Planning Uncategorized

Key Tips to Planning the Best Girls’ Trip

February 22, 2025

Expert Tips You Need to Know and the Questions to Ask Before You Go!

Planning a trip with your best pals is a blast, but there are plenty of things to consider when planning and executing a trip with friends or family.

After taking a ten-day trip to Spain with three friends, I can honestly say that following these tips will help you have the best time planning and executing a smooth trip! These tips can be used for any trip, but since we were in Spain, some are Eurocentric. To get the details of my trip — how much it cost and where we stayed —check the bottom of the blog.

Let’s get into the good stuff: the planning!

Pick your travel friends carefully

Let’s get real: Travel can be stressful and exhausting. If you get tired and cranky, go into an alcohol-fueled serotonin dump, or have a crying jag triggered by body dysmorphia and too many inflammatory foods, are your friends going to murder you? I might be speaking from personal experience.

But seriously, go with friends who love you and friends you love so that minor irritations don’t turn into ruined friendships at the end of the trip. We often see this in travel forums — friends who couldn’t weather the ups and downs of traveling together.

How do you pick travel friends? Keep reading.

Activity level

When planning a trip with friends, pick travel companions similar to your general activity level. We never discussed this, but we all work out at the same gym, are very active, and regularly hang out, so we knew going into it that we all like to do similar things and are generally high-energy. As the oldest in the group, I was a little worried about my energy level matching, but I didn’t need to worry. We averaged eight to ten miles of walking per day, and I don’t think anyone had any issues with that, though we were all certainly tired at the end of the day!

Questions to ask your trip mates about activity levels and getting around:

Do you have any physical limitations for walking up and down hills, steps, across cobblestones?
Do you have issues with heights? This is useful if you are taking cable cars or funiculars.
How many miles per day of walking is doable: 3-5, 5-10, 10+?
How much do you want to rely on taxis or rideshares? How many taxis or rideshares per day would you be open to?
Are you willing or comfortable using public transportation such as buses or subway rides if it’s time efficient?

Mopeds along la rambla — Along La Rambla

Picking a roommate

Depending on where you are traveling and the accommodations you choose, you may end up sharing a room or even a bed.

If you travel to Europe, hotel rooms and beds can be small. If you plan to share a room or bed, there are a couple of key factors to consider.

Preferred room temperature is a major consideration. Having a preferred temperature range to discuss is very helpful. My roomie and I liked the room cool, but not freezing. We were surprised when we popped down to our friend’s room to find that their room was easily 10 degrees colder than ours. Funny correlation—they are both married, and we are both single. I think they have both been acclimated to their husbands’ temperatures!

Other things to discuss are snoring, noise machines, routines, bathroom habits and tidiness.

Questions to ask your potential roommate:

Do you snore? If I snore, will it keep you awake?
What is your ideal bedtime and wake-up time?
How much chaos can you handle in the room, or do you need it to stay pretty tidy and clean?
What is your ideal room temperature range at night and during the day?
If we are sharing a bathroom, how much privacy do you prefer?
If we share a bed, how light or heavy do you sleep?
Do you have quirky sleep habits I need to know about?

Speaking of quirky sleep habits…

Product tip:

I need to be able to listen to TV when I sleep, so I always travel with this headband with speakers. This allows me to listen to my shows when I sleep and also blocks out any noise my roommate might make. It doubles as a sleep mask and looks super cool. It pairs nicely with my mouthguard.

This travel fan is also nice and produces a bit of white noise.

Budget

Setting up budget expectations is crucial when planning a group trip with friends. We never set a “total budget,” but we made group decisions at each step of the planning process, with everyone providing input. This wasn’t a “budget” trip, but it wasn’t a luxury trip either. When booking hotels, we presented options and decided as a group. We chose a less expensive option for our time in Barcelona, a hotel on La Rambla in the heart of the Gothic Quarter; and for Soller, Mallorca, we splurged on a very lovely two-bedroom home using Airbnb.

We opted out of a private boat tour while in Mallorca, which was on the pricy side, and chose a winery tour that fit our collective budgets. Go into your trip planning with a rough idea of what you feel comfortable spending and communicate openly.

Plan to add another couple of hundred dollars for expenses that are harder to predict, such as taxis, ride shares and the late-night splurge on fancy cocktails.

Questions to ask your friends:

What is the maximum you want to budget for accommodations?
What is the maximum you want to budget for meals?
What is the maximum you want to budget for tours and excursions?

Google has an itinerary template in Sheets; we used it to build our itinerary. This is where we kept our reservation information, confirmation numbers, addresses, etc. Everyone had access to the sheet in Google Drive, so even when we split up, everyone had the information at their fingertips. We had two planning meetings: one to rough out our activities and one to finalize details.

Planning activities

Having one or two planned activities and some “we could stop here” backups is a good approach. I would consider restaurant reservations as a planned event.

Leave plenty of time to enjoy each outing and to get between events. I think we did a great job with this trip. Planning your itinerary is essential so you don’t spend much time saying, “What should we do now?” It’s equally important to leave downtime. We had an hour or so each day before dinner to relax. When planning our trip, we all wrote down five things we wanted to do and planned around those. We had a mix of architecture and history with plenty of time for wandering.

Pro tip for Barcelona: I pitched a bike tour to my friends (at the recommendation of another friend!), and they all HATED IT. I thought it would be a great way to see a large swath of the city, and we did, but it was terrifying. Barcelona is a bustling city, and riding an electric bike through crowds, traffic and narrow streets was not fun. I do not recommend it. Instead, pick a hop-on, hop-off bus tour or a walking tour. I’ve been really happy using Get Your Guide to book tours.

Questions to ask your friends:

Would you rather do outdoor activities, indoor activities or a mix of both?
Are museums a priority for this trip?
Would you like to do immersion activities such as a cooking class?
What are five things you would like to do in this city?

Introverts vs. extroverts

Even if you are a go-hard or go-home traveler, traveling with a group requires social energy, and taking some time for yourself is essential. It can be as simple as eating breakfast alone, setting aside a “free” morning, or leaving ample time before dinner to recharge. Don’t let FOMO get the best of you. Even if you have to skip a planned activity, make sure you take time for your mind and body to rest.

Questions to ask your friends:

How much downtime do you need each day?
Do you feel comfortable asking for some alone time?
Should we build alone time into the schedule?

Sunrise, sunset

How you have your activities booked will largely determine your wake-up and getting-to-bed schedules. Generally, it’s good to know how much time everyone needs in the morning to wake up, get ready and get going so that enough time is left for sleeping! Conversely, it’s good to know everyone’s ideal bedtime. If you have some early risers and some late owls, try to pair them up on the trip and leave room for people to crash early or wake up early as needed.

Questions to ask your friends:

What would be your ideal time to be done with our day on most days?
What would be the perfect time to start our adventures each morning?
How much sleep do you need at night to function?

Eating out

I highly recommend setting expectations around eating out. When, where and how much to spend are good questions to ask. I personally am not a “foodie,” and I’ll eat whatever is close and cheap. For this trip with my friends, we did book several fancy dinners. Food culture in Spain is unique, so I will specify this for Barcelona: 10:00 p.m. is not an abnormal time to eat dinner in Spain, but you can eat earlier.

What I noticed in the restaurants we chose, which were mostly high-end and very well-rated, is that the “typical” dinner of a light meal was not the case at the places we ate. Many of them had “set” menus and encouraged many dishes. I left every dinner stuffed.

We ate breakfast in our hotel each morning and had lunch around 1:00 or later. Some of us snacked between lunch and dinner. All but one of our dinners in Barcelona were between 10 p.m. and midnight. Almost every restaurant in the Gothic Quarter serves dinner starting at 8 p.m., so eating earlier is convenient if your group wishes.

I am a very picky eater, and most of Spain’s food culture revolves around seafood and pork, two things I do not eat. Since some meals are tapas, meaning you order a lot of plates of food and share everything, I was grateful my friends were accommodating and ordered plenty of vegetarian plates for the table.

Questions to ask your friends:

What is the ideal time for everyone to eat dinner?
Are you a breakfast person, or do you prefer to skip breakfast? (This also helps you decide if you need a free breakfast as part of your hotel package—unless you make a late included breakfast part of your lunch budget.)
Do you have a budget in mind for meals?
How many “fancy” meals sound good to you?
Do you have food allergies or restrictions that the group will need to accommodate?

Connected and organized

Everyone on this trip had iPhones, but it is best to move to WhatsApp or Signal for group messaging if you have Android-based friends. If you are using an eSim, messaging can be hit or miss between the two operating systems. WhatsApp is used worldwide and is very handy to have on your phone if traveling internationally, as many tour groups, drivers and hotels will use it to communicate with you.

Two of us used an Airalo eSim, and two used international plans. (Learn more about international phone service options.) Our messaging on our iPhones was seamless.

Have a plan for navigating and using maps so the burden and expense are split amongst the group. Make sure everyone can access the itinerary so no one person is in charge of ” what’s next.”

I was so impressed with our group that we were all on time, every day, even with our very tightly packed schedule!

Pro-tip: Assign a leader per day. Each day, one person is in charge of “leading” the group, navigating to destinations and keeping the day on track. This splits up the mental load. Some people are better navigators, so determine as a group whose strengths to use. One in our group was better at Spanish, so she handled more of the Spanish communication, such as asking for our table or the check. One of us is better at navigation, so she did the most to get us to specific places. I like to know when we need to be places and ensure we have enough time.

Questions to ask your friends:

Who best uses maps and gets us from point A to point B? (pick more than one)
Who is going to check the itinerary and manage the tickets?
Who is most comfortable hailing taxis or calling ride shares?
Who is the time manager?

You can create shared folders in iPhoto or Google Photos, but I like the photo-sharing app Photo Circle. It has a free version and is easy to use. It doesn’t clutter up my phone as the photos don’t dump into my camera roll, and I like that it shows who took what picture.

Take candid pictures of your friends and have them take them of you, too. Share at the end of the trip. They might not be your best-posed photos, but aren’t those really the best?

Tracking expenses

Splitwise is a lifesaver when you are sharing expenses with a group.

Enter expenses as they happen and use your location’s name. When you get home and go through your banking statements, it’ll be a lot easier to figure out what expense was what if you use the name of the restaurant and a description of what you had. Instead, I used “weird salad place” or “all the potatoes,” which was not helpful when I got home. For this trip we entered items in euros and then, when we got home, converted the entire thing to USD in the app.

Pick your drivers

We rented a car in Mallorca and decided on two drivers for that duration. I prefer to drive, even in an unknown country, and one of the other women chose to be the additional driver. It’s always good to have two in case someone gets sick or you need a backup driver for any reason. I was thankful to have a second driver. The winding mountain roads in Mallorca can be pretty scary. The driving was challenging but not the most demanding driving experience; that award goes to the Island of Madiera in Portugal! As a side note, you need an international driver’s license in Spain, and we were asked to present it at the car rental counter in Mallorca. We got ours at our local AAA office for under $30, and it’s valid for one year. Check out our tips for renting a car before you go.

I highly recommend using the Spain Driving Guide by Tripamo before you go. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with the rules of the road, the unfamiliar road signs, and even how to fuel your car! Their courses are reasonably priced, and the video portions take less than an hour to complete. They even come with a downloadable PDF you can reference during your trip should you need it.

For more on planning a trip with friends, see our blog on Planning a Girls’ Trip: 5 Important Things to Consider. Going on a trip with your friends is something you will never forget; it will bond you in new ways and deepen your appreciation of one another. You’ll make memories that last a lifetime.

Check out our Spain section in Destinations to get tips on visiting Barcelona and Malaga!

Trip Details

Me and three friends, ages 33 to 54
4 Nights in Barcelona, Spain
3 Nights in Soller, Mallorca
1 Night in Palma, Mallorca
Rental car in Mallorca

The total cost was $4,664 for all four of us or $1,166 per person, plus flights we purchased individually. We all flew the same United Airlines flight. My flight was $820 after I paid $220 to bump to economy plus seats on the way back. Hot tip: United’s basic economy seats are brutal.

Where we stayed:

Barcelona: Hotel Cuatro Naciones. Simple, clean, excellent breakfast right on La Rambla.

Soller, Mallorca: Airbnb. Stunning with beautiful gardens, fruit trees and a lovely pool.

Palma: Puro Hotel. A splurge, completely worth it!

Ready to book your trip?

Book your accommodations

We like booking.com for accommodations. They offer a range of hotels, resorts, apartments, guesthouses and even hostels. The platform also has a loyalty program that allows members to save even more.

Book your tours

We love booking tours through a single provider and keeping our mobile tickets in one spot. We use GetYourGuide. We appreciate that they work with local companies and provide a wide variety of tours!

Stay connected

When using an eSIM, we like Airalo. An eSIM is the easiest way to obtain cell service outside your network. We have used their eSIM cards in Budapest, Canada and Ecuador, and so far, so good! Simply download the Airalo app, select the country you’re traveling to, and choose the amount of data you want. Follow the installation instructions and turn it on when you arrive!

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