Author: Anil Batta

What Goes Into Planning A Memorable, Rejuvenating Holiday ?

Holiday is nothing but an experience – which is meant to be lived, enjoyed and internalized. As may be often the case, you may never come back to the same destination again ! Hence a preparation or home-work is a necessary input into planning a holiday; else you may regret having missed out on memorable experiences in your holiday !

 The 4 fundamental, important and universal components of a holiday are :

1. Experience Travel  

2. Experience Accommodation  

3. Experience Entertainment

4. Experience Food

Lets have a detailed insight into each of these aspects :

1. Experience Travel

The first call that you need to take is whether you are in for flying to a destination or you want to go to drivable distances only – whether by road, rail, etc.

Various factors that play an important role in this decision are :

1. Time-on-hand
2. Budget – Drivacations are obviously Cheaper than Air Packagaes
3. Personal Preference e.g. a Self-Drive Experience
4. Holiday Theme viz Nature, Hills, Beaches, Desserts, Pilgrimage, Cruises, Adventure, etc.
5. Health & Safety – as in Post-Covid Scenario
6. Regulations & Advisories – as in Post-Covid Scenario

Depending upon your decision, you need to make advance reservations – whether for Train Journey or Flights. Given the trends in Flight Fares, it would be recommended to book domestic flights 30-60 days in advance and international flights 60-120 days in advance. While booking flights so much in advance, make sure either your programme and dates are confirmed or you buy only refundable fares. Also check the cancellation and date change penalties applicable on the fares that you book. Personal Involvement of your travel agent, who is experienced in handling air fares every day, can help you save money in booking as well as in case of an unforeseen cancellation. Besides, he gives you adequate information about visa, travel advisory & regulations (as in post-covid scenario) and related travel requirements like meals, seat-preference and baggage allowance, which may be difficult to check on your own, online ! Remember, one mistake can result in a lot of lost money and bad taste in your mouth !

Besides the main travel requirement to the destination from origin, you also need to figure out inter-city (read sub-destination) travel, in case of an itinerary booking, consisting of more than one sub-destination. Select the correct capacity of the vehicle – considering the number of passengers and the amount of baggage you are likely to carry.

2. Experience Accommodation

It is another important part of your holiday experience. You need to select the accommodation keeping in mind your taste and budget, based on following parameters :

• Type of accommodation – Resort Vs Hotel Vs Services Apartment Vs BNB Vs Hostel
• Star-Category of Hotel – 3, 4 ,5, etc.
• Room Tariff
• Hotel Location – Down Town; Outside the City; Beach Location; near Shopping Areas / Airport / Metro Station, Eating Joints of Your Choice etc.
• Room Category – Basic, Standard, Deluxe, Luxury, Suite, etc. Sometimes, you mind find the hotel to be ok but room as unsatisfactory – upgrade your room category in this case
• Special Room Requirements – King-Bed vs Twin, Adjoining, Inter-connected Rooms, etc
• Room View – Beach Facing, Pool Facing, Valley Facing, Garden View, etc
• Hotel Facilities – Swimming Pool, Restaurant, Spa, Gym, Indoor Sports, Outdoor Sports, etc
• Room Facilities – Mini Bar, TV – DTH, Hair Dryer, Ironing Board, etc
• Room Size – can it accommodate an extra bed, if required ?

Depending on the certainty of your Holiday Plan, choose Refundable Vs Non-refundable Tariffs. Also be sure about the Cancellation Policy.

3. Experience Entertainment

Based on the scene of action, let’s categorise it into two types :

 a) In-House Entertainment  – In the Hotel. All hotel facilities listed above indicate towards this. Select your accommodation based on your expectation of in-house entertainment in the hotel. An important clue could be how much time you intend to spend in the hotel.

b) Destination Related Entertainment

• Sight Seeing
• Activities like Water/ Adventure Sports
• Cruises on water-ways
• Safaris
• Treks / Walks
• Dinning Out – Restaurant, Bars, Pubs
• Night Life – Discotheques, Casinos, Bars, etc
• Shopping

Plan your itinerary keeping the destination-related entertainment in your mind.

4.  Experience Food

a) In house – (read in the Hotel) – Number of restaurants / coffee-shops and their cuisine decide this for you. Check about in-house pubs / bars, pool-side bars, court-yard dining, roof-top dining, bar-be-ques, etc. to enrich your food-experience !

b) Dinning Out – As mentioned in the Destination Related Entertainment above, it is partly taken care of by the selection of Restaurants, Bars and Pubs you visit ! However, two broad individual sensibilities drive you, here :

• You may like to taste the local cuisine of the place you are visiting – do some home work on the availability / spread of the out lets serving local cuisine. Your travel agent as well as the local staff of the hotel could be a good source of this information, apart from the on line searches available !
• Some others want only their own cuisine (from the place they have come) even when visiting any other place. Once again, your travel agent or local hotel staff could come in handy in figuring this out !

Your travel agent helps here e.g. if you are an Indian visiting South East Asia, you can pre-buy Indian Dinners at places like Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. – with or without transport option.

The meal plan that you select for your hotel booking or package booking should be largely guided by how much you want to experiment with or experience the food there – should you buy room without meals, only breakfast, breakfast & dinner, all meals, etc. in your hotel package ? The ones wanting to try more dinning out experience should pay more attention to hotel location in the vicinity of eating joints!

While planning / choosing / deciding a holiday, allocate you selection time / effort , budget and itinerary to these four fundamental elements of a holiday. Balance out these four elements in your selection. And time after time you will create memorable holiday experiences for yourself !

Bon Voyage !!

– Anil Batta, CEO – Marketels Hospitality Pvt Ltd, Promoter of travelNstays.com

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