It's time to turn the page to 2023. 

Do you have a travel calendar? 

(And will you help plan mine?)

Do you keep a travel calendar? 

If you love to travel, you know that it's important to plan ahead. Sometimes, the timeline can be expressed in month. In other cases, it should be years. And if you have a bucket list or even just a wish list, you're more likely to achiever some of those travel goals if you map them out.

Your travel planner doesn't need to be a separate physical calendar, although some people do prefer putting pencil (yes, pencil, in case you need to erase and reschedule anything!) to paper. Even a small notepad will do if that's your style. Or perhaps you do everything digitally. The calendar app on your phone probably lets you assign a certain color or particular icons to designate travel (or anything you wish). Personally, I use all of the above!

If you don't keep a travel calendar, the New Year is the perfect time to start. Here are some of the best reasons for doing so:

1. Unless you live a life of complete leisure, you need to carve out the time for your trips.

How long are you able to spend away from home in a given period of time? Days? Weeks? If you're retired, it could be months. If you're able to take multiple trips in a year, you may have ideas or preferences about how you'd like to space them out. Your job, family, or community commitments may dictate your schedule to some degree. We all have constraints on our ability to travel and the time we can devote to it, and a travel calendar can help you navigate your personal schedule to the best advantage.

2. You may need to schedule your trip based on factors that have nothing to do with you.

There may be details connected to your destination that will help determine when you can or should travel there. Many destinations are delightful during one season and miserable in another. Large annual events and festivals may either attract you or give you a reason to choose another date. 

If you've got your eye on a certain destination, it pays to become familiar with factors that might make or break your trip. By keeping a travel calendar, you can pencil in possible dates that either coincide or avoid the seasons, dates, or events that suit your desires.

Those life and community commitments, too, can impose their will on your schedule and you may literally need to block out certain dates as impossible for travel. Your travel calendar will help you plan around those external determinants.

3. Your travel calendar can help you prepare for a trip.

You can include prompts on your schedule for travel preparation tasks. How about reminding yourself of the dates by which you should renew your passport or Global Entry account, when you should apply for foreign visas, or when to set up vaccine appointments? You can also plant seeds for when you need to order something important for a trip or simply put a packing day on your calendar. When you write things on your calendar, you are more likely to tackle them.

4. It helps to take the long view.

One of the biggest pleasures of travel is the anticipation. Keeping a travel calendar will not only serve a practical purpose, it will serve an inspirational role as well. It's been proven in psychological studies that having something to look forward to--such as travel--is good for our mental health. And, boy, haven't the last three years proved that beyond a doubt?

By laying it all out over an extended time frame--I suggest two or three years, depending on your situation--you can see into the future. You'll appreciate the overview of how things all fit together and more easily see how or where you may want to adjust your ideal timeline. 

Maybe you like to balance out one or two longer trips with a few shorter ones each year. Or you dream of including a bucket list exotic trip next year or the year after (or maybe one every year after retirement?). Perhaps you're a more spontaneous person and like to leave a hole in your calendar for an unexpected trip. 

Considering a span of twelve to thirty-six months at the time is not an outlandish idea, and with a digital or pencil method, you can revisit your travel calendar each year to see where you stand--and where you'll be headed. And again, adding those goals to your calendar makes it more likely that you'll see them become reality.

Mon Voyage has a complicated travel calendar. 

As I mentioned, I keep both a physical and a digital calendar. For every Small Group Trip destination, I research the most appealing time to enjoy the locations in question before deciding exactly when I should schedule each trip. I pore over extensive historical weather data. And I do my best not to schedule the three to five SGTs per year too close together. 

I also have a dashboard in my client management platform where I have all of my confirmed and proposed group trip dates integrated into a larger calendar showing all of my private (FIT) clients' trips at the same time. Why? Because I need to be able to schedule my time to handle (and often juggle) their travels alongside the groups I'm planning. I can and do work remotely, yes, but call me old-fashioned: I don't like to be out of my office for more than two or three weeks at the time. 

Until January 22nd, you can help Mon Voyage create that Small Group Trips calendar for 2024 and early 2025.

Please participate in our annual survey to determine our future destinations. Many of the ideas come from client suggestions. Your voice matters.

With your input, I know we'll have some exciting destinations for 2024--and I can't wait see what they'll be!