Tips for Group Travel

Friends and families traveling together can a lot to a vacation: a lot of fun and sometimes a lot of tension.  You may want to throw someone in the pool! 

Before heading out on vacation with a new group, here are some questions to review in advance to ensure a successful vacation.

1. What is your ideal day on vacation? Some people love a day at the beach. Others enjoy an action packed schedule of physical activities. Still others love wandering a city without a plan. It’s important to know in advance what people prefer so you can plan a vacation that offers those elements.  

2. Hotel, house or cruise?  Depending on the size of your group, renting a house can offer a great value.  Cruises and hotels offer more privacy.

3. What is the expectation for group activities?  Does everyone want to do everything together?  Is it important that everyone have dinner together? Setting these expectations in advance lessen the chance of someone’s feeling getting hurt when you decide not to go on a group outing.

4. How are we sharing the costs? This is an important question for a rental house as grocery shopping becomes important. Is it one trip to the store and everyone splits the cost? Are you going to have your own food? Also, get a sense of how much people want to spend eating out so you can choose restaurants accordingly.

5. How should we decide each day’s activities? For more active vacations, it may be helpful for everyone to write down one or two “must do” activities. This way you can plan each day to make sure to include those.  If your group tends to be indecisive, put a person in charge each day to make the decisions or agree on an itinerary in advance.

What has your experience with group travel been?

Any successful or not-so-successful stories?