How to Book a Group Holiday

Hello everybody,
Today I'm going to talk about booking group holidays. As you may know from my previous travel diaries, I have a case of the travel bug. I love to experience new places and I mainly go with just Ben. Now, it's not hard to organise two people and since my boyfriend rarely has any input (probably for his own good anyway), I find it really easy to plan a trip with him. However, this year I decided to go on a group holiday to Berlin and it is the most difficult thing to try and organise! Here are my dos and don'ts of group holiday bookings:

• Do have an idea of where you want to go
• Don't ask everybody for their personal ideal destination (they will have conflicting ideas)
• Do be open to people's opinions/experiences of cities
• Don't disregard what others think
• Do be open to more people coming
• Don't make it an open invite (I know this is a contradiction of the last point, but when I say be open to others coming, I mean girlfriends, other close friends etc., but an open invite would mean practically anyone could come but this is a disaster for organisation)
• Do book it all together, but with separate names on the bookings (book in twos or threes)
• Don't leave it up to everyone when they book it. They might not be able to get the same flights/hotel etc.
• Do keep in mind everyone's budget
• Don't amend the holiday for one person/couple.
• Do - all pay the same amount.
• Don't split payment up in order of bookings etc. We have a person in a single room and why would it be fair if they paid £310 when everyone else was paying £220?
• Do - if everyone's booking on one person's card - make sure you transfer the money FIRST
• Don't agree to pay for someone as a loan. This seems mean, but if they can't afford it now, they will be unlikely to afford it in the near future and also unlikely to want to pay for attractions while there.
• Do take into account everybody's interests. If somebody really hates museums, don't have a whole day dedicated to them - just do one or two
• Don't plan it hour by hour. Having an idea of what you want to do is good, but there is no way you'll be able to stick to an hourly schedule if there's more than 4 of you.
• Do keep all boarding passes together and well organised.
• Don't leave everyone with their own - one person is bound to lose theirs.
• Do be laid back and enjoy your holiday!

All of these dos and don'ts are mainly for group holiday city breaks as opposed to a beach holiday to Zante. Some of them cross over, the booking side for example, but it's not as important that people have the same interests on a beach holiday as a city. You don't have to walk around in a big group all the time, if one half wants to see a cathedral and the other half want to go shopping, agree on a meeting time and place and split up for a while.
Fortunately, my holiday booking all seems to be going well and everyone appears to be really excited for everything we're going to do.
Hopefully this helped you on booking your group holidays - I'll be sharing more tips closer to the time! And I'm super excited to explore this place!

 

CJ x