Creating unforgettable travel experiences often starts with meticulous planning. After nine years of crafting countless travel itineraries, I’ve honed a process that keeps me organized and excited for every adventure. The cornerstone of this process? A customizable Travel Itinerary Template Excel spreadsheet that I’m excited to share with you, along with my step-by-step methodology.
1. Choose Your Dream Destination
The first step in any great journey is selecting your destination. Whether it’s inspired by a whimsical lottery commercial or drawn from a long-held bucket list, the choice is yours! Let your imagination roam and pick the country that truly calls to you.
(Sadly, I can’t directly embed the French lottery ad here, but imagine a scene filled with wanderlust and the allure of far-off lands!)
Once you have a country in mind, your initial research should focus on practicalities. A crucial resource is your country’s foreign affairs ministry website – or a similar platform. For example, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs website offers a section called “advices to travelers”. These official sites provide up-to-date information on safety, visa requirements based on your citizenship, and necessary vaccinations. They also typically link directly to official visa application websites, saving you time and preventing you from landing on expensive, unofficial agent sites.
2. Outline Your Travel Itinerary’s Structure
With the destination confirmed and visa logistics understood, it’s time to delve into the exciting details of your travel itinerary. I often begin by exploring suggested itineraries from reputable sources like Lonely Planet. Their guidebooks and website offer a fantastic starting point, providing route ideas and highlighting popular tourist destinations.
Lonely Planet’s resources are particularly helpful because you can purchase individual chapters digitally, allowing you to carry only the essential information with you. These resources give you a preliminary sense of place names and typical tourist routes. Sometimes, these pre-made itineraries perfectly align with my travel style. Other times, they serve as a guide to the “must-avoid” spots if I’m seeking a more unique, off-the-beaten-path experience.
Following this initial research, I broaden my online searches using keywords such as “itinerary [country name]”, “road trip [country name]”, “one week in [country name]”, “two weeks in [country name]”, and so on. This broader search helps me understand common travel routes and what’s realistically achievable within my timeframe.
By this stage, you’ll be immersed in travel plans, stunning photos, and captivating videos. You should start identifying the key sights and activities that resonate with you. Now, it’s time to organize these ideas into a format that works best for you.
3. Organize Your Plan with an Excel Travel Itinerary Template
Over the years, my go-to tool for organizing travel plans has become a customized Excel template. I’m thrilled to share my excel travel itinerary template with you! Download the empty template here ! Feel free to adapt it to perfectly fit your personal travel style.
The first tab provides a broad overview of your route, a less detailed snapshot that helps visualize the trip’s daily flow and timeline. I typically organize it by weeks and use color-coding to highlight weekends and public holidays. For each day, I outline: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Night, Transport, and Comments.
In the Morning, Afternoon, and Evening sections, I jot down lists of sights and activities to gauge the day’s busyness. I plan activities in half-day or full-day blocks (merging cells accordingly). The Night row indicates the overnight city or any overnight transport like buses or trains. The Transport section details how I’ll be moving around – self-drive, flight ETAs, train schedules, etc. The Comments column is for any crucial at-a-glance information.
Once filled, this overview tab provides a quick, comprehensive summary of my trip. I can easily see when I’ll need a rental car, identify potential rest days after overnight travel, and get a general sense of the trip’s pace.
Below this table, I usually paste links to helpful travel blogs and resources that significantly influenced my itinerary planning. This allows me to quickly revisit them during my travels or as I continue refining the itinerary. I also include website links or contact information for travel agents, tour operators, or dive centers I’m considering.
4. Budgeting: Detailing Your Travel Expenses
The second tab in my travel itinerary template excel is dedicated to a detailed budget. This is where the nitty-gritty number crunching begins, often involving further in-depth research and some informed estimations.
Being French, my default currency is always the Euro. However, online resources often present costs in local currencies. Therefore, my budget sheet includes a section for exchange rates and a dedicated area for food budget planning.
Food budgets are intentionally generous in my itineraries. Firstly, I love exploring local cuisines and don’t want budget constraints to limit my culinary adventures. Secondly, active travel days often require coffee or snack breaks – these essential “fuel stops” need to be factored into the budget! I typically budget for breakfast unless it’s consistently included in pre-booked accommodations.
Towards the end of the detailed expense list, I add fixed costs: visa fees, flights, and vaccinations. Then, I calculate the total projected cost. Most of my budget spreadsheets incorporate a buffer of 10-15% (largely thanks to the flexible food budget). If uncertain about a cost, I err on the side of caution, using the highest estimate found online. This buffer also accommodates souvenir shopping, which I rarely budget for explicitly.
To manage expenses while traveling, I use the Trabee Pocket app. It’s a fantastic tool for real-time expense tracking, and I’ve written a detailed review about it.
5. Customize with Additional Tabs for Enhanced Organization
For longer trips, I often add two more tabs to my travel itinerary template excel – these are invaluable for bookings and serve as helpful checklists:
Transport: This tab meticulously lists each journey leg with departure and arrival dates, origins and destinations, precise times, and transportation companies/methods. For private drivers, I include contact information in the notes.
Hotels: Here, I record check-in and check-out dates, and the number of nights per stay. Once bookings are confirmed, I add hotel/hostel names, contact details, and website links. In some countries, I even include GPS coordinates or pre-save addresses in Google Maps for quicker navigation.
Typically, creating a travel itinerary using my travel itinerary template excel takes me between three days and a week, depending on my familiarity with the destination. Because I’m constantly researching new travel ideas, I often have a wealth of pre-existing notes, speeding up the process. However, if I’m starting from scratch with a completely unknown destination and no personal recommendations, thorough research can take up to two weeks.
For me, crafting these itineraries is already an enjoyable part of the travel experience. It fuels my anticipation, and I get genuinely excited as I immerse myself in photos and videos from fellow travelers!
Extra Research Tips for Perfecting Your Travel Itinerary
- Beyond Instagram Glamour: Don’t solely rely on picture-perfect Instagram photos. Skilled photographers can make even crowded tourist spots appear deserted. Seek out less-edited, more realistic photos to set accurate expectations. Remember Maya Bay in Thailand? Research beyond the glossy images.
- Tailor to Your Travel Style: Experienced travelers should feel empowered to skip sights that no longer excite them. Use this freed-up time to explore off-the-beaten-path locations and hidden gems that require more effort to reach. For example, unless a temple is UNESCO-listed, offers exceptional views, or is conveniently en route, I might skip dedicated visits, or even entire cities if temples are the primary attraction.
- Lonely Planet Hidden Gems: Pay attention to places mentioned briefly in Lonely Planet guides – often, these less-promoted locations become personal favorites.
- Leverage Personal Networks: Don’t underestimate the value of personal recommendations. Your colleagues, family, and friends are invaluable resources because they likely share similar travel preferences.
- Invest in Experiences: If it’s not an extended backpacking trip, don’t always default to budget-backpacker mode. Know when to splurge for enhanced experiences. Investing in certain aspects of your trip can create lasting, priceless memories.
- Google Translate Power: Utilize Google Translate extensively, especially for destinations like Taiwan or Japan, where the best online resources might be in languages other than English.
Credit for the banner photo:
