Planning a holiday I believe is a skill, over the years with extensive travel and planning for that I still sometimes goof up. Planning is all done on paper whereas when you actually travel dynamics change. When I travel, I try to find out as much as possible of that place, keeping in mind all the available options as well as the budget. There are 4 main expenses to any holiday, the airfare, hotel, food, and admission ticket to places you want to visit. After that can keep some money for shopping and leisure. If these 4 expenses are well accounted for then the travel will more or less stay in the budget planned, unless one is a shopping freak and splurge money on it. When I travel, I do not prefer to shop much, except for a few souvenirs of the place. Clothes and random things I majorly avoid unless it is a steal deal and worth it.

These days planning a holiday by self has become very easy. I have never been the person who wants to book a holiday through an agent, but couple of places I have done that like for Egypt, Iran and Turkey. Language is a major barrier here, so I booked it through an agent and customized it as per my requirement. The draw back here is that the cost goes up drastically. If planned by self, on the same cost one can save minimum 25% and also in the 75% spent there will be better hotels and deals that can be grabbed on. I have started using some of these apps like Klook for attraction bookings, they have good offers and worth the deals.

Self-clicked picture

While preparing for my Japan holiday, I first contacted an agent, who gave me a budget of 300K per person for low grade cramped up hotels, flights not included and seat in coach internal excursion travel options. I could not justify the cost and was not happy with the deal. So I started working on my own. In the same cost, I booked 5 star hotels with big spacious rooms, economy premium airfare tickets, all the excursions on private basis and food, shopping, attractions entry fee, leisure all budgeted in it. If I would have taken with the agent, apart from paying 300K to them, I would had to spend additionally on airfare, food, shopping, attraction tickets, leisure, which would have possibly taken my cost between 450k to 475K per person. Planning it myself I could save 150K minimum per person, and for the 3 of us it is big money, probably we could do one more holiday with that money.

There is a lot of hassle in planning but then it is worth it, because you know exactly what you you will get in the money spent, and you will always get value for money and also save money. This time AI tool has been very helpful to me in doing the planning. It guides me with exact locations, to an extent in a subway which exit I need to take to reach to my destination, everything is guided. Let's see now how exactly everything goes. I am sure there will be some hitches but then it's ok, after all travelling is adventure.

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