Empower Your Wanderlust: Mastering Independent Travel - A Comprehensive Guide
Lots of people often ask me how (1) I can book everything myself and (2) am I not concerned about not booking through a travel agent? The answers to (1) is simple - the internet, and the answer to (2) is no, I’m not concerned at all and I would much rather be master of my own destiny.
I remember when I was sixteen I saw a picture of the Lake Palace Hotel (Udaipur, India) in a cookery book and knew at that point it was somewhere that I really wanted to visit. Without the internet, I had no idea where exactly the hotel was so went into a local travel agent to ask, taking the cookery book with me. Considering it was an Indian cookery book, I assumed it was somewhere in India but beyond that I didn’t know, nor did I realise it was actually a hotel. The travel agent explained that they knew it was in India and gave me a brochure to take away with all the details. I didn’t actually get to visit the Lake Palace until almost twenty years later but it does highlight how things have changed and how it’s now possible to find out almost anything yourself through the power of the internet.
I’ve now been booking travel myself for probably the best part of 25 years, including multiple airlines, hotels and trains throughout the world as well as putting all the itineraries together. I now think this is the norm, but on a recent trip to a safari lodge in Madagascar, the camp managers said that I was the first direct booking they had ever received. Occasionally there can be problems if flights get cancelled or changed but I just deal with these, again with the power of the internet on the move, to find alternative routings, book last minute hotels etc.
So how do I do it?
Once I’ve got an idea of where I want to visit, first thing I generally do is find out when it’s a good time to visit weather-wise. Sometimes when and where I want to go don’t initially marry up (I usually look to book trips up to a year out, and then supplement the plans with weekend breaks at shorter notice) so what I do is park a location and chalk it up as a future holiday in the following year. I use a lot of apps, as I’ll come on to, but Excel spreadsheets also come to the fore when recording lists of countries I’ve been, those I want to go, and that’s usually what I use to begin with to plan out an itinerary.
The other aspect to sometimes consider is whether there is any specific landmark events that take place in any specific locations. For example, when looking to book Brazil in the first quarter of 2019, I realised that Carnival in Rio was to be slightly later than normal and would actually finish in March. While not able to be there for most of the Carnival week itself (going to Argentina first) I had booked to arrive in Rio on the final day so we were able to go to the Champions Parade at the Sambadrome, this takes place on the Saturday following Carnival. The famous and sought after Champion's parade, also known as the Winners' Parade reunites the Champion and five runners-up, celebrating victory and closing the Rio Carnival Samba Parades.
Assuming weather seems to be good when I want to go somewhere, next steps are to work out how to get there and whether this is a one country trip or whether it would tie in well with visiting another country either in the same area, or makes it easy to transit through as part of the overall journey. For example, when going to Borneo, it made sense to transit through Kuala Lumpur on the way there and return from Singapore, for international flights. Deciding whether to visit one country only also depends on what I want to do when I’m there, how much there is to do and see and whether it’s a relaxing or activity filled holiday. While I absolutely love relaxing beach or pool holidays, if a location is going to be more activity based or has lots of sightseeing, I also try to balance this out with at least a few days at the end in a beach resort for relaxation before heading back home.
Airlines
My two favourite airlines are British Airways and Qatar Airways, either I will already know whether either or both of these airlines fly to where I want to go (having studied their destinations or keeping track of any new routes they introduce, or I will use their websites to find out). I would say my worldwide geography is pretty good, as travel is such a passion, but even I still need to be careful when booking flights. When planning to go to Costa Rica, having done all the research and the plans all organised, I was really pleased at the point of booking that I noticed (or so I initially thought) new direct flights with BA to Juan Santamaria Airport, San Jose (SJO) - this was many years ago before they did, but they do now have a twice-weekly service from London Gatwick twice a week in summer and three times in winter. I’d initially been working on the assumption that I would need to fly to Miami first in the USA and then fly on from there to Costa Rica. I did at the time think that it was odd I hadn’t been aware of any press notification of BA introducing a new route. Thankfully, some question lingered in my head and I did further research before booking those flights, I then realised that I was I could have booked were flights to Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (SJU) in Puerto Rico. Disaster avoided, but what it has done is instill in me to check, check and check again. As well as not booking the wrong destination, I will spend a lot of time researching options and alternatives, and certainly won’t just book the first viable option that I find. This has been really helpful lots of times to get connections that work really well, or find that I can travel direct to some locations that in the main people normally travel to by other means. When travelling through India back in 2007 I realised that Kingfisher Airlines (established in 2003 but ceased operations when its license was cancelled in 2012) was launching a new route from Agra to Delhi. This meant that rather than travelling by car or train (which our train ride there was an experience in itself) we were able to take a short flight back to Delhi that same day. We traveled on the inaugural flight which took off from a former military airport in Agra, but I don’t think the route lasted long and having not long been back to Agra, this time we went by car.
If I can’t find the flights I’m looking for via British or Qatar Airways direct, my next stop is Skyscanner - either on the web or through their mobile app. While sometimes this is not an completely exhaustive list of routings (or be aware that not all airlines publish schedules 364 days in advance like BA or 362 days for Qatar) Skyscanner is an absolutely brilliant way of homing in on how to travel. The search criteria not only covers the basics like date, routes and class of travel, you can also narrow searches by specific airlines or major airline affiliate groups (my favourite OneWorld), flight arrival or departure times, flight duration or making sure that there are no change of airport during connections. For example, anyone travelling through London could come unstuck if they don’t realise that there are five main airports there - Heathrow, Gatwick, City, Stansted or Luton.
Once I’ve got international flights organised, the next step is to work out whether there are domestic flights needed to or if it’s better to travel by train. While my preference is normally to fly for any significant distances rather than drive, certain trains would actually come to top of the list in preference to flying e.g. Rovos Rail between Johannesburg/Pretoria and Cape Town or the bullet train between the major cities of Japan or China. If I do need to book domestics, again the preference will be the member airlines of OneWorld (American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LATAM, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, S7 Airlines or Sri Lankan Airlines). At time of writing LATAM are still part of the alliance but will be coming out later in 2020.
Hotel Bookings
Next step is to work out where to stay - here there are three sites that I will generally go to first, Leading Hotels of the World, Hotels.com and TripAdvisor. I’ve been a member of LHW since 2003 (now Aurelian status) and other than two properties which disappointed (one in Costa Rica and one Palm Springs many years ago) I have to say these properties usually wow every visit, regardless of where they are in the world. If, in any place, the LHW property or properties also coincide with very high rankings on TripAdvisor then, in the main, job done. In a country where there are now no LHW properties (e.g. Australia, although there used to be when I last visited) then my first check would be look at member rankings in TripAdvisor to see what hotels feature highly. Where I possible, I would then look to book through Hotels.com to take advantage of their rewards program, more information to follow in a later blog. As well as having pricing which seems consistent with most other booking sites, it’s easy to navigate, has a very wide choice of properties and bookings can be stored easily in my iPhone Passbook. Laterally, on good advice I’m lead to believe, I have started booking through Grand Luxury Hotels instead of LHW - while not stayed at any yet, I do already have sufficient bookings made with them to achieve their highest Le Club status of Connoisseur level.
Travel Apps
As I said before, I used to always use Excel spreadsheets for recording itineraries - especially if it was long, complex tour I would print this off and take it with me to give details of flights, hotels, any tours booked etc. Then I discovered TripIt. TripIt, by Concur, is a fantastic app that can record all details of travel. It’s so easy to either have this app set such that it ‘scans’ your emails for any flight, hotel or train booking or you can send manually by emailing a confirmation to plans@tripit.com from a registered email address. This app then sorts all trips together such that it becomes a bible for when you’re away. I can also share this with ‘Mrs’ ThePrivateTraveller so we’re both looking at the same trips, albeit you have to be careful if planning a surprise trip by making sure you disconnect the automatic email scanning feature first.
I’ve added some web links below that might be helpful, but always happy to get feedback from people as to what they think of my travel blog or if I can help answer any questions. Happy travels!
Useful website links:
Taj Lake Palace Hotel Udaipur https://www.tajhotels.com/en-in/taj/taj-lake-palace-udaipur/
British Airways https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_gb/
OneWorld Alliance https://www.oneworld.com/
Qatar Airways https://www.qatarairways.com/en-gb/homepage.html
Skyscanner https://www.skyscanner.net/
Trip Advisor https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/
TripIt https://www.tripit.com/web
Hotels.com https://uk.hotels.com/
Rovos Rail https://www.rovos.com/
American Airlines https://www.americanairlines.co.uk/homePage.do
Cathay Pacific https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_US.html
Finnair https://www.finnair.com/gb-en
Iberia https://www.iberia.com/gb/
Japan Airlines https://www.uk.jal.co.jp/ukl/en/
Malaysia Airlines https://www.malaysiaairlines.com/uk/en.html
Royal Jordanian https://rj.com/
S7 Airlines https://www.s7.ru/en/
Sri Lankan Airlines https://www.srilankan.com/en_uk/uk
Grand Luxury Hotels https://www.grandluxuryhotels.com/leclub
