When it comes time for me to plan a new vacation to a place I’ve never been before, I need to do a lot of research.

While I love to find the best prices on transportation, hotels, cruises, etc., until I know exactly what I’m doing, I can’t book any of them.

First, I need to find out as much as I can about the destination, make sure it’s the type of vacation I want to go on, and then I can book everything.

So what do I do when it’s time to research a new vacation destination?

I can tell you as I am in the process of doing this right now.

Let’s say you are thinking about taking a vacation to Banff National Park, in Alberta, Canada. You know nothing about it (except that you hear it’s beautiful), and want to see if it’s worth going.

What do I do?

How I Research a New Vacation Destination

There are many ways to go about researching a new destination. I’m just sharing the way that I usually go about doing it. There are plenty of other ways.

To me, this is just the fastest way to get an overview to make sure that:
a) I do want to travel to this location, and
b) How long I’ll want to spend at this location.

My First Step in Research

The first thing I do is go to TripAdvisor.

Why? In one place, I can see what the most popular things there are to do, find out the average prices of hotels, how much airfare will be, and even see what types of restaurants are available!

So I went to TripAdvisor, typed in Banff, and then clicked on attractions to see what the popular things are to do in the area.

The top things?

• Parker Ridge Trail
• Lake Minnewanka
• Bow Falls
• Banff Visitor Information Centre
• The Banff Centre

In fact, the top 20+ attractions are all nature related.

Now without doing any other research, I can already tell you that it’s definitely a great place to go if you’re looking to spend time outside in nature.

Since I love doing that, I know to keep looking.

After I spend a little more time looking at all of the attractions, I then move on to the hotels — just to make sure that there are reasonable hotels (i.e. decent hotels that are not going to cost an arm and a leg) still available for when I want to go.)

I don’t spend too much time doing this, as I’m not ready to book a vacation, but want to make sure that if I decide to go, that I’ll have a reasonable place to stay.

The Second Place I Go

Once this gives me the answer I’m looking for, I usually go to Viator.

Before I decide how many days I want to stay in Banff, I want to see not only what tours are available within Banff, but what day trips there are. If I’m within a few hours of something cool, I definitely want to make sure it makes it onto my itinerary.

Note: Just because I’m looking at what’s available, doesn’t mean that all I’ll be doing is taking tours. This is a great place to find out what types of things people go to Banff usually do. It will depend on transportation options (if I’m renting a car, where the places that I want to go are, and what public transportation is like) if I end up going on tours.

So before anything gets booked, I’ll search the destination on Viator, and see if there are any good day trips or tours to take.

When I look at Banff, I see that not only are there are bunch of things to do IN Banff, but that there are some cool day trips such as visiting lakes and waterfalls, visiting the Columbia Icefield, and more.

What’s Next

At this point, I can usually tell if I am interested in traveling to the destination, or not.

If not, I’ll move on.

If so, I’ll continue looking at what to do in the locations in more detail, and then go back to TripAdvisor to find a hotel that I like.

Then I’ll book my flights (if I’m flying to the destination).

Then, I’ll usually go find the visitor’s website for the location to see even more details on what to do in the city, as well as what events are going on.

By now, I’m usually pretty confident in what is available, and continue researching what to do each day.

Checklist to Summarize the Above:

When trying to see what’s available to do in a destination, and if I want to vacation there, here’s what I do:

• Visit TripAdvisor to see what the top attractions are in the destination. While here, also check out hotels, airfare, restaurants, and more.
• Visit Viator to see what types of tours are available, as well as what day trips there are near the destination.

This can be done for any vacation destination, and is especially great if you don’t know much about the location, and want to make sure there is enough that is interesting to you that will keep you busy (and happy!) while you’re on vacation.

Enjoy,