Travel Tips: Travelling With Companion
According to Marnie Hunter from CNN, No matter how carefully you plan a trip with a friend, a romantic interest or a new acquaintance, there will probably be moments of frustration and conflict along the way.
Even after the dates, destination and length of the trip are settled and the tickets have been purchased, there’s still the possibility that problems could come up on the road.
Here are a few tactics to smooth out potential wrinkles before you depart and defuse tension when it crops up:
Plan the trip together
This seems obvious, but sometimes one person takes the lead and tailors the trip to his or her interests. Planning together allows for a more diverse and balanced vacation.
“Some people like to sightsee a lot, other people don’t. Some people want to walk, some people would rather use public transportation,” said Dorlene Kaplan, president of ShawGuides, a publisher of guides to educational travel and career programs.
“So it’s finding out how compatible you are in terms of the things that you’re going to be doing, the places that you’re going to be going, how much time you’re going to be spending together,” said Kaplan, who also runs TravelChums.com, a ShawGuides site that helps solo travelers find like-minded companions.
Be clear about budgets
Vacation-time is not exempt from squabbles over money. Different budgets and mind-sets about leisure spending can leave travel companions at odds over what to do next, said Andrew Sharp, a psychiatric nurse practitioner at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“Some people will want to go to an exclusive restaurant when others weren’t prepared to do that,” he said.
Discussing budgets before the trip will minimize misunderstandings and help travelers see when there’s room for a splurge.
Kaplan recommends figuring out how shared costs will be handled — will they be split as you go, drawn from pooled resources or settled up at the end of the trip?
Find out about lifestyle
Differences in lifestyle can be a rude awakening if they haven’t been discussed in advance.
“There’s nothing worse than being in the room and up at 6 a.m. when [your companion] wanted to sleep until noon,” Sharp said.
“Sleep patterns can be very disruptive to those that don’t hold the same pattern,” he said.
The same can be said for dietary and other restrictions. Anticipating those differences in advance helps people adapt to each other more quickly and graciously.
Drinking habits may also be an issue, as alcohol tends to heighten conflicts.
TravelChums covers these and other questions on its pre-trip questionnaire.
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Filed under: Travel Guides