Tips to Have a Pleasant Travel Experience

As you might have noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of travel posts in recent times. Most of them have covered places I have visited or would like to visit in India. We’ve been thinking of taking a trip abroad for a while now. We have family in the US, mostly Miami area,  and Australia, mostly Melbourne, and so that’s the draw to visit those countries. However, there are also many other countries calling our name. Let’s see how it all pans out.

While traveling can be a lot of fun, it can also be quite stressful if you do not plan your trip in the right way. There are some things that every person should do before they depart that can make their trip much more enjoyable and free of the hassles that travelers often endure. There are always going to be events and circumstances that pop up during your trip that you will not be able to predict. However, planning ahead helps to eliminate the little problems, making the big problems easier for you to deal with. I thought I’d put together a list of tips to keep in mind. I had a chat with Fiona Moriarty of Hipmunk, a travel website that offers customers a fast and easy way to find the best travel deals. According to her, if you plan on staying in Miami Beach, or anywhere else, here are just a few basic tips to have a pleasant travel experience.

1. Get to the airport very early

In the old days, this was not a very important consideration. However, 9/11 changed everything in the air travel industry. It takes much longer to go through security screenings. Therefore, if you do not get to the airport early enough, there is a very good chance that you will miss your flight. This is why it is imperative that you make a point of getting to the airport at least two hours before your flight. If you happen to be traveling close to a holiday, or on a weekend in the summer, it would be a good idea to get there even earlier. Doing this will eliminate the possibility of missing your flight because you were delayed.

2. Constantly check your reservations

Just because you have made reservations, you should never assume that they are still in place. Airlines and hotels make mistakes all the time. Reservations are kept on computers. Therefore, it is possible that a computer glitch has wiped out your reservation. This happens to many people every year. Another problem occurs when the original reservation is not correctly entered into the computer by the airline or hotel employee. This is why you need to check your reservations once every week until you finally leave on your trip. This will allow you to find out if your reservation has been misplaced. You can then take steps to fix the situation.

3. Book your flight early

This makes sense for a number of reasons. First of all, the farther in advance you book your flight, the more money you can save. If you wait until two weeks or less before your trip to book your flight, you will be paying significantly more than you would if you had taken the time to book it earlier. Secondly, if you book your flight early, you can also have your choice of seats. If you prefer an aisle seat, a window seat or an emergency row seat for extra leg room, you will be able to choose whatever you want. The longer you wait to make a reservation, the fewer seats will be available.

4. Schedule your flights properly

If you are going to need more than one flight to make it to your chosen destination, make sure that you leave yourself plenty of time between each of your flights. It would be wise to shoot for a layover of at least one hour between your flights. This will help to compensate in case your first flight is delayed for some reason, preventing you from having to reschedule your second flight.

I’ll be giving you more tips in the months ahead.

Happy travels!