This is by no means an exhaustive list but certainly is useful in helping you achieve your objective. Here are 8 tips which apply to pretty much all travel destinations:

1. How is the place rated by other writers?

Never take one person’s work for anything that is subjective. Scan through a few reviews and you’ll get an accurate picture of your holiday destination.

2. Does the electricity voltage match yours at home?

Today, you have more electronic gadgets than ever before. Make sue it will work where you are going or else you’ll carry extra weight with you. Worse still, you may damage your devices.

Also pretty much every country I have visited, has a different electrical plug and socket standard. Buy one a universal electrical adapter kit and read the fine print to make sure it covers your travel destination. Alternatively, buy only the one adapter suitable for your destination which will be cheaper.

3. How far is your hotel from the airport?

Be careful here. There are many exotic places that are really far from the airport. It sounds silly but you can suffer a lot of discomfort if you are not prepared.

Imagine after a long journey of several hours in the air, you then spend another 2 or 3 hours on a coach to your hotel. Now imagine it is hot and humid and your coach is not air conditioned! Children will particularly suffer.

You will then need a day to recover from your journey. This scenario happens so often you wouldn’t believe it. Why do you think some of those hotels are so cheap!

When checking distance, also check the traffic too and find out the journey “time” and not just the travel distance. Back in the year 2000 I traveled to Dubai. A great place in itself and I stayed in a 5 start hotel that was only 20 – 25 minutes from the airport in spite of heavy traffic. Now, seven years later, that same journey can take anything up to one or even one and half hours. Be prepared.

4. Is public transport efficient or will you need to hire a car?

How are you going to get around? Far too many travel locations have poor public transport and at the same time very expensive and difficult private transport, be it taxis or hired cars.

I was in Istanbul back in 1997 … I enjoyed the city, the weather and so much more but getting around in taxis was not easy nor cheap. And note that Istanbul wasn’t a particularly expensive place but the demand for taxis was high

Also the language barrier meant that inevitably there were times that I paid more for a short journey that I expected. But that was OK because I had done my research including about transport and knew what to expect. I needed a day to recover from my very long journey. After that I haggled (bargained) with the taxi drivers as well as others “before” accepting their service and everything worked out just fine.

5. Try to work out an estimation of the budget that you’ll need, so that you avoid any shocks and embarrassment once you get there.

This one is obvious and yet many of us over spend while on holiday. I always work out what I need and then add plenty of extra to the total estimate. It works very well. I come back with plenty of spare cash rather than end up in distress in an unfamiliar place.

6. Are there plenty of restaurants nearby or will you have to dine at your hotel for the duration of your stay?

Big, big point: Think of the effect on variety, cost, etc, if you only have a limited choice within one hotel or one complex. Bear in mind that the laws of supply and demand apply here too. If your stay is not all inclusive, then expect to pay a huge price or suffer low quality or even both. The local outlets of course know if you are a “captive” customer and their prices will be adjusted “up” accordingly.

Back in 2001 I enjoyed a Latin dance holiday to Cuba. I absolutely loved it. The people, the music, the dancing, all wonderful. But if you know anything about Cuba then you know that food variety and quality is an issue.

I won’t go into the politics or economics of it all. The point is that I spent a portion of my time in an all inclusive resort outside Havana. I experienced first hand the quality issues and lack variety that can happen as a captive customer. Such situations aren’t suitable for children at all and barely acceptable for adults. This can happen any place you are a captive customer.

7. Is your hotel or resort able to provide a doctor in case of an emergency?

Don’t wait to find out the answer when you really need a doctor. It is a fact of life that we or a traveling companion will need medical attention at one time or other in our travels. The difference between being prepared and not is huge.

My best friend and business partner traveled to a newly built Greek resort. While taking a mid-evening stroll around the poorly lit pool area, his wife stepped into “hole”. It was one of these holes around most swimming pools where workmen access pumps, pipes and wiring etc that service the pool. They had left the cover loose and it just flipped when it was stepped on.

Long story short, the local hospital would “not” send out an ambulance! Something to do with not having an arrangement with the hotel because the hotel was outside their region. The hotel knew this but my friend and other hotel guests didn’t until the accident.

8. Do you know anyone else who has been there and how did they find it?

Personal experiences are so valuable and worth knowing. Make it a part of your conversation with friends before you travel to your destination. Find out if they or anyone they know has been to that region.

Knowing the answers to the above can make all the difference. A little homework will save you so much precious time once you get there. When you get there, you’ll be able to do as much or as little as you desire. Happy traveling, where ever your travel destination.

So, you’ve been persuaded by your someone close to you to make reservations for an exotic place. But you can’t even say the name of that travel destination. You know almost nothing about your travel destination.

What’s your plan? When it’s time to travel, are you just going to jump on the airplane? Don’t you think a few minutes of research is going to pay great dividends? I promise you it will.

There are times when traveling ‘blindly’ may have it’s attractions and yes nice surprises too. But often times the key to your nice break from work is to know a little about your travel destination.

Look, you needn’t spend a huge amount of time finding out everything about a place but some basic information before you travel saves you a lot of time when you are at your destination. This in turn means that you will get the most out of your stay rather than to spend a big portion of your time searching and deciding what to do when at your travel destination.

Why not visit the travel section in your local library but do this online to save time. Don’t just look for where you are going but also look for nearby places too. Here are the question you will want to answer:

1. How far is it?

This will dictate whether you need to take more or less reading/entertainment material while en-route to your destination. Also if traveling with children or youngsters you’ll need to cater for their needs to.

2. What is the spoken local language?

You can’t imagine how flattered most locals are when a visitor makes an effort. Just hello, thank you, please, good bye, where is, what time etc make a huge difference.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have had locals bend over backwards to help me out of trouble when I used just three or four basic phrases … they have at times grabbed some local English speaker to help me out. Make this effort.

We’re talking about a tiny phrase book that you can even point to while at your travel destination and the locals will read your phrase in their own language. But learning the basic phrases will not take more than half an hour.

3. What is the currency and can you easily make conversions to your own currency for comparison purposes?

In most countries, your destination hotel is probably one of the most expensive places to exchange currency. Think about it. They don’t service all that many customers, so they make their money out of larger commissions and bigger currency differences than the average bank.

Add this to your list of things to do before or after you get to your travel destination: Where is the nearest high street bank and look for a main branch of a main bank. Hopefully their volume trade means you get better rates.

4. What are the customs regarding tipping?

Do not get ripped off. Find out what the tipping rate is so you don’t spend a big percentage of your money on over the top tips.

5. What, if any, is the time difference?

Don’t underestimate the effect of time difference on your daily schedule when you get there and when you get back from your holiday. If the difference is more than 2 hours, do try to alter your timing for sleep, wake up time, eating etc just slightly, before you go on your vacation.

When you get there, adjusting to local time is going to be much easier. You will spend less of your precious holiday time recovering from the journey.

Do the same adjustment a day or two before you get back and you lose less precious work time when you get back. Somehow I don’t think this one bothers too many people.

6. What is the expected average temperature, and how much does it rain?

You already know how much the weather affects our daily activities. Then you agree that the weather absolutely *rules* your vacation at your travel destination.

Be prepared in terms of clothing but also in terms of the activities you plan and possibly pre-book. For example, if you are going to Britain you will find rain is a year round certainty.

Knowing that in advance means you won’t pre-book a Shakespeare open air play unless you are allowed to cancel without penalties. You will just buy the ticket on the day, if the weather holds up.

Similar considerations go for pretty much any destination. Know what to expect and then you won’t be disappointed.

7. What places do the travel writers recommend visiting?

Many travel writers have got their work down to a fine art. They place the correct emphasis on the relative importance of one thing compared to another. They will pint you a good picture of what a place is like.

Just do a search in the online search engines for something like “London review” or “London holiday review” and you will find plenty of references. The search engines will probably show you the most “liked” reviews because these are the reviews that most people have enjoyed and therefore made popular.

Advanced consideration of these valuable questions will make all the difference to your enjoyment of your travel destination.

Attention Travel Agents and Operators

Do you or your company sell or deal with any of the following: Flights (airline tickets), hotel rooms, car rentals, travel packages, tours, restaurant reservations, attraction or special event tickets, ferries, travel insurance, cruises, public transportation, train tickets, or currency exchange? If you work in the travel industry then that was a pretty redundant question, but why am I asking it? I am not trying to waste your time, in fact I am trying to save you time. I will ask you one more question, and this time it is important. How many different pieces of software do you use to offer your services to you clients? Making multiple searches to find the best deals for your customers is now a thing of the past. There is a new piece of travel reservation software which provides an end to end solution for all types of travel companies.

Currently the hottest se is called Gilboa by Galor. Galor is one of the older travel agent management system producers. They have been around since 1989 and their travel reservation software is used by hundreds of clients in over 20 countries. What makes Galor’s software so special is that it can interface with all of the Global Distribution Systems like Sabre, Amadeus, WorldSpan and all of the others. It also integrates website and online bookings, comes with financial tools specific to the travel industry, and can handle wholesale, in-house and tailor made bookings.

This article is about informing you that there are other options out there f0r  There is no longer the need to rely on several systems, which waste valuable time with mulitple searches. There is now travel reservation software that works with the GDS’s, and with the private charters and specials that you have worked out directly with other travel companies. You can throw away all your binders because the records you need can be found indexed and researched on your computer. These programs are scalable so that they can work with both small and large travel companies. If you are a small company looking to expand, this is the perfect answer because the software can help in expansion and you won’t have to find new software once your client base grows. If you are a large travel network or company, reducing your travel reservation software to one program is a great way to save time and money.