our process for booking
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Here’s a quick list of steps we use for booking trips. For more details, check out our Free Guide!
1: Set a Vision
Setting a vision for a family trip is about defining what kind of experience you want to have together before diving into the logistics. If you aren’t completely set on a destination, this is a great way to start! A trip vision gives the trip purpose, helps guide decisions, and ensures everyone’s needs and expectations are considered. Check out our Trip Vision Guide for more on how to do this!
Make sure to involve everyone! Gather input from all family members (age-appropriate) about what they want to do or see. Encourage kids or teens to suggest activities or experiences—they feel invested when their voices are heard.
Think in terms of memories, not just logistics.
We love using Convo Cards in this phase!
TIP: If you are traveling with any kids or older adults, be sure to ask about their most active / tired times so you can schedule around that.
2: Identify and rank Priorities
Choose the experiences that matter most to the family.
Group experiences into:
Must-have
Nice to have
Must not
Consider:
Splurge
Unstructured time
Extras
Rank ideas by importance to ensure the trip matches your vision even if time or budget is limited.
Our Vision Board is a great way to help do this
3. Set your budget
Budget sets the upper limit for all travelers.
To set your budget, decide how much you can afford to spend overall. This keeps your plans realistic from the start. Get your bottom line number and set up a sheet to compare different options by breaking down major costs - transportation, lodging, food, activities, and souvenirs. Then you see how your options match up to your budget.
4. Figure out your tentative dates and what weather you want
Dates can be particularly restrictive for families with kids due to school schedules, appointments and sports. I recommend starting here instead of with destinations.
Once you know you can travel for a week in April, let’s start researching based on your weather preferences. Are you looking to ski in April or go to the beach? That will help us figure out some options.
5. Go to Google Flights or Skyscanner, find and lock down some deals
Based on the amount of time you have, set your flight must-haves. If you only have a week, what does that mean? For me, direct flights would be ideal, maybe 1 stop is OK, and no more than 7 hours total flight time.
Then I’m heading to Google Flights, searching from my home airport to “anywhere” and filtering by the options laid out above. I toggle around the map and find some cool options.
6. Figure out your stops and book lodging
Flights booked! Next, we think - how many stops do we want? Do we want to rent a car or no? My hard rule for traveling with kids? We need 1 base for every 3-4 nights. If we have a week that’s ideally 1 base, maybe 2 if there’s a super cool option.
Once we know our bases, we can look at lodging. We love to use Expedia, Booking.com, or VRBO. for our bookings. I look for reviews that mention family and I prioritize laundry (a MUST have for us).
7. Ground Transport plans
Now we have flights and lodging, we can figure out if we need to rent a car, purchase internal flights or train travel between our bases or we can rely on public transit more spontaneously.
8. Time to plan your itinerary!
All the logistical stuff is done, now we can build our itinerary! Here’s the tool we use to get everyone’s preferences and ideas incorporated. This is my favorite part! Here’s where we get to add in fun activities, tours, excursions and day trips. We love to search on Viator and Getyourguide.