What you do in the first 24 hours of reaching your destination can really help you organize your trip efficiently and reduce travel-related stress. We’d like to share with you 7 top tips for things to do in the first 24 hours of reaching your destination.
- Unpack your essentials
- Talk to the hotel staff
- Buy plenty of bottled water (and some snacks)
- Buy a data SIM (if required)
- Find the Tourist Information point
- Update your plans
- Book excursions
Planning and organizing what you want to do on holiday in advance is definitely key to making it a successful one. It makes a huge difference if you already know what things you want to do and see, so you’re not spending the limited, precious time you have researching this when you’re actually on holiday.
But nothing compares to actually being in your chosen destination and getting your bearings. Things become a lot clearer when you’re actually there and you can see what is possible to fit into your trip.
1. Unpack your Essentials
Once you get to your accommodation, unpack your essentials that you’ll be using frequently, for example, toiletries. Depending on how long you’ll be spending that accommodation, it may or may not be worth unpacking your whole suitcase.
Personally, we prefer to just live out of our suitcase for the trip. It saves time on completely unpacking and repacking and also ensures most things are in one place, therefore less likely to be forgotten about. There’s nothing worse than unpacking your whole suitcase, having to leave in a rush, and then worrying you may have left something behind!
If you feel comfortable leaving your valuables in the safe if there’s one available, do so, such as, extra cash, jewelry, passports.
After reaching your hotel, you may want to freshen up and change before heading out again. Keep a laundry bag aside for the time you spend in the hotel, so easy to pack this without contaminating your other clothes.
2. Talk to the Hotel Staff
Take advantage of the locals’ knowledge. If you’re staying in a hotel, it’s really useful when you check-in to talk to the hotel staff and ask for a map. They normally will have some to give out for free, but only if you ask. Not only that, but many staff will also be really helpful and point out local attractions nearby as well as where the nearest amenities, bus stops, metro stops, and train stations are.
The staff are a free, super useful resource, use them! You might discover something you didn’t already know.
3. Buy Plenty of Bottled Water (and some snacks)
Whenever we travel abroad, we always make sure to buy plenty of bottled water as soon as we get to the hotel, especially if we’re going somewhere hot! We normally buy a few large bottles to keep us going for a few days, then top up the night before we know we need another bottle. Therefore no time-wasting the next morning if we’re due to be somewhere. Yes, we’re that organized!
If you didn’t pack any snacks into your luggage, this is the time to also buy a few snacks. Don’t go overboard, but if you have packed your days out with activities, it’s good to have some on the go snacks to keep you going. There’s no point unnecessarily buying premium-priced snacks from tourist areas. Save your money for other things!
Do not underestimate keeping hydrated and well-fed, especially if you’re packing your days out with trips and activities.
4. Buy a data SIM (if required)
This point is highly dependent on your network provider and whether they provide service to the country you are traveling to. Find out before you travel whether you’ll need to buy a data SIM if you want to stay connected to the outside world.
It’s not surprising most people are addicted to their phones and won’t want to be disconnected from everything but also from a safety aspect it’s good to keep a working phone.
Find out where you can get a day SIM by asking your driver, locals, or hotel staff. Bear in mind, the shop staff are likely to request your passport to take a photocopy before they’re able to give you the SIM card so make sure you take that with you.
There will be several options for data SIMs, mostly in terms of the length of time it’s valid, for example, 1 week, 10 days, 2 weeks etc as well as data and minutes.
5. Find the Tourist Information Point
Whenever we go to a popular tourist area, one of the first things we try to find is the Tourist Information point. If it’s a big city, they’ll usually have quite a few spread across the city.
Tourist Information points are fantastic resources to get to know what’s available locally and even a bit further out. And there are staff available to answer any questions. If you haven’t managed to get a hold of a free map, you can definitely get hold of one here.
You can also book some tours from here too. We recommend having a conversation with the staff if possible and not just grabbing and leaving with some leaflets. The best way to know about the attractions is to talk to the locals, so don’t shy away from it!
6. Update your Plans
Planning as much of your trip as possible before you travel is important. However, it is also important to remember to stay flexible. You always get a better idea about how far you are from attractions, the best way to see everything you’re hoping to see once you’ve actually reached your destination. It also opens your eyes up to other possibilities you didn’t know of.
Plus, talking to hotel staff or staff at the Tourist Information points, you can gather a lot more information too.
So, take another look at your plans for the rest of your trip. See if any other activities or sights you’ve discovered that you want to do and add them to your trip and maybe look at removing some other plans if they no longer fit in whether it’s because you want to prioritize other sights or just due to lack of time.
7. Book Excursions
Often, booking excursions can be a lot cheaper to do once you’ve reached your destination rather than pre-booking when you book your flights, hotel etc. This definitely goes for a lot of Asian countries, for example, Thailand.
Depending on where you travel to, you can often get overwhelmed by how many local tour operators there in one area. To be honest, we would recommend checking out a few just to compare prices. A lot of them will have the exact same tour, but will likely offer you different prices. So it’s a good idea to ensure you’re getting a fair price.
Particularly, in Asian countries, it’s common that the prices are inflated to begin with. Don’t agree with the first deal they offer you! There’s often room to negotiate the price down. Booking several excursions in one go can also help reduce the overall price.
We did exactly this when we visited Thailand. As we were picked up and dropped off at the hotel at predetermined times, we knew exactly how much time we had to fit in any other activities or sights we wanted to see to fill in the gaps.
To Conclude…
We hope these tips will help with efficiently streamlining your plans and effectively making it a trip to remember. If you do even some of the tips we’ve suggested within the first 24 hours of reaching your destination, we promise it’ll definitely enhance your trip, reduce any travel-related stress, and ultimately leave you to enjoy your holiday more. And that’s the most important thing, right?!
We think it’s so important to have the right balance between planning what you want to do ahead of travel, streamlining your plan when you get to your destination and being flexible! There’s always going to be things you discover when you get to your destination that you absolutely want to do and some things you thought you wanted to do, but actually drop down the priority list.
That’s the beauty of travel, there’s always something to discover, experience and explore!
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