Adventure is a State of Mind
If you’ve picked a location and your travel companions, it’s time to start your research. Wait! Please don’t leave yet! I promise this isn’t going to be as painful as you think it is. Researching a trip is much more fun than it sounds.
Believe it or not, researching and planning a trip contributes to a significant amount of the enjoyment we experience in traveling. Research shows that the anticipation of a trip creates as much, if not more, of the actual enjoyment of the trip. Doing research for a trip is probably the easiest way to immerse yourself in anticipation of the adventure, which will intensify your enjoyment. In fact, planning or anticipating your trip can often be more enjoyable than actually taking it. That means that the person planning the trip may be investing more of their time and energy than their travel companions, but the ROI (Return On Investment) of that planning is well worth it!
Resources, Resources!
We live in an amazing time when about the only thing we can’t learn on the internet about a place is what it smells like…although I’m sure someone is busy inventing that right now! But our amazing digital world is changing so rapidly that as I write this, some of the resources I’m suggesting are becoming obsolete while new and better ones are being born. Think of this advice, and all of the advice in any of my blog posts, as directional to help you get started rather than as the be all and end all of trip planning advice.
Nothing is interesting if you’re not interested.
Helen Clark McInnes
Start General
Now is the time to buy the books and visit the library. Throughout the planning process, your local library is one of the best resources you have. You can find books and videos about the areas you are considering visiting, cookbooks to give you a preview of the types of food you might enjoy, and book and online resources for language learning. Not sure where to start? Ask a librarian for help. They are amazing resources in and of themselves and can usually point you in the right direction.
As I said before, we live in an amazing time in which we can find almost anything about everything on the internet. Read the blogs, explore Wikitravel, and check out the photos on Instagram and Pinterest. Just put the location of your dreams into the Google search box and happily go down the rabbit hole! Take those ideas you generated by brainstorming on your own or with your future travel companions and find out more about them.
Most of the time, this is where your excitement is going to grow and the trip starts becoming more than just a fantasy in your mind — you see a photo and can imagine standing on the ramparts of that castle with the wind blowing through your hair. But it also might be when you start making some adjustments as reality sets in — if you read that it’s 999 steps to climb to the top of the Palamidi Fortress in Nafplio, Greece, is that still something you want to do?
There are sooooo many resources, but some of my favorites are:
Blogs
Books
- The Lonely Planet guidebook series — they have a number of general books, such as Lonely Planet Best of South America and Lonely Planet Best of Europe, as well as many area-specific books, such as Lonely Planet Tokyo and Lonely Planet France.
- The Rick Steves guidebook series — again, this series contains both general books as well as books about more localized areas.
- The Fodor’s Travel guidebook series — same as the previously mentioned series.
Websites
Culture
While you’re learning about the locations you want to visit, start taking notice of the comments about culture and customs you come across. What may seem like an off-handed comment about the culture can sometimes end up being valuable information that will help you understand your experience better and help you interact with the people you meet in a much more respectful manner.
Most of all, enjoy the process. Rather than being a chore, think of planning as part of the adventure!
Where do you want to research first?
5 thoughts on “The ROI of Travel Research”