7 pre-vacation tips to make your trip hassle-free
Before you on your exciting vacation, it's crucial to take care of some important tasks the day before you leave. Here's a list of seven things you should prioritize to ensure a smooth and enjoyable holiday.
1. Confirm all reservations
It's recommended to double-check and re-confirm all your reservations. Whether it is double-checking your flight tickets to make sure you know the exact date and time of your flight, to your accommodation reservations (hotels), any other services that you might have booked, and car rentals - if you will be renting a car once you reach your holiday destination. You might want to go over your reservations for any popular tourist spots and attractions - just so that your mind can be at peace that you bought the tickets of touristy spots in advance and can skip that annoying queue.
Tip: Keep all your reservation emails or tickets in one folder (in you phone, email or prinouts).
2. Prepare Your Home and Kitchen
Make sure you give away, donate or throw away or eat the perishable food items present in your kitchen. After feeling blissful from your vacation the last thing you want to come back home to is spoilt, stinky food and fridge. No matter how long your trip is, whether its for 5 days or less or a month - it's important to clean out and tidy up your kitchen (and obviously the rest of the house) of all things perishable or that can be ruined while you are away.
Re-check if all the electrical appliances, ACs, microwave, light switches, etc are turned off before you leave.
Tip: Keep your drain and trashcans clean (empty them out) so that you don't come back home to bugs and mold.
3. Share your itinerary with a trusted contact
Share your itinerary with a close friend or family member in case of emergency. Your emergency contact should have a copy of your travel plans and details so they can contact you when needed. Also, if you want you can dowload various location tracking safety apps to keep your loved ones informed of your location in real time.
4. Settle pending bills
Remeber to pay all your credit cards, housing expenses (including rent, utlities) or any other monthly bills that might be due while you're on your vacation on time. You might prefer to pay your bills in advance or if there's an option of auto-pay (this could also be a good alternative) and take care of any payments due before you leave for your holiday.
5. Activate out-of-office notifications
For both your personal and professional email accounts, it is courteous to turn on your Out-Of-Office message so that your friends, colleagues or anyone else knows that you're simply away and not ignoring them.
6. Notify your bank
To ensure your credit cards work while you are travelling and you don't end up being in an embarassing financial situation - alert your bank of your travel plans. Especially if you are travelling abroad, you wouldn't want your account to be flagged or get frozen and unable to use your card for transaction.
7. Download offline essentials
From screenshots of your boarding passes, to Netlfix movies, songs, spotify playlists, Kindle books to almost anything else that you might need when you don't have a WiFi connection or a stable data connection - download all those things in advance to avoid boredome or any inconvenience.
Do you think these tips are helpful? Let us know in the comments.