Travel Planning
Planning travel can be overwhelming: whether it’s your first trip abroad or your tenth national park adventure. This hub brings together the best strategies, checklists, tools, and expert tips from Chasing ADVNTR to help you plan smarter, travel lighter, and make every trip unforgettable.
From big-picture planning steps to detailed resources on budgets, routes, packing, and more, this is your home base for travel planning success.
Before you start choosing flights or booking hotels, good travel planning starts with a clear process. These foundational articles walk you through the step-by-step methodology we use for every trip.
- How to Plan a Trip: The Exact 11 Steps We Use — step-by-step planning method from idea to packing.
- All the Resources we use to Plan Travel – updated often – these are some of the best tools for deals and incredible experiences.
Planning Tools & Resources
The right tools can shorten your planning time, reduce stress, and often save you money. These are the sites, apps, and travel resources we use again and again.
Here are some of our Favorite Tools for Booking our Travel:
- Hotels: Booking – This site is our go-to for hotels/apartments/etc. We’ve found some amazing options especially in Europe.
- Flights – Google Flights – I love using the ANYWHERE feature when I’m searching for a specific week so you can compare different locations
- Viator – this has lots of tour options often run by local guides.
- Discover Cars – You can use this site to search for multiple car rental companies
- Travel Insurance: We never travel without travel insurance, espcially outside of the country. If you get a travel credit card you may have some built in travel insurance, or if you can sometimes purchase insurance through individual suppliers. Otherwise we search for the best insurance using the site below: Visitors Coverage
Itinerary Planning Guides
Once you know where you want to go, it helps to organize your days with a thoughtful itinerary. These posts walk you through planning tools and templates that make building your own itinerary easier.
- 5 Easy Steps for Exactly How to Plan a Road Trip With Google Maps: how to build a route digitally.
- 12 Steps to Create the Perfect Plan for Road Trip Success (A Complete Guide): Put together a perfect itinerary with these guides!
- 9 Best Ways to Find Hiking Trails Near Me
Get more ideas for itineraries in the US and Around the World
Packing & Prep Guides
Packing well is part of travel success: it affects comfort, cost (no lug fees!), and the quality of your adventure.
- The Complete Road Trip Packing List for Families: comprehensive lists + PDFs you can print.
💰 6) Budgeting & Money Tips
Budgeting isn’t just about cost: it’s about choice. Knowing your budget lets you decide between experiences, season, and trip length.
- How to Budget Family Travel: Exactly How We Save Money, Plan Cheap Travel, and Make More Money for Amazing Vacations.
- Get my full course on Budgeting for Family Travel
Travel Planning for the Whole Family
Travel planning gets even more complicated when you are traveling as a family. This includes kids, aunts, parents, cousins, neices, etc. Below you can see some tools to plan trave as a family.
You can find more ideas for family traveling in my family travel page.
Planning Services
Want personalized help? Chasing ADVNTR offers travel planning services: from coaching and consulting to full trip planning and booking, so you spend less time stuck in tabs and more time exploring.
Learn more about our Travel Planning Services
Schedule a complimentary travel planning consultation, and Chasing ADVNTR Travel will get started planning your next big adventure – you can see our complete Travel Planning Packages and Learn about our Services. Want to learn more, contact me at gretchen@chasingadvntr.com
Whether you are interested in a consultation of full travel services, we want to help you plan the adventure of a lifetime.
Want to Talk? Contact Chasing ADVNTR at 207-752-0905
I try to respond within 1 business day. If you don’t hear back in one business day, I may be on the road researching new travel destinations and be in touch as soon as I return.
