The Professionals Know How To Plan A Trip

Before you finish the schedule for your summer vacation, Gerry Mitchell has a tip: Forget half the plans.

“Once you start penciling out your itinerary, you should follow the same rule used for packing suitcases,” says the author and tour operator.

“Put in everything you plan on bringing and then take half of it out. You can’t do everything.”

Mitchell, a South Carolinian, realizes his suggestion doesn’t apply to everyone.

If your daily vacation itinerary reads “breakfast, beach, bed,” any sightseeing plans are probably too much.

Or, if a vacation day without two museums and three national parks seems slow-paced, you probably don’t want to hear anyone telling you to slow down.

But even busy travelers can learn from those who plan trips for a living.

Marc Mancini, a Los Angeles travel consultant, follows the lead of group-tour operators who, through trial and error, have learned how to organize satisfying trips.

His first suggestion: Anchor the first and last days of a trip - the most memorable days of a vacation - with dramatic destinations or activities.

“Think about the two destinations that are most important to you,” he says. Then plan your trip around them.

For example, a California trip that starts with a cable-car ride in San Francisco and ends with Disneyland would be a winner, he says.

Beginning in California’s wine country and ending in Tijuana, Mexico, wouldn’t.

The latter two are worth seeing, but they aren’t openers and closers. Wine country offers subtle beauty that wouldn’t match a traveler’s first-day energy, he says.

Tijuana with its border-town kitsch and poverty would leave vacationers with mixed feelings.

Mancini says he likes to put his most-anticipated activity or destination at the end of the trip. As with many travelers, he can get tired or homesick.

Having a favorite stop at the trip’s end helps him keep excited about the trip.

He also tells planners not to get trapped into one vacation idea or destination. It’s often easy to split up trips and include extra stops at little additional expense.

For instance, Mancini was delighted to discover that a trip to visit his family in Boston could include a stop in Bermuda with just a negligible change in air fare.

Finally, Mancini suggests outlining a trip on a calendar or chart, listing plans, schedules and hotels for each day.

Make sure there’s a variety of daily activities, with active days followed by passive ones.

“Drawing it out gives you a feeling for how packed you will be or won’t be,” he says.

Mitchell, the South Carolina author, designs his trips around a three-day formula: half-day sightseeing the first day, a full-day sightseeing the second, and the next day, nothing. The fourth day, he starts at the beginning again.

He says it has gotten easier for independent travelers to plan their own trips to even distant locations. Many overseas hotels and tourist offices now have fax machines and e-mail, which can help bridge language barriers.

But he warns against overplanning. Vacationers often find the most memorable part of a journey springs from chance encounters, he says.

Other travelers might suggest a promising day trip. Locals could extend invitations to festivals or offer to serve as tour guides.

“It would be a shame to miss that because you were set to visit a castle that afternoon,” he says.

Finally, Mitchell suggests minimizing hotel changes by settling into one place for four or five days.

“Even seasoned travelers don’t like to pack and unpack,” he says. “I try to approach it as a lazy person: If you’re lazy, you’re relaxed, you enjoy it.”