10 Steps Guide to Create Your Own Awesome Travel Itinerary


For quite some time, I’ve had this idea of adding road trip planner service to my blog and preparing custom travel itineraries for independent travelers. Many people now are discovering the joys of travelling on their own with no travel agencies, no group packages, no bus tours and no guides. Though not a rocket science, preparing a travel itinerary might become quite challenging as it requires a lot of research, organizational and logistics skills, but most importantly – time, the true luxury which we strive to spend sparingly.

It is always easier said than done and the road trip planner idea has yet to be implemented. In the meantime, I’ve decided to come up with this sample step by step guide to help anyone organize an amazing self-guided voyage with no sweat. Well, there will be some sweat anyways, but it’s all good exciting stuff, believe me!

The key to awesome travels, by the way, is not the perfect itinerary. The key is the attitude. Positive, open-minded and laidback. Treat any obstacle, any trouble or any inconvenience along the way like an adventure and there you have it – your awesome travel experience! Not perfect. But exhilarating, fulfilling and hard to forget.


10 steps to an awesome travel itinerary:


1.     Destination and dates.
First things first – you must decide on your destination and dates. It might be a few days mini vacation with a single destination or a several months long trip covering a number of countries. The routine of preparing an itinerary stays the same.

2.     Transportation.
Choosing the type of transportation. Would you fly, take a train/bus/ship or drive to your destination? Maybe it will be a road trip or RV trip.
If your trip is long and complex you might end up using all kinds of transportation, but you need to think this through.

3.     Rough route outline.
This step echoes the first one, as you basically create a rough draft of your route. In Google maps you would choose the country (city) of arrival and further direction. You might start up north and travel down south or west to east etc. Personally, I prefer having circular trips, with same location start and end points. The rough route outline would look something like that: 




4.     Visa and other necessary documentation.
Once you have your dates, destinations and outline, it’s time to take care of visas and other docs for your trip.

In case you need a visa (visas) – gather all required docs and apply. With almost any travel visa application, you must provide some travel itinerary, reserved flights and accommodations, purchased travel health insurance. If your travel plans are vast, don’t be a nut case by completing your entire itinerary to submit with a visa application. The flights, health insurance, at least one booked accommodation and in some cases an outline of your trip would be more than enough.

It is wise to find out beforehand how good your chances of getting a visa are. If there are no guarantees – I would strongly encourage to book flights/accommodations only with easy/free cancellation policy. You might choose to simply lock the flights for 72 hours for a set fee (around $10, option available with a few airlines) instead of risking to lose the whole airfare.

5.     Flights, train tickets, car rental reservations.
So you have your dates, destinations, route outline and maybe already a visa. Now it’s a good time to purchase airfare, or maybe train tickets, or reserve a car rental.

6.     Accommodations.
This step totally depends on the type of your trip, its length and complexity. Going someplace for a few days with no relocations? Easy – use your favorite booking sites and search the area for a perfect place to stay. It might be a hotel or hostel, bed and breakfast, or maybe couch surfing. Booking in advance gives you an advantage of having a starting point for your daily routes.

With more complex trips you will obviously need to change accommodations as you proceed with your journey and so this step will coalesce with the next one – scheduling activities for each day of your outlined trip. Once we did a six-week road trip in Europe, changed 10 countries and about 25 hotels/Airbnb rooms. You can imagine it took us some time to find and book all those places!

I did road trips for NO booked accommodations whatsoever and just stayed at whatever had vacancies on the way. So rule number one about creating an itinerary – there are NO rules, when it comes to itineraries.

7.     Google
Now the fun part begins – choosing attractions, scheduling activities, looking for the most renowned restaurants and iconic street foods, the list goes on! All of this takes TONS of time as you have to browse through articles, blogs, Wikipedia pages, TripAdvisor reviews, scrutinize the area for all it has to offer and narrowing it down to what interest you the most (fits your budget ).

8.     Don’t forget logistics!
Smart logistics is the key to a successful trip.

Open google maps and start adding everything you’d like to accomplish in one day. Then change positions of the destinations until you reach the perfect route for the day:
-       you won’t go in circles
-       you won’t go back and forth
-       you won’t make unnecessary loops

9.     Activities reservations.
Sometimes it is wise to reserve activities or buy tickets up front. Lots of hype places get booked way in advance and you won’t simply drop in. You might also save a buck if booking online or skip a line to the cashier at the location.

10.  Parking, daily transportation, wifi, currency etc.
It is wise to get to know as much as you can beforehand. This way you save time of your precious trip for the fun part rather than spending it figuring out where to park a car, if there is a free wifi and what to do when there is no ATM or credit card machine within tens of miles and you have absolutely no cash.

It is especially important when traveling abroad and in countries where your language is nothing more than some foreign tarabarshina. Yes, your language. Tarabarshina!


Ooookay, these are my 10 steps to a perfect itinerary! I skip some of them or add a few depending on the trip. The main idea is to be prepared with a plan but when you are on the road is to stay flexible and open for adventures! Traveling is supposed to be fun. Don’t forget this when you're running from one attraction to another. ☺


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