You’re about to embark on your next adventure – hooray!
Travel planning comes naturally to some who thrive on the challenge to find the best deal on a tour, stay at the coolest hotel or dine at the hottest new restaurant. These travellers are always at the airport on time, check opening hours of attractions before leaving home and have packing down to a fine art form. On the other end of the scale, there are travellers who prefer to go with the flow, do things spontaneously and are happy to rock up to a new destination and “wing it”.
According to the World Tourism Organization (UNTWO), 1.4 billion people travelled internationally in 2018. And apparently, there are over 750 million users of Microsoft Excel worldwide. There’s a high chance that you’ll fall into both of these categories (we don’t know the exact number but it would make for a pretty neat Venn diagram). And if you also classify yourself as an “unprepared” and/or “unorganised” traveller, our trip planner template is designed to help YOU.
Microsoft Excel is not only used by accountants and finance people. Microsoft Excel has become the ultimate planning and analysis tool, recognised and used worldwide which is why we’ve chosen it to create our trip planner template. We hope you find it useful and welcome your feedback and recommendations!
FREE TRIP PLANNER TEMPLATE! MICROSOFT EXCEL & GOOGLE DOCS
Why use a spreadsheet to plan your trip?
- Identify gaps in your itinerary (closures, public holidays, mandatory reservations)
- Save time
- Save money (better budget decisions, better choices on trip)
- To get you excited! You’re going on a holiday! Hooray!
Download your free trip planner template here
Note: For Google Docs template, download the .zip file and upload the spreadsheet to your Google Drive. Once uploaded, open with Google Sheets.
Using this spreadsheet
The Ultimate Trip Planner Template is built into a spreadsheet which is divided into six sections. We’ve built this trip planner to include 16 days of travel but you can adjust the length of the trip by adding or removing columns in the spreadsheet.
1. Summary
Once you’ve confirmed your travel plans, add them here. This is where you can record all your reservations – flight details, accommodation, car rental, equipment rental, tour reservations etc. Listing them on one tab means you can quickly jump in and find those important details when you need them.
2. Planning
Researching airlines, hotels, Airbnbs, car hire, tour operators and travel insurance policies can be exhausting. You’ll probably go through a phase where you’ll have so many tabs open on your browser, it’ll make you want to pull your hair out! If you also need to compare prices and dates with your travel companions, it can become downright overwhelming.
When you find a potential option you like, add it to the “Planning” tab. When your research is condensed into a neat summary, it will be a simple exercise of reviewing all possible suppliers, key dates and prices and then after a process of elimination, you will be left with the most suitable option.
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3. Budget
A budget is by no means set in stone. Our budget tab is designed to help with your travel planning decisions. We feel that it is important to understand the costs of a holiday before making any hasty decisions. And we consider it even more important that you don’t spend beyond your means!
We don’t want to sound like party-poopers but the last thing you want is to get ripped off and/or find yourself stuck abroad without any money. By understanding where you plan to spend the bulk of your hard-earned money on your holiday, you can plan where you’ll allow yourself to splurge and other areas where you may need to tighten the purse strings.
For example, we give ourselves extra budget for food and coffee experiences as this is an aspect we love about travelling. We tend to book budget/basic accommodation on the road depending on the destination and available options, as all we need is a bed, access to a (preferably) hot shower in a secure room.
A good chunk of your budget will already be paid or known in advance before you’ve even left home (i.e. flights, some ground transport, accommodation, tours (if applicable) etc), so this should also help when allocating your budget to food, shopping and extras. There will also be times where you need to be strict and say “no” if your gut feeling and bank account tell you that you cannot afford a certain something. Be conservative but also be kind to yourself – you are treating yourself to a holiday after all and you’ll have to spend money to fully enjoy the experience!
4. Itinerary
We spend a lot of time planning our travel itineraries on a day by day basis and even breaking it down to each hour of each day. Some people call us crazy but when we are short on time and have an extensive list of things to see/do/eat/shop etc, we prefer to be organised.
Laying out our trip day by day also helps us to block out periods of time for travel or to take note of when restaurants and attractions are closed. Of course, plans can and will change. Rain may force you indoors (museums, galleries, shopping) or an unknown public holiday may disrupt your planned travel day.
We recommend using this tab to roughly outline your plans and drop in the activities and places you simply cannot miss. You can move activities to different days if your original plan doesn’t work out. If you want, record your daily expenses at the bottom and you can track how your actual spending goes against your budget.
5. Packing List
For those who begrudge packing, it tends to be the case that you will end up wearing 20% of your packed belongings during 80% of your trip. Or if you’ve left packing until the last minute and thrown items higgledy-piggledy into your suitcase, you’ll arrive at your accommodation to realise you’ve forgotten your favourite undies or packed the wrong shoes.
Packing lists work. Once you’ve considered the weather and climate at your destination, your baggage allowance plus the duration of your trip, you can plan what you need and limit unnecessary purchases on the other side.
We’ve compiled a pretty epic packing list covering practically every type of adventure and possibly everything that you may need. Feel free to adjust accordingly to your requirements.
6. Checklist
This is the final step before you walk out your front door to embark on a brand new adventure. Before you go, use this tab to ensure you’ve dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. And then you’re off!
Bon voyage!
WHERE WILL YOU TRAVEL NEXT?
EUROPE
ASIA
AUSTRALIA
Give us your feedback of the Trip Planner Template below!
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Thank you so much! This Travel Planning template is perfect and contains everything we need for our family holiday
HOLY COW I cannot believe I found EVERYTHING I needed all in one for FREE. I feel like I have ROBBED someone! My partner and I never grew up in households where family vacations were had, so we have no idea what were doing. Thank you kindly to The Travel Quandary. If I can donate, share your page, volunteer, etc. let me know how I can repay <3
SO HELPFUL ! THANK YOU SO MUCH !
How you extend the dates! I am going for a month
This template is so great! Planning a trip to New Zealand and will be traveling around a lot – this is super helpful!
NICE!! MUCHAS GRACIAS VERY COOL!!!
Alina
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your files!
Thanks so much for the template. This is a very good start for a traveller like me. Easy to use!
Amazing template! Exactly what I needed. Thank you!
Thank you for the great tool! I was wondering if theres a way to enter an end date as well to the itenerary?
Hi there!
I was wrapped to see that the template is created by some Aussies! and local ones as well. I’m from Melbourne! Template is a charm! Just what I’ve been looking for ages! Planning our Europe trip for 2023 that got cancelled in 2020! (We all know why!!)
Will let you know how it goes and will definitely check out your website!
Thanks,
Hi Rosanna, we’re so glad to hear that you’ve found this template useful! Very jealous that you’re planning an escapade to Europe. No doubt it will be amazing! Safe travels 🙂
Thankyou for your post on THE ULTIMATE TRIP PLANNER TEMPLATE on excel. It is very usefull. I have been using this template to plan my trips for a while now and it has saved me a lot of time. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a travel planner.
Didn’t work. At least, not on my version of excel.
something about “delimited” something or another.
Hi Piotr, We’re sorry to hear this. What version of excel are you using? Are you on a Mac or PC? If you wish, we can email you an Excel copy of the template.
So so sooo helpful! I’m happy to find this great itinerary template! Thank you so much.
Thanks Tahira! We’re so glad that you found it helpful. Enjoy your travels! 🙂
Hi Tahira, we’re thrilled you found this template helpful. Enjoy your travels!
I needed this so much, easy and simply. Thank you for a great spreadsheet.
Thanks Nga! Happy travel planning!
Hi Nga, we’re so glad you loved this spreadsheet. Hope you had an amazing travel adventure!
Thank you , soooo much ! I appreciate you putting this together and sharing it
Hi Priscilla! So glad that you found this planning template useful! We hope you enjoy your trip!
I am so excited to find this. (Thank you, Pinterest!) I will be leaving in a month on an eight day train trip and this is exactly what I needed to get all my ducks in a row. Thank you so much!
HiTeresa! We’re so glad to hear this and so exciting for you. Enjoy your trip!
This is great! Found this as i was looking for a newer travel planner and this is very helpful and user friendly!
We’re so glad to hear this! Happy travel planning!
great tool. never used a planner before and it has most every item to consider… add a route sheet for those who driving to, during and back from their vacations…
Glad you like it and thanks for the feedback. We’ll look into adding a new tab for routes.