Travel planning mistakes can happen to the best of us.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I was recently reading an article on Fodor’s about various difficulties someone might run into when planning a trip. Things like indecisive travel companions or figuring out who will care for your pet while you’re away. But one of the items in their list really struck a chord with me and I’ve been thinking about it ever since: the problem of Destination Creep.
What Is Destination Creep?
Destination Creep is a travel planning mistake that can lead to you going over budget and using up too many vacation days.
Scope creep is an idea from the project management world.
According to Forbes, it occurs “when a project’s completion requirements increase past the planned project requirements. When this happens, the project runs the risk of being completed late, over budget and lacking in quality.”
Fodor’s has taken the concept of scope creep and applied it to travel planning, an endeavor that can easily go over budget and expand to overwhelming proportions.
“This is called destination creep, where you thought you were set on the parameters, but now, upon researching further, more options have come up. A very likely scenario is that you’re now back to the drawing board—and have not booked the trip at all.”
Destination Creep is what happens when you are planning a trip, let’s say to London. And you open up your map of the UK and you see that Belgium really isn’t that far away from England.
And if you are going to fly across the Atlantic Ocean anyway, you might as well visit another country while you are there. And the easiest way to get from England to Europe is the Eurostar train which conveniently goes right to Paris.
And since you have to travel into Paris to get to Europe you should honestly just spend a couple of nights there before heading to Belgium.
What’s So Bad About Destination Creep?
Destination Creep is a travel planning mistake that costs money and adds time that you might not have available to your vacation. Or causes you to shorten your time at one destination so you can fit in an additional destination, leading to a less enjoyable experience.
In the example above, Destination Creep added 4 nights of hotel stay, four days of food and expenses, train tickets and probably more expensive airfare to your plans.
I am very guilty of doing this. Which is probably why the article caught my attention in the first place. I now have a name for the thing that I always try to do in my own trips.
Even Professionals Are Guilty of This Travel Planning Mistake
Last fall I planned a personal trip to Italy for the Thanksgiving break and I thought, if we’re flying over there anyway, why not fly into Paris and spend a couple of nights? And then we can take a train to Venice or Milan. And from there we can carry on with our original plans.
The only thing that stopped me is the fact that there are no direct trains running from Paris to Italy at the moment. What should have stopped me is that we will be on a time crunch due to school vacation schedules and the budget we are trying to stick to. Thankfully, the trains made me come to my senses.
You Can Easily Fix This Travel Planning Mistake
If you are sitting down and planning out a multi-stop trip that includes London, Paris, and Brussels, that isn’t Destination Creep. That’s itinerary planning.
The creep occurs when you look at that itinerary and think, I have a long layover in Dublin, I should just spend the night and get a hotel room and explore the city instead of sitting in the airport. Or, you start to look up hotels in Amsterdam because Amsterdam is only a 2 hour train ride from Brussels.
Destination Creep is not necessarily a bad thing when planning a trip. It just means plotting out those additional stops, working the extra days into your budget, and figuring out the best way to get there and back. If you have the time, and you have the budget to accommodate your extra stops, and you feel good about adding them to your itinerary, then add the days to your plans and update your itinerary.
It only becomes a travel planning mistake when the plans you were previously happy with begin to seem overwhelming or are putting you over your approved vacation days or blowing your budget. That’s where creep can lead to the lack of quality and decision paralysis that Forbes mentioned as a real consequence of going beyond the scope of your project.
“…you’re now back to the drawing board—and have not booked the trip at all.“
Don’t let this travel planning mistake stop you from booking your trip!
This is an easy travel planning mistake to fix if you are still in the rough draft stages of your trip planning. If you’ve put together an itinerary but the idea of traveling it seems overwhelming, don’t be afraid to cut.
Get back to your original idea. Open up a map and plot it out again. Open up a travel guide and read about the incredible things you will see and do in the destination you first wanted to visit. Then cut stops and days until you get to a trip that you are happy with.
Sources:
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/how-to-deal-with-trip-planning-difficulties-mishaps-and-hiccups
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/scope-creep/
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