By this time of summer, you may already have planned where to go on vacation and when; at the very least, you’ve got a few ideas in your head. Nowadays, planning your vacation from home is becoming more and more common. The Internet gives us all the possible resources: flight and accommodation reservations, destination information, etc.
To ensure that the experience is complete and the preparation and execution of the trip do not end up being a headache, in this article we will talk about the useful information provided by new technologies to have everything in order and enjoy a well-deserved vacation. We have divided the text into 3 different periods: planning, realization and return from vacation.
This first article focuses on the planning of the trip and, later, we will talk about the realization and the return.
The planning
How to plan a good summer vacation with the internet price comparison
With all the possibilities that the Internet offers us, it is becoming easier and easier to compare prices through specialized search engines and even find the best last minute offers. Some of the best-known comparators in our country are Trivago, eDreams or Kayak.
In addition, all the transport companies are also on the Internet, both by land and air, so we can easily check prices and availability through their websites (to give just a few examples: Renfe, Ryanair, Iberia.
Most airlines offer online check-in on their websites, a service that allows you to print your boarding pass from home, using your computer hours, even days, before you go to the airport. The process is simple, just the how and when can vary from company to company. Renfe also allows us to print the ticket once we have purchased it.
Make reservations
Once we have decided the destination, whether in our own country or abroad, an essential complement are the platforms of opinions such as Tripadvisor, which will give us a more realistic image of the places and hotels before booking, as they are based on the opinions and comments of users. A Yahoo study called “Connected Holidays” reveals that 67% of Spaniards are already guided by the recommendations and opinions of other travelers.
How to plan a good summer vacation with the Internet
Tripadvisor is becoming an essential tool for holiday preparation. In addition to being able to see how our customers rate their accommodation, you can also find out about prices and book if you are convinced by the links to specialist booking websites, such as Booking.com, which has long led the ranking of the most popular booking websites.
It is very important to check that the page we are on is really the page of the hotel or portal where we are going to buy. This is best done by checking whether they have’trusted online’ stamps or simply by checking whether they are secure pages (https appears in the navigation bar). It is also recommended that we keep a copy of the purchase and order confirmation pages.
Control of expenses
In preparing for a trip, it should also be essential to control expenses, with an estimate of both the budget we have and the expenses we expect to have. Today there is a wide range of applications that will help us in this task. Some of the most commonly used are:
How to plan a good summer holiday thanks to the Internet – Toshl Finance (free of charge): Easy to use, it is created especially for those who need a simple control, without complex statistics. With it, we can create a budget, and add income and expenses. It is in Spanish and is available for both Android and iOS.
Settle Up (free): It’s the perfect app for group trips and expenses. Essential when we are a large group of people, to know who owes what to whom. It is very comfortable to control and share expenses. It is available for IOS and Android.
The weather and the clothes
Another headache when planning a vacation is the weather and the clothes we need to take with us. One thing is related to the other, so the problem of clothing is solved by visiting any of the weather forecast websites. The most interesting are the American weather channel Weather Channel (which is also in Spanish), very complete; otherwise, we have native websites such as Meteosat or Tiempo.com. There are also a lot of mobile applications or tablets that predict the weather. Among the most popular are the same: Weather Channel and Tiempo.es, as well as others like Weather Bug.
