I’ve been on dozens of girl trips over the years.  It doesn’t matter how many you’ve been on, it always seems to be a challenge to get everything together.  I thought I’d give you my checklist of things to do to make your trip as easy and pleasant as possible.

In our group, we always take turns being the organizer.  This is important for many reasons. First, everybody gets a chance to pick their favorite spots.  Secondly, the workload gets passed around every year.  Finally, if you don’t like to plan, you only have to do it once every few years!

We’ve found it easier for scheduling to pick the same month(s) every year.  We don’t always choose the same week, because not everyone can travel at the same time, but if we all know it’s coming in March or April, we’ll allow flexibility in our schedules to make sure we can shift things around.

We usually go in the spring because we like to visit places with gardens and other early spring outdoor activities.   Wherever you go, if it’s too hot or too cold, you’ll end up spending most of your time indoors. 

When we first started doing girl trips, the organizer would always host the trip at her house.  That meant one of us felt like she didn’t get away that year, so we changed to neutral sites.   Whoever is the organizer should choose 2 destinations to propose to the group.  If your group is scattered across the country, keep in mind travel costs.  It won’t always work out this way, but the fairest way is to pick locations with nearly equal travel requirements. Browse through some of the past posts on Girlaway to find places perfect for a girls getaway.

Another reason we like to go in the spring is because many of the popular spots plan festivals and other activities for the warming weather.  Search for your destinations’ calendar of events to see what’s going on that month.  You might need to get advanced tickets to some events.  In any case, it will help you to narrow down your two choices if one of them has a big event going on.

I always double check my locations on weather.com to make sure the weather will be accommodating.  Places like Santa Fe can be cool in the early spring, so if you want it to be over 70, you should wait until May.  If you’re going to Austin or Savannah, you’ll want to go much earlier.

After you all settle on a location, you’ll have to find a place to stay. Check to see if anybody has member discounts (AAA,  corporate, etc.)  for hotels.  When we stayed in Pasadena, one of the girls in the group was able to use her corporate rate and we stayed at the Ritz for the price of a Holiday Inn.  Just keep everyone’s budget in mind, but remember that some of the best hotels have great weekend rates. When you’re sharing a room, it can be pretty inexpensive. Try Expedia’s mapping feature to find a hotel with a great location close to points of interest in the area. 

Use TripHub’s Event scheduler and blogging feature as a tool to coordinate your travel group and iron out the trip details.  I just started using this recently and it’s an invaluable tool.  It also cuts down on the emails and questions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Travel Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.