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Itinerary writing is one of the areas where new international travel professionals often feel vulnerable. It’s not as if it’s rocket science, but an itinerary does need to flow well, have time devoted to each activity that’s reasonable, have decent logistics, and leave enough free time that the traveler doesn’t feel completely exhausted and overscheduled. The key to improving this skill quickly is to think less about trying to write a compelling text and more about planning and logistics. What order do activities occur in? How long is the transfer between them? What time of day does the client arrive? What is the purpose of each day of the trip? And what’s the pace like in the destination? Start with a simple exercise. Plan three days in one place for one type of traveler.
Be very specific about what you’re going for: for example, “Three days in Rome for a first time visitor interested in culture.” Be very simple about your description. What time will the client arrive? What neighborhood will they be staying in? What is the one main activity for each day? How will they get around? Then read through your days and ask yourself: Does this day make sense, or is too much going on? That will teach you more than anything about itinerary planning, because it’s all about logistics and pacing. A classic itinerary mistake is overplanning.
When you’re first starting out, it’s easy to think the more full an itinerary is, the better it is. But the truth is, it’s just tiring and unrealistic to pack too much into each day. I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve spent traveling where I’ve managed to visit four major sights, had a transfer, and squeezed in a meal.
It’s just not that realistic. To fix it, simply cut one major activity off of the day and see how it looks. Add in a time for lunch. Add in a time for transfers between locations. Consider what the jet lag situation will be. More often than not, cleaning up the itinerary a bit will make it feel more solid, even if it has a bit less going on. If you’re getting stuck, try to identify where exactly the problem is before rewriting your entire itinerary. Sometimes, the activities for the day are great, but the arrival day is overplanned. Sometimes the structure for the day is great, but the activities aren’t the right fit for the client. Sometimes the choice of city is the right one, but the choice of hotel makes for long commutes. Take one paragraph of your itinerary and comment it in simple language.
What’s working, what’s feeling a bit forced, what’s missing? Getting feedback and using your own judgment is one of the key ways to get better at planning. Here’s another exercise to improve your skills. It should take about 15 minutes. Spend five minutes reading over a sample day in a sample itinerary for a destination. Spend the next five minutes rewriting it to make it simpler and more realistic. Spend the last five minutes explaining why you made the changes you did to pacing, order of activities, and activity selection. On a second day, repeat the exercise with a different type of destination. If the first day was a beach town, try a big city. If the first day was a multi-city train trip, try a single city.
Repeating this exercise will help you start to notice some patterns around timing, comfort, and logic. Itinerary planning is just as much about editing as it is about creating. Remember, the goal isn’t to try and fit in as much as humanly possible. The goal is to create a trip that makes sense from start to finish. As you practice writing short destination descriptions, editing for time, and using self-editing to make changes, planning itineraries will start to feel less like a mysterious art, and more like a skill that you can work on.