Discover your planning type, transform your trip

How do you plan your travel? Do you obsess over every detail, scour the internet, or just book a flight and hope for the best?

I tend to vacillate between extremes, sometimes taking inspiration from social media “research” and sometimes designing my trips to the same obsessive degree that NASA plotted the moon landing. But no matter how I plan, the creakiest part of the process is collaborating with friends or family—it’s a slog to get everyone to even look at all the flight and car and lodging options, much less agree on a winner. (Text threads only take you so far.)

Enter Trip Planner, a new tool on Expedia’s website and app that lets you save aspects of what you’re searching for, then easily share them with friends, family, partners, or wealthy benefactors. Then you can vote and decide as a group. It works no matter what type of planner you are, and that brings us to our three most common planning archetypes: The TikTokcationer, the Set-Jetter, and the Optimizer. Which one are you?

01

The TikTokcationer

I’m old enough to remember “guidebooks,” an archaic platform that digital natives can think of as printed out web pages that are bound together and cost around $15. But why spend hours studying dead trees when you can plan your travel by watching a 15-second TikTok video?

And for the TikTokcationer, this is the new norm. TikTok’s #travel hashtag has more than 245 billionviews, which somehow pales in comparison to the 1.4 trillion for #explore. A 2022 survey found that 60% of TikTok users wanted to visit somewhere after seeing it on the platform, and that 52 million Americans actually packed their bags and traveled somewhere after getting inspired by TikTok.

Cooler, younger, more spontaneous and always up for a great deal to somewhere that’s under the radar, TikTokcationers are the travelers who fueled the trend for Destination Dupes. They’re adventurers, curious and hungry for the new, seeking out camera-ready spots in lesser-known locations. They flocked, for instance, to Albania’s previously uncelebrated golden beaches (one estimate put visits to the Mediterranean country up 29% in 2023). Inspired by images of a spectacular sunrise over a forest park on the Chinese island of Hainan, TikTokcationers flooded the area, to the tune of a tenfold increase in visitors. They also lap up local intel, such as learning via viral video how to spot an authentic gelateria.

For Gen Z and millennials, the appeal is obvious—quick hits of dopamine, engaging personalities, up-to-date content that’s more “in the know” than what you’d get in a boomer travel book. Some great accounts to follow? For outdoorsy ideas, try Renee Hahnel, whose recent trip to Antarctica means she’s now traveled to all seven continents. Nikita Bathia posts exhaustive itineraries for popular destinations all over the world; while Angela Liguori is a must-follow for those who love an active vacation.

But on the other hand, of course, we must confront the Sisyphean paradox of TikTok travel. If the entire point is to discover hidden, off-the-radar travel gems, but you found the video because it has 50 million likes, is it really off the radar?

02

The Set-Jetter

One year I was lucky enough to visit Malta, Croatia and Iceland all in the span of a few months. The motivation? I had legitimate reasons to explore all three, but they also happened to be locations for the filming of Game of Thrones, and in each country I obsessively matched scenes from the show to what I could see with my own eyes. (In Malta, I spent five hours trying to recreate a shot from the Red Keep.)

It’s true that I’m a massive nerd, but it’s also true that I’m hardly alone. Television fuels travel: Culture-obsessed Set-Jetters are the type who book their next beach vacation or city break inspired by the locations in their most recent box set.

Why are people flocking to Richmond, England? Because it’s achingly pretty—and it’s the setting of Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso: It sparked a 160% jump in search traffic on Expedia. At this rate, the hottest destination of 2024 will be icy Alaska in winter, thanks to HBO’s True Detective: Night Country. More realistically, Expedia’s set-jetting forecast predicts spikes for South Korea (Netflix’s Squid Game) and France (Netflix’s Emily in Paris).

You can’t really blame the Set-Jetter. Movies and TV shows use jaw-dropping locations for good reason, and since the average American spends more than three hours a day watching TV or digital video, this is simply where we find our inspiration. (But we’re not always watching TV—in our other hours we’re on Tik-Tok.)

03

The Optimizer

A TikTok video may be five seconds. A show might last an hour. But if planning is half the fun of traveling, the pleasure of long-game research can last for months or years or even decades—think of it as tantric for travel. For Optimizers, the goal is to make the trip—and it’s often a bucket-list trip—as perfect as possible.

This archetype is detail-oriented, obsessive, and gets their kicks from the joy they bring along for the ride. For them, planning usually involves spreadsheets. Shared Google docs. Flight notifications set up on Expedia’s Price Tracking tool, so they’re ready to pounce. Even the purchase of actual books. It’s not enough to jot on your agenda, “Thailand: Days 4 through 6, Ko Lanta beach.” Each day must be broken down with activities, venues, and cost estimates. Nothing left to chance.

The only tiny downside, of course, is that chance happens. Micromanaging can backfire. The best moments in travel—as with life—come from pockets of serendipity. I often think back to a time I rented a bike in Beijing and got lost, and had no cell service, and discovered an unfamiliar neighborhood. I ducked into a locals-only café for lunch and had no clue what I was ordering, I just pointed at food and hoped for the best, then held out a fistful of Yuan and motioned for them to take whatever it cost. It was a little scary, it was different, it was wonderful. Sometimes the best planning is no plan at all.