Voice of Travel

So you’ve decided where to go on your next vacation. You might have thought the hard part was over…but the next question that will surely come up is WHEN do you take your next vacation?

It might seem like an easy question. You want to go a nice tropical island when it’s cold and snowing at home of course…and you want to go somewhere that the weather will be perfect for what you want to do.

But beyond that, how do you choose which week? You will probably very easily be able to narrow it down to the month you want to get away. For example, maybe you are sure you want to go away in March, since it’ll still be cold out at home, but it’s still enough time away that you can plan your trip.

Well, how do you figure out which week is best? You might think that any week would be the same, but that can make a huge difference. Also, the days that you go can make a huge difference.

There are many things you should look out for when deciding which week to take a trip. If the time is during a holiday, or right by a holiday, the destination may be more crowded, and could also be more expensive. Of course, if that’s the only time you can take off (because kids are in school), then you don’t really have a choice. But if you can, you should try to avoid times that everyone else will be taking the same vacation.

You should also think about things like spring break, and school vacations. We are in the middle of planning a trip to Southern California right now. We wanted to go in March, but didn’t want to deal with the Easter holiday, or kids on spring break. We know that places like Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo will be a lot more crowded during those weeks, so we are purposely planning on going at the beginning of the month, before all the kids will be out. This way our trip should be a little less crowded, and we can be more relaxed instead of having to rush around and end up waiting in line a lot.

Cost can also be a factor. Sometimes weekends are more expensive, so you might want to take your trip from Sun-Thurs instead. This is a perfect example of what we do when we go to Las Vegas. The price goes up a lot for Friday and Saturday nights, so we’ll go Sunday morning, and come back home late Friday night. We still get almost a week, but don’t have to pay the high hotel costs. Depending on the time of year, school breaks, and things like that, prices can go up and down…so if you can try to see the difference in costs between a few weeks, you can save a lot of money!

Any week you go on vacation will be incredible. It just might be worth spending a few minutes to make sure that not everyone will be going to your destination the same week as you!!