So you want to travel with friends? Taking a holiday with your best buddies may seem like a good idea, but the reality is not always as good. Selecting which friends would make great travel companions is important to ensuring the success of your trip.
When choosing friends to travel with, factors such as everyone’s budgets and expectations for the trip need to be considered. Feeling like you could survive 24-hours a day, seven days a week with these people is another important consideration. When you’ve all settled on each other, a little planning will go a long way.
Here are some tips on planning a holiday with friends that will make the trip memorable, in the best way possible.
1. Figure out the money stuff first
Before anyone books anything, decide who will pay for what and how it will be tracked. Who will book the flights, hotels, tours? Will you each pay for something and call it even, or will you tally up the whole and split it between everyone? It’s obvious why this is important for costly items, but it’s also crucial to ensure everyone’s day-to-day satisfaction. This decision is likely to dictate how money is spent on the trip overall. When it comes to lunches at restaurants, entry to tourist sites, metro tickets and the many other daily costs of travelling, will you shout each other or pay for yourselves? Choosing to divide the cost of meals evenly might seem reasonable – unless one person is choosing salads and forgoing alcoholic beverages. In this case, it may be fair to ensure sure that everyone feels happy with the payment situation.
2. Schedule in some space
So, you’ve decided you could survive 24-hours a day, seven days a week with your dear friends. But as the saying goes, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Why place extra strain on being together all the time than you have to? Make sure to schedule time to be alone; have a snooze in the hotel, read a book in the park, visit a gallery alone or enjoy a nice lunch by the river. If you’re travelling in a group of three or more, you probably won’t all feel like seeing the same things at the same time, so consider splitting into pairs. Divide and conquer.
3. Make new friends too
You love your friends. You’ve been friends for decades; seen each other through all the good times and the bad times. But travelling offers a great opportunity to connect with new people and make new friends. Perhaps you bump into someone and share an interesting conversation over your continental breakfast. Feel free to invite them along to join your group for the day’s activity – but make sure your friends are happy with this first. Jealousy might seem petty but it can be hard going for the other person/people. Vice versa, if your friend gets excited about spending time with someone else, don’t let it get you down. Instead, talk calmly with your friend and ask whether they’d like some alone time with this new person or whether there are any issues. Chances are your friend would gladly spend time with both you and their new friend.
Have you travelled with friends? What other advice would you suggest?
Related articles:
How to travel as a couple
How to find a travel companion
Travel SOS: should I travel alone?
