My European Travel Research Approach – Phase 1

I’ve planned enough trips to Europe that I have developed my own approach to travel research. If you are truly interested in experiencing Europe Your Way, this approach can help you do that. Travel research phases that I will cover in a series of blog posts include:

• Phase 1 – Developing your itinerary; the where, what, when of your trip.
• Phase 2 – Figuring out the logistics; the how of your trip.
• Phase 3 – Finalizing the details and booking.

In addition, I will show you how to document your travel plans so that you can easily share them with your fellow travelers as your planning progresses. When finished, this document is also useful for family and friends not going with you (so that they know where you are) and is useful for you to take as a reference while on your trip.

TV Has a Role in Travel Research

If you are like us, you watch travel shows whenever you can. We even set our DVR to record them so we don’t miss any. There are shows for all types of travelers.  On PBS, Rick Steves is the “everyman” of travel shows while Globe Trekker is more in tune with a younger, more adventurous audience and there are others. The Travel Network has programs for specific experiences – whether you are into food, haunted houses, or something else. These shows can inspire and focus your wanderlust while providing valuable historical information and travel tips. We were planning our honeymoon to the Alps of Switzerland and Austria. After seeing the Rick Steves show on Halstatt, Austria, we made a point of day tripping there and it was one of the highlights of our trip. We might never have considered Halstatt if not for that show.

Guide Books

To help us decide where we might want to go, we move onto getting more detailed information via guide books. For us, this is a team effort – Dave buys books and I devour them. In this early phase of planning, we try to cover as many books as we can. This can get expensive so Dave mines places like Goodwill where he can find them for $1. He is restricted to getting books that are no older than 4-5 years old. We use these to narrow our focus in two ways – (1) if we are undecided between say Scandinavia or Spain we can affordably get books on both and (2) to the experiences we want to have once we have selected the country/countries we want to visit. Our theory is that the museums, churches, and monuments don’t move or change in that time frame so the information is still valid. At this price point, we look at all of the following we can find:

• Rick Steves – provides easy to read information and recommendations but is limited to what he has determined are the best experiences.
• Fodors and/or Frommers – these are good for providing information on just about any region or town on the map so cover more than Rick Steves. If you have mapped a general route for your trip, you can find information on most of the towns you will pass along the way which may help you choose rest stops.
• Eyewitness Guides – not as good if you’re looking for recommendations but they provide great color pictures and maps. If you are a visual learner, you may like these best.
• Lonely Planet – skews a little younger with more focus on adventure/outdoor travel and traveling on the cheap.
• Top Ten — there are some books that rank places and activities for certain regions or cities. We usually wait to get current versions of these once our itinerary is more settled.

This may sound like overkill but I don’t actually read every word. I skim through them focusing on the sidebars and digging deeper when I see something that catches my interest. I also pay attention to the itineraries they lay out (i.e., Best of Italy in Two Weeks). Because these are used books, I don’t feel guilty dog-earing pages or highlighting parts for Dave.

Once we have finalized our itinerary, we will buy an up-to-date book or books depending on our needs. If everywhere we are staying is covered in Rick Steves, we will just get the appropriate books of his. If we are going to travel on the fly (without reservations) we will also get Fodors or Frommers to help us with finding accommodations in places not covered by Rick Steves.

Websites

In this phase, between TV travel shows and guide books, you should have a pretty good idea of where you want to go and what you want to do. If your wish list is too long to be accommodated in the time that you will have in Europe, you can get more detailed information on regions, towns, attractions, and experiences on the web. All the guidebooks will provide websites that you can use including their own. Others they recommend are often chamber of commerce type sites that provide pictures, maps, hours of operation, and so on. These are more helpful as you get to phases 2 and 3 of your travel research. I find the TripAdvisor site useful at this phase because it contains reviews and comments on real peoples’ experiences. If there are a lot of reviews, you may want to filter them for the time of year you will be going and for the type of traveler you will be (i.e., couple, family with children, etc.). TripAdvisor will rank their “Things to Do” but I would read the reviews as well. Sometimes you will find a nugget that will either make or break a particular activity for you.

Documenting Your Travel Research

I find it helpful to document my travel research using PowerPoint. I began to do this because I was having a hard time getting Dave to sit down and discuss plans as far in advance as I thought we needed. My solution was to create a PowerPoint deck for him so that he could have something tangible to react to. This approach has worked well for us. I get to plan on my timetable and he gets to be informed and participate in the process in a way that works for him. We have also found it useful to bring a copy of the deck along on the trip so that we have all our pertinent information readily available.

At this phase, you can start developing your travel calendar by inserting a table into your blank PowerPoint deck as follows.

In the beginning, this is really your travel wish list but it’s a great starting point and is easily edited as your plans change during the course of your travel research. If you have used TripAdvisor or any other websites, you can take screenshots and paste them into your deck as well. This pictorial record of your research can help you get your fellow travelers excited about the possibilities.

In future posts I will blog about research phase 2 – logistics. This will cover transportation, starting with flights to Europe and packing. Let me know if you have any questions or comments about the process.