen utensils, two queen sized beds, tv, you name it they have it.

These apartments definitely did not drop down from the sky as we booked them through airbnb.com! The website has thousands, or maybe even millions of room/apartment/house listings from all over the world. Be it London, Paris, Seoul, even people in Singapore are renting out their spaces to tourists on airbnb. A tip while choosing the apartment is to firstly check out the reviews after reading the description that the host gave. If you are really interested in booking, contact the host via this built-in messaging system that airbnb provides! It's really convenient though. You do everything through airbnb, even the payment is processed through their system.

How it helped us: It helped us save hundreds of dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course I would definitely recommend this to my friends or readers who are intending to go on budget trips with their homiez ;)

3. Look out for Airline Sales



How it helped us: It helped us laugh at the price quotes from Scoot/Malaysian Airlines when the SQ tickets we purchased were even cheaper than their tickets. Ridiculous, isn't it?

MY FRIENDS THERE IS NO NEED TO TAKE BUDGET AIR ALL THE TIME WHEN YOU FLY! Because as proven, sometimes the more premium airlines might be even cheaper than flying budget. And really, budget ain't very budget as you still have to pay for extra check-in baggage, add-on meals, add-on drinks, add-on this, add-on that. After all the add-ons your ticket will cost twice as much as what you intended to pay.
It is always good to plan for your trips few months beforehand so that all of you can start looking out for airline sales and bite at the best chance for the best pricing ticket! Min used Skyscanner ($0 service fee) to monitor the ticket prices and we booked the tickets via SIA website so there's no shady website or middleman involved in this heavy transaction.

4. Split the work


You will go crazy having to juggle monitoring ticket prices, trip research, booking, itinerary planning, e.t.c all by yourself while holding a 9-6 job. Hence it is always good to have a To-do list to split the work out. Set deadlines and remember to complete the tasks before that day arrives! Min and I were the only ones going on this trip but she managed to rope in Li Ying few weeks ago so now there's three of us! We're all really enthusiastic and meticulous people thus making the whole process so much more smoother and efficient. I really thank God for both of them and my parents too, for agreeing to pay for our airfare and accommodation first before we reimburse them with our monthly salaries T.T (there goes our money)

5. Use NAVER maps if you are travelling to Korea, instead of Google Maps.
The greatest joy while planning this trip is 1. Knowing how to read Korean, 2. Using my abilities to search for directions on NAVER (even though it might take forever cos I take super long to read but still works)
NAVER maps is the best thing that happened to me. It will suggest routes, tell you specifically which bus to take and which train station you should alight. It even tells you the cab fare if you want to cab from place to place. Such a great buddy for my budgeting job, I'll strongly recommend people to use it especially if they are heading to Korea for a holiday. If I'm not wrong, they also provide Japan maps. But I did my Japan trip routings last year via Google maps and it was pretty okay, so well it's all up to you! But NAVER maps for Korea, wangjjang daebak.

Yup and that's about it. Always remember to have good communication within your trip buddies. Nothing can't be worked out with the willingness to listen and accommodate! Here's to an amazing trip wherever you guys plan to go.

xx,
Ming Rui L.

6 comments:

  1. Hi can you do a post about korea when you're back? :) would be really interesting to read! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. https://greenvisa.io Common travel woes like lost baggage, delays and cancellations are standard in trip travel insurance policies also.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Talking about tire edges, take a gander at your tire track before you start any trip. The correct profundity of tire track will keep you out and about in the downpour. You're searching for lopsided wear designs on either side. cheap hotels in Kansas city Missouri

    ReplyDelete
  4. In the event that you like trips to include devastation, you've gone to the ideal spot. travel box subscription

    ReplyDelete
  5. Instructive trips like these are done to assist understudies with learning their nations and different nations too. They could give better understanding as the understudies would have the option to make an association between a spot, time, or even individual in history and something that they have found in a field trip. hotelgods.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. You will have all you require to make your own extraordinary trip, yet you will keep your opportunity as well. Europa-Road túlméretes szállítás

    ReplyDelete

Leave a comment below!