How to Plan Your Trip: The Perfect Luxury Getaway Edition (Step-by-Step)

How to choose the right destination? And once you did that, what luxury hotel is going to be the best pick? How to plan your itinerary so that you don’t come back exhausted, but you’re actually seeing the destination while also relaxing. So you don’t need a vacation after you got home from your vacation. They also call this slow traveling. What restaurants and bars to choose? What activities? In this blog post I’m showing you my process on how to plan your trip, and how it gets me a successful perfect luxury getaway.

If you would like to watch the video version of this blog post, here it is:

Choosing the destination

Obviously, the first thing you want to be doing is decide when you’re traveling. Let’s say you’re wanting to book a trip around April/May. Then some really good destinations are in the south of Europe. I would always go for a city trip around these months, because the weather is really good, but not too hot yet.

Some amazing destinations could be Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla, Rome, Athens, Nice, and many more around that area. For the sake of example in this blog post, let’s go with Rome. I love Rome, and need to go back. I might even do. The one time I visited Rome was back in 2016, and we went in August. Everything about that trip was bad, expect for Rome, haha. Rome is so gorgeous. The history, the food, everything. That’s it, I’m going back. Going back to my trip back in 2016, I’ll spare you the details. But August is such a bad time for Rome. Let’s leave it at that. Okay, so Rome it is.

What exact location?

The next step in how to plan your trip is, once the overall destination is set, where exactly do you go? What exact location? Rome is a big city. Because I’ve already been to Rome, I know where all the good things are. I would go for a place near the Spanish Steps or Trastevere. What I do with a destination that I don’t know yet, depending on the trip, I look at the itinerary with all the things that I want to do, and look in that area. For example for Sardinia, that would be the North Eastern area.

If you’ve decided on a trip to Amsterdam, I love that for you! Make sure to check out my Amsterdam travel vlog, and the Conservatorium hotel review vlog.

Choosing the hotel

Moving on to choosing the hotel. My favorite step in the how to plan your trip process. I always start my journey at Booking.com since almost every hotel is on there. I use it more like a search engine than an actual place where I book a hotel. I can filter what’s important to me, I can see reviews, it’s the best hotel searching tool if you ask me. I filter on hotels, 5 stars, and 9+ reviews. The very best hotels come out of this search. Then I’m going through them to see which one matches my vibe, I add that in a spreadsheet, and then decide which one I want to book.

Making the itinerary

I create my itinerary on Wanderlog. I seriously love this application. You can add your hotel, and all the places where you want to go, and it automatically calculates the time that’s needed to get there. How to plan your trip without Wanderlog? I can’t even imagine that anymore.

So I first go on Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube to find the best things to do and see. Then I put that into the list on Wanderlog. And I schedule it in once I have everything that I want to do and see in my list. By the end of the planning, my whole itinerary is in here and I know exactly what, how, why, when.

Are you already subscribed on Youtube? I’m putting out videos like this on a weekly basis. So, if this is helpful to you, I would love for you to subscribe and click the bell, so that I can officially welcome you to the community, and you get a notification when my next videos are live. Psst, there’s a Vienna travel vlog, and luxury hotel review vlog coming in a few weeks.

Choosing the right restaurants

Lots of destinations have countless of restaurants, but you only have so many evenings in your trip. So you have to choose. Omg, I suck at making decisions. Anyway, the thing that I always look for first is the vibe of the restaurants and possible views. A restaurants with a gorgeous view wins easily from a different one that doesn’t have a view. After I’m convinced about the vibe and the view, I look at their menu. After that I check out the reviews.

What I also look at is if the restaurants has specific nights you know, like a jazz night or something like that. Based on that I place each of them on a specific day in my itinerary.

Now that you know how to plan your trip, the luxury edition, make sure to watch my Amsterdam travel vlog if that’s the destination you want to go for. Subscribe if you’re curious about Vienna, because that travel vlog will go live in a few weeks. See you next week!