A working couple’s travel plans for 2017

SO, how does a couple who’s addicted to traveling but still has to work full time (in a non-travel related role) make it work?

WE PLAN AHEAD!

Our yearly travel plans always include four major holidays followed by smaller trips scattered throughout the year depending on how good a flight deal we can find.

The MAJOR holidays

These are special holidays that we always plan to take every year, which is in March (Bobbe’s birthday), July (Amana’s birthday), August (wedding anniversary), and December (dating anniversary). These are the four holidays that we always make sure we take because we believe it’s important to celebrate our love and we treat each other by going on holidays! We think we got lucky that these dates are spanned out throughout the year, no? Or it’s the universe telling us that we’re meant to be traveling together. At least, we’d like to think that is the case.

Knowing when our major holidays for the year beforehand is helpful because then we can keep an eye out for good deals. First thing to do is check if there are any public holidays during that time, so that you can plan your dates around this. So for this year’s August holiday, there is a bank holiday on August 28th here in the UK, which means that we can plan our holidays with this in mind. This would allow us to use the minimum amount of holiday entitlement from work and get the maximum amount of days for actual holidays.

Once you have identified the dates you want to take holidays and have requested for holidays from your boss, it’s time to set up some price alerts on skyscanner for those dates. Here is a link on how you can do that. This would mean that you would get updates from skyscanner whenever there has been a price change for the dates you have requested. We would always recommend purchasing tickets at least a month before your intended holiday (Skyscanner recommends 7 weeks before traveling). Obviously, this rule is subject to where you’re going, when you’re going and how much you’re willing to spend. By this point, it is quite clear that Skyscanner is our go to website for finding travel deals.

So, what are our major plans this year?

March – Bali (Already booked! So excited!)

July – Destination undecided

August – Kenya

December – Destination undecided. Maybe South Africa.

The SPONTANEOUS breaks

These are weekend breaks that we’re always on the lookout for. Ideally, we aim to take a weekend break once a month although this isn’t always the case. So this month, we’re going to Lisbon, Portugal this weekend (28th January 2017). Normally weekend breaks mean that we have to take early morning flights, which means leaving home at 2am for a 1.5-2 hour drive to the airport as we don’t live near a major airport. But if you love traveling like us, sometimes small sacrifices are worth the effort!

Hope this has been helpful and you enjoyed reading our FIRST blog post! If you’re keen to hear and see more please like and subscribe to our page and follow our Instagram page @malediviana. Hopefully we will be able to keep this up 🙂 Any thoughts, ideas or improvements you think we need to make please feel free to leave a comment.

Update (25.07.2017)

So, thought we would write an update on where we are with regards to our travel plans as it had not gone to plan due to unforeseen expenses. The main reason for being unable to travel is due to our work visa’s being renewed so this has been a significant cost for us to bear. We’re still going to be looking out for good deals in the UK but we always find that everything in UK is a bit more expensive and you’re left questioning whether you’re getting the right value for money. But we’re sure there will be lots of places that offer good value for money 🙂 Any recommendations anyone?

Happy Travels!

Amana & Bobbé