3 Steps to Better Travel Planning

Earlier this month, Beth and I celebrated our ninth anniversary since we  first met in San Diego. It’s hard to believe that it has been nearly decade, and even crazier to think that for the last four years, we’ve worked side by side–often right across from one another–and haven’t killed each other yet. The truth is we love what we do, and I couldn’t imagine doing it without her.

One of the ways we pass time during the workday, especially when she’s sewing and I’m packing our Speakeasy Travel Scarfs, is to talk travel (big surprise there, right?), specifically, plan out future trips we would like to take. One particular destination that we’ve been talking about recently is Nepal. The country has been calling to us for awhile, and I think 2015 is the year that we’re finally going to make it. Better yet, I think Beth’s cousin, Bill, may be joining us. Ever since our trip to Italy with him last year, we’ve been in search of a new adventure, and when we mentioned Nepal at Thanksgiving, he immediately jumped at the idea.

To help with the planning, I started using Amadeus.net to share information about the trip with our group. Within a few minutes of signing on today, I had flight prices at my finger tips and was only a couple of steps away from a creating a trip plan that I could share with Beth and Bill. This is a huge step forward from our last trip with Bill, when our planning sessions were regulated to emails, texts, and Facebook messages. Amadeus.net makes trip planning collaborative again, kind of like the good old days when you’d gather with your mates at the bar to scour maps, guidebooks, and Post-it notes–ah, good times! To demonstrate what I’m talking about, I’ve laid out my work flow on Amadeus.net, which consists of three easy steps.

1. Search Flights

Since I already had a destination in mind, I jumped right into searching for flights. However, Amadeus.net also offers some fun search options, like “inspiration” and “destinations,” that are fun to play around with when daydreaming at your cubicle.

In just a few minutes, Amadeus.net had pulled up 233 flights from its huge data base of airlines. In fact, the best price I got from them beat Kayak by nearly $100. The search also revealed a 12-month calendar (left hand side in the pic above) that displayed the lowest rates for each month. And below that, the average weather and temperature for each month in Nepal. From this point, you can either purchase your tickets or add your preferred flights to your trip plan.

2. Share Your Plan

Bringing others into your trip plan is as easy as adding their email address or inviting them through Facebook.

3. Collaborate

You can have multiple trip plans on Amadeus.net, making it easy to keep track all of your different adventures. In each plan, you can add links to useful stories, view your flight preferences, and share messages among the group. Plus, Amadeus.net features a nice selection of trips tools–world clock, weather, airport guides, subway maps, exchange rates, among others–which help to further streamline the planning process.

Ready to plan your own trip? Your next adventure starts here: Amadeus.net!

Disclosure: This story was sponsored by Amadeus.net. However, all of our opinions, thoughts, and ideas in this post are our own.