Group Trip Planning Tips

Hi all.

Recently me and my friends plan to go to France for a road trip. And it’s not a small 3 to 5 people group. It’s a 10 person group, therefore, planning these kind of trip can be a bit tricky. I’ll share what I’ve learnt from this experience.

#1 Plan ahead

Well obviously the one of the main thing is to plan ahead. Checkout what dates are suitable and pick the destination. And once that’s confirmed, buy the tickets. Sounds simple right? And here’s the first tip.

Only confirm the head count for those who had bought the tickets.

Often there are friends who say they are interested to join the trip but didn’t take any action. Thus, causes confusion as to how many people are going there in the end – making plans for the trip would be more difficult.

Therefore, to simplify that. No tickets = Not part of the travel gang.

#2 Take charge and team work

Where are we staying? When are we booking? Where are we going? Questions are to be answered by who?

Want to go on a trip? Take charge.

Of course, the bigger the group, the harder it is to co-ordinate. Someone has to take charge. If not 1 person, split up the responsibility. Team work is important. What our group did was we divided the accommodation into 3 nights, and 3 different people are assigned to look for AirBnB accommodation.

Each assigned person has to look for a few accommodation within everybody’s budget. For example: 60€ per night accommodation with double beds. And the final decision will be done by casting votes. We used Facebook group Messenger for that. It was all decided within a few hours. Quite efficient I’d say.

Tip #3: Utilize group messaging tools. Example: Whatsapp Group / Telegram / Facebook Group Messenger etc.

#3 Book, book and book

Payments can be hard to collect when it comes to a big group.

Set a hard deadline.

Recently I had found out AirBnb implemented a very nice feature enabling big groups to plan travel more easily. I would highly recommend it. If you are interested more about it read it from the official AirBnB site: What’s group payment?

How does it work? Once a place is decided, the first person can select the third option “Split with friends” and pay his/her share of the whole amount. There will be a payment link provided so that the rest of the group can pay up the remaining amount. The accommodation will be confirmed once the full amount is paid.

Apart from that, there’s also a 60 hour time limit to collect the full amount. What this means is that everyone in the group is responsible for paying up within the specified time frame or else the accommodation will not be confirmed.

#4 Have fun and enjoy

At the end of the day, you are going on the trip with these bunch. And it’s a vacation, so enjoy the whole process of planning and of course the trip itself. Make friends and get to know the people better if you haven’t. Happy holidays!