How to plan your own trip. How to plan a trip on your own: practical advice. We are going on a trip

Beginning travelers usually choose all-inclusive package tours, most often to Turkey or Egypt. But after several such trips, everyone begins to think about planning an independent trip. And at this moment, a dozen questions arise. We have tried to collect in the article the most common of them.

What to take with you

If you are a little scattered and periodically lose something, then these tips are primarily for you.

• Credit cards and cash. You don't need to take a lot of cash on your trip. It is better to take debit or credit cards. Almost everywhere there is the possibility of paying by card, or in extreme cases, a bank where you can withdraw cash. You don't have to take all your cards with you. If possible, take with you a card with the currency of the country where you plan to go. And also leave at least one card at home, if you still lose your wallet, and you urgently need to buy something, for example, a ticket for a return flight, you can use Internet banking. We have already written about .
• Set a spending limit on the card. Be sure to set a cash withdrawal limit on all cards, even if you are not going anywhere. If, nevertheless, the card falls into the wrong hands, they will not be able to withdraw more than the limit amount from it. And you can change the limit at any time via the Internet bank or by phone.
• Copies of documents. Make several copies of your documents, insurances, and important phone numbers in advance. Put copies in each bag if you have more than one. And also throw them on your email, in the "cloud" and on the phone itself. Whatever happens, you can access your documents.
• Insurance. A must for travel. We hope you will not need it, but in any case it will not be superfluous. In most countries, medicine is much more expensive than in our country, and in some countries, without insurance, you won’t be able to get to the doctor at all. By the way, when opening cards in a bank, they can also offer favorable insurance conditions, for example, you will receive insurance for free with this card.

Packing a suitcase for a trip

Perhaps, when you are going on a short trip, you take a huge suitcase or a small backpack is enough for a month. We all have different habits. But if you think about it, most often on a trip we don’t need 5 pairs of boots or jeans. It is better to think over your wardrobe for every day in advance. Be sure to check the weather forecast. And also, if you do not check in your luggage on the plane, but take only hand luggage, this saves a lot of time at the airport, and also dramatically reduces the chances of losing luggage.

Install offline map

Before the upcoming trip, be sure to study the travel itinerary. If possible, print or buy a map. There are also many offline maps on the phone, very convenient maps.me. If you suddenly get lost, there will be something to use.

Buy a SIM card

We can no longer imagine ourselves without the phone and the Internet. Now there is a huge choice of operators and tariffs. You can buy a universal card for travelers - Drimsim. The cost of a SIM card is 10 euros. When you receive a SIM card, top it up with 10 euros and you will receive more as a bonus 5 euros.

Transport

Be sure to check the transport schedule before your trip. You will definitely need to get from the airport or train station to the place of temporary accommodation. Print out addresses as well as route numbers and stops. you can find a lot of useful information.

Foreign language

Undoubtedly, in many countries they know English, if you know it - this is a huge plus. But still there are a number of countries in which English will not help you much. Be sure to find out what language the local population speaks, memorize some important phrases or write them down. You should also write down the address of your accommodation in the local language. This is an important point if you are planning a trip to the east. If possible, install an online translator on your phone, with it it will be easier for you to understand or explain.

Nutrition

Think about nutrition. Now there are a lot of services, such as Tripadvisor, Foursquare, with which you can choose an institution to your liking. But we advise you to eat in "non-tourist" establishments: it will be cheaper and tastier there. Seek advice from locals. Walking around the city, pay attention to which institution has fewer tourists and more locals.

Help

If you need help, you get lost, you need to print a ticket - do not panic. Almost every country loves tourists and is ready to help. In hotels, you can explain the situation and they will give you a call, print out a ticket or let you go to the toilet. Many cities have tourist centers. There you can get qualified help on any issues. Information desks can be found at various popular tourist spots. Volunteers are often assigned to them, who can answer all the questions that have arisen.

As you can see, there is nothing wrong with independent travel. We have great tips about and. For more savings, look for travel.

Traveling with travel agencies is not always convenient. Let's say you bought a bus tour of the Golden Ring of Russia, it may not be a vacation, but a torment. After all, on the bus you will find yourself with people whom you will have to endure all week. Add to this a time limit, each attraction is allocated a strictly limited time. Add here the route, approved and unshakable, from which you can’t turn or rewrite. And on the way you will be constantly brought to shops, souvenir shops and you will eat in the “right” places. It doesn't sound very good anymore. Obviously, a tour package is the choice of those who find it difficult or simply lazy to carry out their plans on their own.

It's no secret that for an independent traveler, preparing for a trip takes many times more time than the trip itself. Unless you decide to surrender to the will of fate, give a thumbs up and go hitchhiking around the country. But quite desperate people are drawn into such adventures. We just want to relax and see something new and interesting.

In the case of traveling around Russia, everything is both simpler and more difficult at the same time. If you are not traveling by private vehicle, then the main problem of the whole trip will naturally be transportation. Whatever one may say, the main aspect to be considered is the distance. In the conditions of “my native country is wide”, the method of weekends away from home, so beloved by Europeans, is hardly suitable for us. Judge for yourself, to fly by plane from Moscow to Lake Baikal (the nearest airport in Irkutsk), at best, you will spend about 6 hours in the air. In the worst case, you will spend from 17 to 22 hours on a flight with a transfer in Novosibirsk, and a flight together back and forth will cost about 50,000 rubles.

Agree, a very wealthy person can afford such a pleasure, and he certainly will not fly to Baikal for 2 days. The example is far-fetched, you say, because from Moscow you can easily and quickly fly to Sochi or the Crimea. But to the Urals, Altai or Kamchatka - the most beautiful places in Russia, fly no less. And what about those who do not live in Moscow, some of our compatriots will fly to Sochi as much as Muscovites will fly to Lake Baikal. And we considered only air traffic. One can easily imagine how long it takes to travel on the Russian Railway.

So it turns out that if you are going to travel around Russia, then you need to go for at least a week, or even two. And the pleasure from a long vacation is much more than from a short one.
Our article will help you choose a place to stay in Russia:. So the place has been chosen. We pass to the second stage.

Buying tickets.

The most important and very important part of planning is buying train tickets - all at once and for your entire journey, including return tickets. The fact is that the railway message is the most popular in Russia and during the holiday season tickets fly like hot cakes. By postponing the purchase of tickets to the last moment, you risk simply not getting on the train you need. Therefore, ideally, you need to buy a ticket as soon as it opens sale. This happens 45 days before the date of the trip, so it is possible that you will have to buy tickets several times, because we add vacation time to 45 days of the first ticket and it turns out that return tickets have not yet gone on sale. In order to avoid numerous trips to the station, and not rarely, railway stations are located only in large cities, it is advisable to buy tickets via the Internet on the official website of Russian Railways.

Having bought an e-ticket, you may well feel safe, except for one small detail - you will need to print an e-ticket before traveling at the terminals located in the station buildings. Here you may encounter several difficulties. Firstly, there is often a queue at the terminals, and secondly, the terminal will not print your ticket less than 10 minutes before the train departs, so we strongly advise you to come to the station with a small margin of time (an hour and a half).

Having calculated the travel time and bought all the tickets, we now know exactly the number of days that we will spend away from home. It's time to look for housing.

Hotel search.

The hotel business in Russia is quite well developed, but there are also unscrupulous hoteliers, living in a hotel of such an owner can completely spoil the whole impression of your vacation. Therefore, when choosing a hotel, be sure to look at the reviews. That is why we will book a hotel via the Internet and through a large website, which has a large database of hotels and a database of reviews of visitors to these hotels. Another argument in favor of online hotel booking is that, as a rule, we do not care where we live and we choose the place of residence based on its actual location on the map. To do this, you can easily use the map below. On it you can choose any hotel you like in Sochi.

If we are interested in another city, we will use the form below and simply enter the desired place in the search bar.

Then everything is as easy as shelling pears - choose the hotel you like, read the reviews, look at its location on the map and book. You will not have any difficulties or problems. All hotels participating in the booking program, in case of their dishonest work, can be influenced by filing a complaint on the site. Therefore, all the hotels presented on the site monitor their good reputation - after all, at the present time, online booking is almost the main source of customers for hotels.

Do you need excursions while traveling?

So, all the main and most costly manipulations are done! We booked tickets, we booked a hotel. It's a matter of small. Map out interesting places to visit and schedule excursions. It's already faster here. For an independent traveler, it is important to make a choice - book excursions through travel agencies or continue to travel everywhere and around by public transport and on your own two feet.

It all depends on the place you have chosen to stay. If you have focused your attention on Sochi, then it will not be difficult for you to go to all the significant sights, both natural and man-made, on your own. In Sochi, things are very good with public transport, and the Lastochka train will make your travels a real pleasure. About the sights of Sochi, we have a large series of articles on our website:. Of course, not all the sights of Sochi are presented and described in it, but all the most interesting things are there. The main plus of self-sightseeing is savings - getting somewhere on your own is always cheaper than with a tour. And do not forget that in most cases you pay for the stories of the guide. If you can do without local legends, and do not like being taken to cheese dairies, apiaries and wine shops, then it is better to refuse excursions.

Based on the foregoing, we strongly recommend that you do not spend money on excursions to Sochi, but see everything yourself.

The situation is cardinally opposite with excursions in the North Caucasus. Here, transport links are not very well developed and, let's say, you will not get to Elbrus in any way, except on a sightseeing bus. Therefore, excursions in the Caucasian mineral waters are not just a whim, but a very necessary and often even irreplaceable thing. You can get acquainted with the sights of the CMS in our other series of articles.

Hello friends! We are happy to know that more and more people join the ranks of independent travelers. We are among them. This type of travel allows you to get the most out of the trip, while saving the budget and giving you the right to choose how much and where to stay. In this article, we share tips on how to how to plan your own trip. I hope they will help novice travelers in planning a trip, and give impetus to those who doubt and think that this is not realistic.

We like to plan trips on our own, not to be dependent on a certain framework that tours dictate. In some cases, of course, they do. For example, when the goal is to see several countries in the minimum number of days, and cut off those that do not please. And those that you liked - visit on your own, having planned your trip in advance.

One of my favorite phrases is “Preparing for a journey is already the beginning of a journey.” In our opinion, every tourist trip begins with planning and preparation, and not when we have reached our destination. Indeed, during the waiting period, the brain subconsciously already begins to travel, for example, looking through photos, making a plan of what you want to see and what sights to see, buying tickets, etc.

Ideally, it is best to plan your trip in advance. Approximately 3-6 months before the trip. This will make it possible to save on tickets, as well as choose good accommodation. It is necessary to decide in advance on the type of vacation, for example, it will be a vacation at sea, in the mountains, a ski vacation, sightseeing, etc., as well as the approximate time (month) of the planned trip. It's cool when a person is not tied to work or a vacation can be adjusted to travel. In this case, it remains only to choose a direction.

Choice of direction

As a rule, the organization of trips begins with the choice of direction. Nowadays, the doors to many countries of the world are open, it all depends on preferences and opportunities. is replenished every year. So, with an ordinary foreign passport, you can visit about 50 countries without a visa. This year, they included Antigua and Barbuda, Qatar, Uruguay and Thailand. In addition, with a biometric passport, you can visit 26 countries that are members of the European Union, as well as Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, which are part of the Schengen zone. I will not list all the countries, as I have already written about them. If you are interested please follow the links above.As you can see, the choice is quite large, I'm not talking about countries with visas on arrival, or for which an e-visa is required.

If you need to apply for a visa at the embassy in the desired country, this is also not a problem. Yes, the process will take time, and you need to prepare the required package of documents, but everything is real. Before the introduction of a visa-free regime, we issued and. Nothing wrong with that. Prepare a list of documents, sign up at the embassy, ​​come at the appointed time to submit documents, pay the fee and wait for about 5-7 days depending on the country.

The choice of country directly depends on your preferences. Depending on your budget, there are great options to choose from. I have a vacation without the sea is not a vacation, so we plan one trip a year to the sea, all the rest depend on preferences and wishes, as well as on the offers of carriers. For example, if the country is interesting and tickets are affordable.

Buying and booking tickets

And so, the course is set, we proceed to booking and buying tickets. An important point in preparing for the trip is the search and booking of tickets. Nowadays, there are many cool resources that help solve many problems without leaving your home or office. Including buying a ticket. To do this, you do not need to go anywhere, stand in line, wasting your time.

Ticket booking services work online, you only need access to the Internet and any "conductor" - phone, laptop, PC, tablet, etc.To purchase air tickets, we use the search engines Aviasales, Skyscanner, Buruki. To do this, you just need to fill out the form, indicating the city of departure and arrival, the exact dates of the trip, the number of passengers.

Aviasales system performs a search for tickets for 728 airlines, after which it issues a list, starting with the most budget options. You can select the number of transfers in the filters. The system also finds tickets, for example, Ryanair, SkyUp, Fly Dubai.

The search is carried out on 728 airlines, 5 booking systems and 15 major agencies.

After the purchase, the ticket comes to your mail, you just need to print it and take it with you. All personal data must be filled in in accordance with the travel document (foreign passport).

Top tips for buying cheap flights:

Buy tickets during the week. The cheapest options can be found on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Weekends and holidays tend to be more expensive.

Do not stop at one search engine, check the cost of air tickets on several resources and compare prices.

When buying tickets, pay attention to luggage. Is it included in the ticket price or do you have to pay extra for it.

The best price for air tickets is 2 months before the flight.

Evening and night flights tend to be cheaper than daytime flights. You may need .

You can read the full list of tips here.

In addition to air, cheap tickets can be found on the bus or train. We recently traveled on the Intercity Kiev-Przemysl. Fast, comfortable and affordable. In addition, not so long ago a good and inexpensive one entered Ukraine. He works in Europe, Russia, and now with us. You can find and buy FlixBus tickets online by filling out a simple form.

As for train tickets, everything is also simple here. Moreover, you can also buy railway tickets in Ukraine online. we have shared with you before.

Booking a hotel or apartment

The place is chosen, tickets are bought, the next step in planning a trip is accommodation. It's good when you have friends or relatives who will accept you to stay for a few days, but if there are none, what to do? The answer is obvious - you need to find housing in advance!

Search in Hotellook is carried out on 30 booking systems in 220 countries of the world.

Before you start looking for a room or apartment, you need to determine the basic requirements for housing. If you are going to travel around the country or sightseeing, and you need a room just for the night, choose rooms without frills. In this case, you do not need a designer interior, cool appliances, new furniture, etc.

Room rates may vary depending on location. Look at the map where the hotel is located, whether it is convenient to get there and on what. In some cases, it is worth paying more for a hotel than spending money on public transport.

Choose accommodation according to seasonality. If the trip is planned in the summer, pay attention to the presence of air conditioning, if in the winter - to the presence of heating.

View photos and reviews of people who have already visited this hotel, and not on booking sites. Often the photos do not correspond to reality or photoshop. We always look at several sites, for example, Turpravda, TripAdvisor, TopHotels, then compare photos, read reviews, and make a choice.

Room requirements may vary depending on your wishes. For instance:

• Availability of free parking if traveling by car
• sea ​​view
• The presence of a balcony
• Internet presence
• Room with breakfast etc

We use online services to book rooms and apartmentsHotellok , Hotels24 , Dobovo , as well asBooking, Agoda . I will not give detailed instructions for booking hotels, maybe I will write a separate article about this, I just want to give the main advice: carefully read the information about the hotel, what is included in the price and what is not, so as not to be disappointed or overpay.

After booking, a confirmation will be sent to your email address. You need to print it out and take it with you when you travel.

Travel insurance

When planning a trip on your own, it is imperative to take out travel insurance. To do this, just come to the insurance company or buy a travel voucher online. Nowadays, there are many companies and services for buying insurance. We use, tripinsurance , Parasol. After purchase, the voucher will be sent to your email. Before the trip, you need to print it and take it with you.

D To apply for travel insurance, you need passport data and an IIN. Insurance is issued for the duration of your stay abroad. The sum insured may vary depending on the country of visit, for example, for European countries the sum insured is 30,000 euros.If you plan to travel by car or want to rent a car, find out if your license is right. In addition, for those traveling by car, you need to apply for a green card. It can be bought from the insurance company on arrival or online, and is often sold at the border. Detail we have already written. If you are interested please follow the link.

List of travel documents:

Foreign passport (original and copy). Visa, if required;

Travel medical insurance for the duration of your stay abroad;

Tickets;

Hotel reservation or invitation.

In addition to documents, we always draw up a travel plan. We write down the places we want to see. If necessary, indicate the location.

Review. In the article we wrote our tips How to plan a trip yourself. I hope they help and make your trip planning easier. Share in the comments your life hacks or useful resources that help you on your journey.

Thanks for reading our blog. See you soon on the pages of our

How to turn a seemingly boring activity into an exciting one, now we’ll tell you. For this, however, you need the Internet, but the Internet is no longer a problem. Here are seven simple steps, go ahead.

Step one. Divination by the map of the world.

Decide where we want. We choose a country of interest to us or, if there are no specific aspirations, we simply poke at random into the map. We open any Internet search engine: google.com, yandex.ru, rambler.ru, aport.ru, yahoo.com, altavista.com ... I bet ten against one: when you type "Iceland" or "Czech Republic" into the search engine window, or "Egypt" or "Morocco", then the first page of results will be dominated by links to the websites of travel agencies. Forget about them, information about countries there is usually scarce and stolen from each other. It is possible to familiarize, but it is not necessary to be limited. We continue to dig. We use special search engines blog.yandex.ru and blogsearch.google.com, which do not scour the entire Internet, but blogs and forums. To see what real people write, not PR departments of agencies.

Step two. Dreams and reality.

We have thought of a country (or several countries) - we begin to specify our desires. You may be disappointed, but there is a lot of tension with the unknown on the planet: all more or less interesting places have already been photographed, and these photos are on the Internet. The most dashing way is the GoogleEarth program: it is downloaded (quickly) from earth.google.com and installed with one button. GoogleEarth is essentially a globe glued together from thousands of space photos. By zooming in, you can even see isolated people near the banal Eiffel Tower. We downloaded it, launched it, checked that the panoramio layer was turned on, and now we are traveling around the world map, at the same time seeing which photos were taken in which part of this world.

Step three. With a magnifying glass on the planet.

We understand that the first thing you will do is find your home to see what it looks like from space. Or maybe a photo of your street taken by one of the neighbors will be glued next to it. As you see enough, turn the globe in the direction of the desired country. Here it makes sense to connect books, guidebooks, encyclopedias and online communities to the search. And look at the planet until there is a strong desire to go exactly here. As soon as it sizzled, we consider that you have decided. Choose the cities you want to visit. And we looked at how they look (caves, monuments, castles, parks, attractions, towers, restaurants). Or beer. Or food. Or the Reichenbach Falls, where Sherlock Holmes fought Professor Moriarty...

Step four. My own navigator.

The next step is route planning. From where, where and in what order will you go? By what transport? For now, we're just figuring it out. Getting to the first point abroad by train or plane? How to get around there? In Europe, for example, there are low-cost flights - air travel at ridiculous prices, but without amenities. Or you will rent a car, and then you need to remember that you can rent a car from large companies in one city, and rent it in another and even in another country. But it will be more expensive. And you can rent it cheaper, but from a local company, then you will have to rent it in the same place where you took it. Trains, ferries, timetables, it's all on the Internet. A list of sites where to look is attached. Rates are listed there as well.

At this point, your plan may need to be adjusted. It is possible that the order of visiting cities will have to be changed for the sake of ease of movement. Hint: mapping services, like GoogleEarth, can plot routes. You mark the start and end points of the trip on the map, and smart technology tells you how much it will be in kilometers and how to go if by car.

Step five. We are looking for housing.

Let's get down to specifics. And we immediately assume that you don’t have anyone you know there, otherwise why do you need our instructions? Accommodation options: hotels, apartments, motels, hostels, tents (tents are for extreme people, besides, many countries do not trust Russians with tents, they require you to book a hotel). A motel is a hotel for car travelers. A hostel (if you ignore the horror movie of the same name) is something like a hostel. Cheap, but you have to share a room with strange people, mostly students, mostly tourists too. Shower with toilet is in the hallway. An apartment is simply rented housing, an apartment or a house.

We begin to search - again on the Internet - these same hotels, motels, hostels. We are not lazy, we sort through the search options. We search in google, we search in yahoo, we make requests like “hotels (city name)”, “apartments (city name)”, we study sites (the list of which, again, is attached). And here it is very important to understand: these sites, which present heaps of hotels or apartments, are not sellers for you. Use them as a directory. We looked at the photos of the hotel - we climb to look for it on the map. We study how conveniently located, at what distance from the historical center, transport hubs or the nearest tavern. did you like some of the options? We start looking for hotel pages, or at least coordinates in the form of e-mail and phone, in order to negotiate directly with them in the future. Prices in the hotel itself can be significantly lower than those stated on hostels.com or hotels.com. But they can also be significantly higher. If you want to save money - compare!

By the way, if you stay outside of the capitals, you can save a lot. Do not be lazy to study offers outside the chosen Prague, Barcelona and Paris. You are not going to sit in the room, why pay more? It is enough to drive away from the big city for 10-20 km, and the cost of a room per day can drop to some 20 euros.

Step six. The only boring one.

So, let's start documenting the trip. Most embassies for a visa require:

1) prove to them that you will arrive and will surely leave,

2) to prove that something keeps you in your homeland,

3) prove that you have something to live on in their country.

In practice, this means that you need to provide round-trip tickets, a certificate of income from your place of work, an extract from a bank account, a certificate of purchase of foreign currency or traveler's checks, confirmation of hotel reservations for each day of stay, medical insurance. Well, as a rule, two photographs and a completed application form, which can be downloaded from the embassy website or taken from this embassy.

The first point is clear: you buy tickets there and back. If inside the host country you are not limited to one hotel, then take care of tickets for movement on the spot. In the case of Europe or North America, this is not difficult, on the Internet you can see all the schedules and buy tickets. In less developed countries, however, embassy requirements are not so strict. By the way, in many countries, transport runs like a Swiss watch, so you can even plan transfers from bus to bus somewhere in a remote village on the Internet.

The second point is also clear. Go to the accounting department, take a certificate of income, go to the bank, take an account statement. But keep in mind: the embassy may require an extract on the movement of funds for the last months. Therefore, the feint with the ears “put two thousand euros, immediately took an extract and showed it to the embassy a week later” may not work.

The third point will require you to know the language or a person who knows the language. However, in practice, hotels that are ready to receive tourists from abroad will be satisfied with a letter in broken English “I want 1 room for 2 persons from 4 july to 11 july, our names Nikolay Pupkin and Zinaida Pupkina, please send me confi rmation by fax eight*****". This is an important point, many embassies do not trust printouts of electronic confirmations, so ask hotels for faxes. And make sure that the fax from the hotel has its address, phone and e-mail. What if someone in the embassy wants to call and check? Some hotels require prepayment. Get a card like Visa or Master Card, and it’s more convenient to carry money than cash, and use it to pay for the reservation all over the same Internet. If the embassy wants to see your cash, show it, and then throw it into the account of the same card.

It’s also a good idea to attach a trip plan, since you have it ready for a long time with this approach. This inspires respect among the embassies.

The only unpleasant moment: the line at the embassy may have to be taken after dark and, as a rule, you have to stand on the street. Let a thermos of coffee warm you at this moment and the thought that you are now saving at least one hundred euros, which agencies usually charge for such a service.

If you, studying the peculiarities of submitting documents to a particular embassy, ​​come across remarks like “yes, there are only three pieces of paper, they give visas without any problems,” you don’t have to be led by it. Collect not a minimum, but a maximum of pieces of paper. The more carefully you prepare your transparent daddy with these pieces of paper, the less chance of rejection. Does the specific embassy require you to present round trip tickets? Put them in a folder anyway, in extreme cases, the embassy worker will say: “This is not necessary” - and will return it immediately upon receipt of the documents. Are you a husband and wife and are going to the same hotel to live in the same room from arrival to departure? Make a copy of the booking confirmation from the hotel for each person anyway. Etc.

Step seven. Suitcase.

Don't forget your camera.

What happens when you book a hotel away from busy tourist routes, where the staff does not understand how a Russian differs from a Schengen resident.

Here is a free translation of the author's electronic dialogue with the owner of an Austrian hotel.

- I want to book a room for two, such and such dates, such and such data, such and such credit card number. If you know of any problems, please send us a booking confirmation.

- OK.

“Wait, what’s ok?” Send me confirmation!

Well, they sent it.

- How did you send it? I didn't receive anything.

- It can't be that they didn't. Then they sent it to you.

“Then I just got “OK.”

Well, you say you didn't get anything.

- No, that's not good enough. The embassy doesn't need your "okay". Send a normal confirmation that I can show at the embassy. To make sure that I booked a room with you. For two.

- Catch.

And the fax came. He was like, “Okay, he booked. For two".

I had to ask my acquaintances to call their acquaintances in Germany, so that those acquaintances would call the Austrian hotel and explain with their fingers what I required of them.

Savings should be

On average, the agency's standard profit is about 10% of the contract amount. This figure can "walk" depending on what the client wants.

Fixed markups are laid on the "star" of the hotel. Suppose, when buying a five-star ticket, you pay $50 for the room itself, $40 for a four-star ticket, and $30 for a three-star ticket. You can buy a ticket either from an agent or from an operator. The difference is this: the operator himself forms the tourist product, the agent only resells it. But when in a travel agency they show you the prices for tours of some other operator, then on the monitor screen you see the amounts that are already included

agency services.

An individual tour booked at an agency will cost you an extra 15-20% compared to the cost of a group tour. As a rule, six months before the start of the season (summer for travel agencies lasts four months, from June to September), travel companies determine the direction (say, Italy), agree on what days they will fly there (say, Friday), choose an airline and they buy from her a “chain of flights” on some plane (say, for 250 seats). Armchairs are divided among themselves - and they are immediately redeemed.

Sample fax* - booking confirmation so that the embassy does not find fault**

1. Hotel name.

2. Hotel phone.

3. Hotel email.

4. Names and surnames of visitors (preferably passport numbers).

5. Amount.

6. Confirmation of prepayment.

* there are embassies that do not need faxes, for example, the American one will be satisfied with a printout of an email where Petrov confirms that he is inviting Ivanov

** there are embassies for which even a fax is not enough, for example, the Danish one will easily require the original invitation, certified by the local police department

***

The airline is no longer concerned about this issue; it has already sold its 250 seats a week one way. And each travel company with purchased chairs does what it wants. Maybe put one margin, maybe another. Can sell surplus empty seats to an operator that does not fit all customers. On average, a company earns 10-15% of its value on a ticket when buying from a carrier.

The minimum tourist product is air travel, accommodation, transport (delivery from the airport and back, excursions), medical insurance. At the request of the client, individual excursions, translation services, etc. can be added.

Features of national booking

When organizing a trip on your own, remember that you need to keep your eyes open with Far East Asia. Apart from the time difference, the fact that Asians often do not know English and approach work in a slipshod manner can interfere. They can send you an invoice when you haven't booked a hotel room yet.

When negotiating with the Germans, Austrians, Dutch, stretch out into the front. These comrades will require you to strictly follow the instructions. An attempt to bargain is doomed to failure.

But you can bargain with the Turks or Egyptians (yes, it’s easy to go to Egypt and Turkey as a “savage”).

Charter vs regular season

Show pictures!

We travel, therefore we take pictures.

In our time, when the camera is built into the phone, to go somewhere and not bring a photo report looks like a strange act to the limit.

Now we will guess what photos are in the photo archive of 99% of travelers.

Almost all photos outside of this list will be of interest not only to you.

• Me and the monument in the same poses.
• I am familiar with a small monument.
• I am in front of a famous object.
• I'm in a sophisticated pose.
• I am in a landscape.
• Sunset on the sea.
• The food they brought us.
• Narrow European streets.
• Camel.
• Me and camel.
• The sun on the palm.

Untraveled places on the planet

Travels for those curious people who are not afraid of long-distance flights and difficult roads and have enough money.

All rights to this material belong to the magazine"Idea X". When publishing this material on the Internet, a link to magazine "Idea X" and site site. The new issue of the magazine is on sale from July 1, 2009

If you are a traveler or are just about to become one, this book will become an indispensable assistant in organizing your vacation. Here you will find all the necessary information about where and how to purchase tickets, hotels, excursions and other travel services at the best prices. The book contains many tips and recommendations that will help you organize a variety of tours on your own without contacting travel companies. You will learn all the nuances of the tourist world that will help you plan an exciting, safe and comfortable trip for your budget.

* * *

The following excerpt from the book Vacation without a travel agency. How to organize a tour yourself (G. V. Ottens, 2018) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

So why do we travel? For many people, tourism is just a vacation, an opportunity to change the environment. When buying flights or booking hotels, such travelers want to just lie by the sea and do nothing. For another category of tourists, travel means much more than just a change of place and relaxing on the beach. Such tourists make a whole adventure out of their trip, test themselves and their strength. They travel for new acquaintances, actively get acquainted with new cities, studying the nature of unusual places and sightseeing. Some tourists study culture, others go shopping. If we combine all these goals, we will understand that the main reason for traveling is to get new emotions and inspiration.

During the trip, you can not only restore strength, but also get a complete reset of your worldview, a change in your way of thinking, habits and even character. Traveling helps to discover in oneself what was hidden behind the dullness of everyday life, to expand one's consciousness, to realize one's dreams. Travel, in one way or another, has become an integral part of everyone's life. On trips, you can make not only new acquaintances, but also new true friends, important business partners. Thanks to travel, you grow, reach a new level of your personal development. And, of course, the feeling of beauty that we get while traveling is very important, which encourages us to work and live better.

The experience of traveling is certainly transferred to our daily life, and the usual and rather boring things appear in a completely different perspective. We can learn a lot from other cultures. For example, from the Spaniards and the Greeks, you can learn to “correctly” relax. The Greeks have such a rule not to talk about work during friendly meetings, during a siesta, on weekends. If you call a Greek during non-business hours, even for urgent matters, it will be considered bad manners. I hope this book will teach you how to relax culturally and with pleasure, and, most importantly, without much damage to your budget.

How to plan your trip the right way

In order to go and relax for a couple of weeks in one of the hot countries or take a sightseeing tour of Europe, you need to plan your vacation correctly and choose the last-minute offers from tour operators, hotels, airlines and other travel service providers that suit your budget and quality. In this book you will receive a lot of advice on how to plan your own vacation. How to buy air tickets and book hotels at the best prices. Find out where the best hotels are located in different countries of the world, how to arrange travel insurance yourself, how to find out if Russians need a visa for a particular country and many other useful information for your travel.

Any journey is a fascinating and enjoyable process that allows a person to recuperate and learn a lot of new things. However, before you go on a trip, you should consider the many nuances and aspects that arise in any journey. The primary task in such cases is to develop a route, as well as a schedule. The route defines the entire path along which you will have to travel from one point to another to the final destination. The schedule, in turn, determines the time intervals for which you can stay at certain points of the route. We must also not forget that the route should indicate all the hotels and other important places that you may need during the trip. It is worth choosing hotels of the appropriate quality, since such establishments with poor quality of service can spoil the whole impression of the trip. And, of course, the trip should be comfortable for your budget. In addition, an important issue is always a visa and its need for a particular country for the Russians. By foreseeing such details in advance, you can ensure the most effective and enjoyable vacation in general.

There are two options for organizing tourist trips: buying a ready-made package tour from a travel company; and independent organization of recreation without recourse to travel agents. Each of these two travel options has its pros and cons. However, after the infamous “riot” of travel agencies and airlines in 2013-2014, when travel agencies and airlines went bankrupt one after another against the backdrop of a sharp increase in the exchange rate, many tourists began to rely more and more on their own strength and experience to organize their long-awaited vacation. In such cases, it is important to learn how to correctly and profitably buy air tickets, last-minute tours, find suitable hotels and select other travel services necessary for your good rest.

This book is a guide for tourists in the world of independent travel. It will teach you how to properly use popular booking services for various travel services around the world, show you what cultural and national features of a particular country you should pay attention to when planning your trips. In addition, the book will tell you how and where you can save a sufficient amount of your budget, and where you should not do it. Moreover, we will discuss in detail all the important issues of obtaining visas, travel insurance and other documents necessary for your safe trip.