In August I visited Hong Kong with two of my good friends and I thought it would be fun to share some tips to make traveling with friends a breeze!
Pick your travel partners wisely – This sounds kind of weird but hear me out. During your trip you will be spending ALL of your time with your friends during these “x” amount of days/weeks, this means flying (or driving), sleeping in the same room, dealing with each other when you’re tired and hangry, etc. You don’t want to spend your trip dealing with drama, so pick your closest friends who have a similar outlook on traveling.
Talk about the places and things you want to see – One of the first things to do after deciding to go on a trip with friends is to get together, sit down and talk about your expectations for the trip; try to be on the same page before you go. List all of the places you want to see and decide together which ones you will visit. You will probably have to compromise at some point during the trip, because everyone has different travel tastes, but go for it! (because YOLO and such..) You may be surprised by how awesome your friend’s ideas are.
Discuss your budget – This one is very important because you want everyone to feel comfortable with the amount of money you will be spending on hotels, activities, food, etc. Again, you want everyone in your group to be on the same page, because money can always cause awkward problems and you don’t want to deal with that while you’re on vacation.
Start a Pinterest Group Board – Pinterest is by far my favorite tool for travel planning (follow me!). I haven’t used a group board yet, but it sounds like amazing resource; especially for planning a trip with friends! What better way to share your must see’s than a group board.
Download the Splitwise App – I read about this app before our trip to Hong Kong and it was really helpful and free!! When traveling with a group a lot of times one person will pay for the group, whether it’s at restaurants or reserving a hotel room. The app helps the group keep track of expenses, it will do the math for you and keep track of payments as well. Another awesome thing about this app is that you can change the currency for when you travel abroad. Read More on the App.
Bonus Tip: Take tons of pictures, create a hashtag and have a blast! It’s not every day you get to travel and explore a new country/city with your besties!
