Traveling in a large group is always cool, but there are certain difficulties. For example, in organization. It’s necessary to agree with everyone, to take responsibility for entertainment and overnight stays. Let’s find out how to get the will in the fist and do the impossible – to organize a group trip to enjoy it all.
Create a Chat
You can’t go anywhere without chat rooms when planning a trip with a lot of people. Yes, it will be a mess of opinions, because people are different. Someone reads once a week and constantly asks questions, someone writes back with post-it notes so that you have to figure out what he meant. But it’s good that some modern messengers have the ability to anchor messages and create polls. You can always find out the latest news and decisions from pinned messages and quickly express your opinion by voting in a poll.
But it takes a lot from you, too. Try to be specific and to the point. Consider the wishes of all, and do not forget about yours. Remember, it’s hard to please everyone, but you can always split up into a couple of days so everyone can go where they want.
Keep in mind that not everyone is comfortable speaking their mind, especially if they don’t agree with the majority. Make it clear to these people that you can address any issues in person.
Gather Information
The first thing to decide is your travel date and destination. There are a lot of people with their own lives, so choose dates and places together. It shouldn’t be convenient for just one person, so everyone else has to adjust. Share the Google Calendar with everyone, so everyone can mark a convenient time to travel.
Another important thing is to do it ahead of time. It doesn’t matter how far you’re going, or if you’ll be flying. Decide on a date a few months in advance. Remember that it can be adjusted due to the cost of tickets and lodging. All participants should be aware of these shifts.
When choosing a destination, it’s also important to consider everyone’s opinions. Choose something that everyone has something to do in one place or another. That’s why it’s most ideal to have a trip to several countries or cities.
The next step is to price the tickets. Usually the tickets with good prices come on weekdays, and it’s more expensive to fly on weekends. Experiment with the cities of departure, maybe from the neighboring even cheaper? Consult with the participants, who is fundamentally important to fly from. And once you have found a good price – collect the data from the participants and buy tickets for all at once, rather than separately. That way there is less chance of buying tickets at different prices.
If not everyone is from the same city and someone plans to join already in place, arrange a place and time to meet, give the address of the accommodation and keep the person informed of your movements.
Now we’re looking for lodging! Since there are a lot of you, you can look for accommodations with amenities, rather than settle for bunks in rooms for 10 people. It’s cheaper, but it’s a shower at the end of the hallway, an uncomfortable toilet, and no breakfast. It’s better to rent an apartment or house. Some places even give a group discount.
Find out who is ready to lay out a maximum for housing, calculate the average and then look for options. Post your findings in the chat room, and the participants will use voting to choose the right one.
Ask About the Leisure
Even those who at first “agree to everything” will eventually become dissatisfied with something and snort that they were not asked about anything. And there’s a way out of this. Try to schedule time so that your company has at least one joint event in the day: a picnic in the park, a trip to the rides, bypassing the main sights, and so on. Everything else is optional. Maybe someone wants to spend evenings playing a slot machine online instead of walking around the city, while another person decides to split off for half a day and walk their own route, so let them go. In the evening, it will be interesting to listen to what people have seen and where they have been.
The basic idea is not to plan every minute, and if anything, not to grumble that “we’re running out of time, we have two more museums scheduled for today!” No one needs that kind of vacation. Pick something the most fun and go together, and let everyone else do the rest in their own way.
Ask for Help
If you have a group of 5-6 people, it’s not that difficult to cope with organization. If there are more people, ask for help. Taking the burden of organizing everything is hard, somewhere you can overlook and make mistakes that can jeopardize the trip. You always need a fresh eye and an extra pair of hands to look for hotels while you buy tickets for everyone.
