Have you planned your Christmas/New-Year vacations?

It's not too late if you haven't yet planned your year-end trip. Christmas and New Year week is generally planned by many of us because of multiple practical reasons. And it's very important to plan this week well in advance because of high demand of good hotels and better deals. Travelling and Staying during this week in one of the popular tourist destinations is an expensive affair and smart travellers do it through various means. This Photo Journey will talk about few ways to get good deals at better prices.

If I have to plan such trips, the first thing I would do is to list down places which are not so popular during last week of december. There are two main reasons - saving on cost and avoiding crowdedness. When this list is ready, check if weather is a reason for rejecting some of the options. Now other factors would come in - the time I have is sufficient for the destinations listed etc. Now start searching more on web about things we can do at these destinations and further choose the options which suites to everyone in your group. Most of the times, we end up at 3-4 options. 

AT this point of time, everyone in the group will have preferences. One of the logical step to reach to the right conclusion is to start looking at the options to travel and stay. There are various online portals which present the comparative data in a very useful manner. Wesbites like MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip , Ghumakkar.com & Yatra.com are reasonably good places for doing such research and get a sense of budget you need to plan for. During this exercise, you need to be very aware if there is significant budget differences between the options we finally shortlist. I know, it's not always that simple, because personal preferences are most important. 

Subsequently we end up deciding on a destination and now comes one of the most important steps of booking Hotel/Resort and flight(s)/train(s). Thanks for online competition, which is very helpful in fetching good deals. More the time in hands, better is the probability to get awesome deals. Nowadays you have flexibility of subscribing to fluctuation in flight/hotel prices, if time permits. This definitely helps in reducing the overall cost of the trip. Recently lot of coupon companies have also came in which help in reducing the cost further. But here we need to be very careful about choosing the right websites. I am sure that many of you already check a lot on the web before taking action and that's definitely a good approach. At the same time, try to reduce your risk to avoid frustration in worst cases, which happens at times. I keep a regular check on deals being offered at Travel​ coupons and deals  and have planned some trips which were decided only because of better deals :).  As a traveller, you always look for reasons to pack the bags and move out to explore something new. Apart from Travel section, I love to explore the Photography section and have made best use of it.

I encourage to use online booking portals & coupon websites like cuponation, but at the same time it's advisable to reach out to same hotels, airlines to check which of them is giving you better value in terms of money as well as peace of mind. If the difference is not significant, I always prefer direct booking with Hotels or Airlines, but in today's world of competition, there is high probability of finding some really good deals through other route which can be time consuming but worth. 

Good planning can bring a lot of difference to your vacations. So this was just a reminder to the folks who haven't yet started planning year-end vacations. It's right time to start doing your research and celebrate Christmas & New Year at some special place.