Do you want to make a travel itinerary for a business trip or family vacation?
Are you interested in practical tips on how to create your own travel itinerary with ease?
A well-prepared travel itinerary makes it easier to manage your schedule during your travels.
In this post, you’ll find a step-by-step process on how to make a simple travel itinerary by hand.
You can use these steps to prepare any type of travel itinerary for your needs.
Create an itinerary for your next international business trip, local weekend conference, or your next relaxing beach vacation. It’s completely up to you!
What is a Travel Itinerary?
A travel itinerary is a document that contains detailed information related to a particular trip or excursion.
You can think of a travel itinerary as a tailored plan or guide for your future travels.
Your itinerary will be 100% unique to you and your trip.
Why? It only contains information that is directly relevant to your trip.
As such, you’ll refer to your travel itinerary on a regular basis before, during, and after your trip.
Why Should You Create a Travel Itinerary?
You may be wondering, why should you even bother creating a travel itinerary in the first place?
Firstly, a travel itinerary provides you and your fellow travelers with a handy informational document for your trip.
It’s like having a plan of your trip at your fingertips.
You’ll know exactly where, when, and how you will travel from one location to the next, as well as what to expect.
Secondly, an itinerary serves as a reference for anyone involved in your travel arrangements.
These individuals can be your fellow travelers, colleagues, family members, or emergency contacts.
Individuals can track your travels and know where to reach you in case of an emergency or other situation.
Thirdly, creating a travel itinerary forces you to carefully think about your travel plans.
You must plan, evaluate, and review your travel arrangements and schedule.
This in turn can help you better familiarize yourself with your travel arrangements and understand the need for such arrangements.
How Does a Travel Itinerary Help You Manage Your Time?
Travel itineraries are than just a convenient record of your travels. They can also be useful time management tools.
While the itinerary itself won’t physically move you from one place, it is a type of calendar or schedule.
A travel itinerary can help you:
- Prepare your schedule days, weeks, and months in advance of your trip
- Understand how much time you’ll spend at a particular location or destination
- Gain a better sense of travel time and distance between locations or destinations
- Plan on arriving on time to transportation hubs, connections, and ports
- Make the most of your time during your travels both near and far
- Keep a solid record of your travels for future review and use
What Type of Information is Included in a Travel Itinerary?
Travel itineraries typically include details related to the who, what, where, when, and how of your travels.
Let’s take a thorough look at these considerations one by one.
Who
Who is traveling on the trip? Are there particular people or persons whom you are going to meet or interact with?
Who is going to assist you before, during, and after the trip? Will there be an off-site contact in case of an emergency while you travel?
When
When are you going to travel? Are you traveling for a few hours or days? Will you travel for a few weeks’ time?
Or are you going to be away for several months or more? Will you travel in the morning, afternoon, evening, or night time?
These are all important travel considerations.
Where
Where will you travel? Are you traveling to a nearby city from your place of work?
Are you going on a long trip to a distant country? Maybe you’ll visit a neighboring state, region, or province?
Perhaps you’ll travel to the opposite end of the country in which you live?
How
How will you travel to your destination? Will you take an airplane, boat, bus, train, car, light rail, taxi, or some other mode of transportation?
Are you going to walk or bike? Will you need to hire a particular type of transport that is unique to town, city, area, region, province, or country in which you’re visiting?
Why
Although not traditionally included in a travel itinerary, you may want to strongly consider the ‘why’ behind your travels. You can think of this as a bonus planning exercise.
For instance, is it to meet with existing business contacts? Sign a contract with a new vendor? Present a workshop or evaluate a client’s workspace? Enjoy your vacation in a mountain hideaway?
What Type of Information Does a Travel Itinerary Contain?
An itinerary commonly includes important details related to your trip.
These details can provide you with valuable travel information at a moment’s notice.
There’s no need to sift through papers or flip through materials!
Ideally, one quick glance at your travel itinerary should tell you what you need to know about your trip.
Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find in an itinerary:
Basic Information
Your itinerary will include information related to the when and where of your trip. This information will be unique to individual meetings, appointments, events, trips, and excursions.
Some items to consider:
- Dates. This includes the day of the week and the full day, month, and year
- Times. You’ll note whether a time is AM or PM, as well as any relevant time zones or time zone changes
- Locations. Depending on your trip, you may include public, private, commercial, or residential locations
Travel Arrangements
Your travel arrangements section will include everything you need to know about traveling from location to location.
Some items to consider:
- Carriers, companies, and tour operators
- Flight, bus, train, car, cruise, and ferry numbers
- Reservation numbers
- Confirmation numbers
- Rest areas or rest stops
Accommodation Arrangements
Your accommodation arrangements section will tell you where you will rest or sleep during your trip.
Some items to consider:
- Hotels, motels, resorts, bed and breakfasts, campsites
- Reservation numbers
- Confirmation numbers
Meal Arrangements
Your travel itinerary may include further information about refreshment plans or options for your trip.
Some items to consider:
- Restaurants, cafes, dining halls, catering halls, snack bars, and cafeterias
- Seating arrangements
- Dietary offerings
- Voucher or meal ticket information
- Social and excursion arrangements
Contact Information
You may want to include relevant contact information for items included in your travel itinerary related to your travels, accommodation, or meals.
Some items to consider:
- Landline phone numbers
- Toll-free phone numbers
- Mobile phone numbers
- Fax numbers
- Email addresses
- Website addresses
- Physical addresses
- GPS coordinates
- Mailing addresses
- Social media profiles
Emergency Contact Information
You may also wish to include contact information on your itinerary in case there’s some sort of an emergency or you require assistance during your travels.
Some items to consider:
- Name
- Title
- Relationship
- Company or organization
- Physical address
- Landline number
- Mobile number
- Email address
- Notes
Relevant Notes
Lastly, it can be helpful to jot down relevant notes related to your trip. This can include things like specific instructions to follow, detailed instructions, or who you should contact when you arrive.
How to Make a Travel Itinerary
Making a trip itinerary requires careful scheduling and organization skills.
If you feel nervous about preparing your travel itinerary, don’t worry!
The process can be smooth and easy, if you just follow things one step at a time.
Let’s walk through each of the steps you’ll need to follow to create your trip itinerary.
Gather important information and materials
The first step in creating a travel itinerary is to assemble all relevant trip information as you have it thus far.
You’ll want to gather items like dates and times, travel arrangements, accommodations, meal arrangements, and excursion arrangements.
This type of information may be found in booking confirmation emails, purchased travel tickets, reservation and confirmation messages and so on.
Additionally, you may find it helpful to gather any related brochures, pamphlets, and notes you may have on hand that are related to the above.
Another thing you can do is have your favorite web browser open on your computer, tablet, or smart phone available. You can use the browser to research or double-check information related to your trip as necessary.
Create a travel itinerary document
Next, you’ll want to create a document in which to store your itinerary. You can do this easily in a word processor or text editor on your computer or digital device of choice.
The beauty of using a word processor or text editor is that you can quickly and easily type, cut and paste, adjust, and move travel information with the click of a mouse or key stroke.
You can also use this method to copy and paste text from emails, web browsers, and other documents in a pinch.
Open up a new document file in your word processor or text editor.
Next, type out the name of your trip at the very top of your document, followed by the start and end dates of your travels.
For example, let’s say you’re planning a business trip. So in this case you would write out, “Business Trip, Tuesday July 12th – Thursday July 14th.”
Add itinerary sections
The next step in the travel itinerary creation process is to create three separate sections in your document.
Creating these sections allows you to easily organize and locate information now and during your travels.
These sections also make it extremely easy for anyone to read and understand your itinerary. That can be a big help, especially if the individual is unfamiliar with the itinerary or is not traveling with you.
Okay, it’s time to divide your document into the following three sections:
General Information
This section contains the “at-a-glance” information for your trip.
This space is the perfect place to store general information and resources related to your travel.
What type of general information can you include in this section?
You can include carrier and travel operator information, accommodation information, and contact information, for starters.
Feel free to include information such as toll-free numbers, landline phone numbers, mobile phone numbers, fax numbers, websites, social media profiles, physical and mailing addresses in this section.
Dates and Times
This section is where you’ll list out the different dates and times related to your trip.
This space will include information related to your arrivals, departures, connections, travel routes, transportation hubs, reservation information, and so on.
Notes
This section is for any other information related to your trip that doesn’t quite fall into the categories above.
You can include notes about travel arrangements, whom to ask for when you arrive at a destination, what to look out for upon your arrival, and so on.
Write down trip dates
Once you’ve created your three itinerary sections, you can move onto to jotting down the dates of your trip.
Write down the dates of your trip under the “Dates and Times” section of your itinerary one after another on separate lines.
Jotting down the dates of your trip sets the framework for your travel itinerary.
Be sure to include any other relevant dates, such as the day you leave your office or home, to the day you return.
From our example above, you’d list out all the days in consecutive order, like this.
- Tuesday July 12
- Wednesday July 13
- Thursday July 14
Layout trip day details
Now it’s time to start laying out the nuts and bolts your travel itinerary.
The best way to do this is to work your way through the itinerary one day at a time.
In effect, you’ll be planning out one hour of your trip at a time, from morning until night.
Doing so will allow you to “virtually travel” through each stage of your trip.
Simply work your way from one item to the next, gathering all your travel information into the itinerary.
One easy way to think about your planning is that you will always, on the bigger picture level, be doing either one of two things on your trip.
You will either be traveling to or you will physically be at a destination.
So, how does this play out in practice?
Let’s say you’ve booked your flights, car service, and hotel lodgings.
You can easily drop this information into the first day of your trip. You can then start putting together your itinerary:
July 12
8 A.M. Leave office for Local Airport via ABC car service. Car service reservation is #334XB1.
10 A.M. Flight 324 on Example Airlines leaves Local Airport for Tropical Island Airport. Flight seat number is 14C.
3 P.M. Arrive at Tropical Island Airport and take ABC car service to Beach Hotel. Car service reservation is #908WE3
3:30 P.M. Arrive at Beach Hotel. Hotel reservation is #C12129HHT.
See how each of the travel itinerary items directly links to the next?
You want to ensure each of your entries logically follows the entries immediately before and after.
Add Relevant Information
Once you’ve created a daily itinerary entry, be sure to add any relevant information to the general information or notes section of your itinerary.
From the itinerary example above, you’d probably want to include phone numbers, websites, and addresses in your general information for: Local Airport, ABC Car Service, Example Airlines, Tropical Island Airport, and Beach Hotel.
Likewise, you’d probably want to add notes that correspond with your itinerary entries. For example, you might make a note to ask for the Assistant Manager at the Beach Hotel.
Be sure to repeat this process, step-by-step, for each day of your trip.
Proofread and double-check your travel itinerary
A travel itinerary is only as good as the information contained within.
Be sure to double-check your work on your travel itinerary a few days later to make sure you have included everything you need.
Even better still, have someone you trust review the document after your initial review. This is to ensure there aren’t any glaring errors or omissions.
How should you review your itinerary? Begin by confirming general information.
For example, you’ll want to make sure you have the correct name, address, and phone number for a hotel. Check each of your general information entries to make sure things are indeed correct.
You’ll then want to review the specific dates and times of your travel itinerary. Take care and slowly work through each line of your itinerary. Make sure all the information matches your original source documents.
You should also check to see if the information contained in your itinerary makes logical sense.
For instance, do all airplane arrivals have matching departures? Have you listed your hotel accommodations?
Are there any unaccounted gaps of time? Perhaps you’ve inadvertently scheduled two events to take place at the same time?
Lastly, it’s time to confirm your notes. Are all of your notes clear and understandable? If not, you may want to add more detail or clarify a few items.
Finally, do one final check to make sure all the items in the itinerary are clear and make sense to you. And there you have it…a completed travel itinerary!
Learn How to Be More Organized
A travel itinerary is a convenient way to stay organized during your travels.
But if you find it difficult to stay focused and productive in your business, then you need to take steps to get yourself organized.
If you want clarity around being more productive in your business or life, schedule a free 30-minute video strategy session with me today.
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