Travelling With Friends - Tips To Make The Vacation Great While Keeping The Friendship Intact

Traveling with your family or spouse can be exhilarating and difficult, but established family dynamics often create a predetermined set of rules that each of you follow without realizing it. When you bring another couple or set of friends into the mix, the family dynamics are no longer a factor and this could actually lead to some difficult travel incidents if you don't plan ahead to avoid them.
If you want to travel with friends while keeping your friendship intact during and after your travels, here are a few tips.

Start small: If you've never travelled with anyone other than a family member or significant other, then start small and just take a short trip with your friends to a relatively near-by location. This will help you identify any incompatibilities and quirks. Save any long trips or overseas journeys until you know that you have similar travelling habits.

Have a plan: If you have certain places you want to stay, restaurants you want to try, or sights you want to see, you need to bring that up while the trip is still in its planning stages. Be sure to make it very clear which destinations are your non-negotiables, and which you'll be okay missing.

Create a schedule: When you have a group of people travelling together, it can take a while to get all your stuff together and be on your way to seeing the sights. If you create a schedule ahead of time, less time will be spent debating on where to go next and you can make sure that everyone's priority stops are pre-planned.
Plan some alone time: If you plan too many activities with your travelling companions, you may find yourself longing for some alone time on the trip. In order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings, plan for this ahead of time and carve out certain days or times that you can be by yourself or alone with your spouse or family member.

Be flexible: There is no way to travel with friends and have a trip that is your way, all the time. Be prepared to be flexible and give a little.
Purchase travel health insurance: Nothing can ruin a trip abroad with friends faster than having improper travel health insurance coverage. If one of you were to become injured or ill while on the trip, the lack of travel health insurance could mean that you are not able to get proper treatment, which will negatively impact the trip for everyone involved. A simple and affordable travel health insurance policy for each member of the group will help you avoid the awkwardness and discomfort of not having coverage.
The ultimate goal of a trip with friends is to see things through each other's eyes. If you allow this to happen without resistance, it can give you a tremendous insight to how others view the world and can help your consider things much differently than you might on your own. It's a powerful experience that can work really well if you let it.

By: Doug Polifron

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