Want to have a good time with the girls, catch up with your college friends, or sip bloody mary while staring at the beautiful views with your best friend? A girls getaway it is; we all could use one! Going on a vacation with your best girlfriends is a great way to rekindle your friendship and have fun together. Use these tips to plan a girlfriend getaway you’ll never forget!
*Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have recommended. Please check out our disclosure policy for more details. Thank you for your support!
Table of Contents
Planning a Trip with Friends
Planning the perfect girls’ weekend getaway can be tedious, with so many things to consider: budget, location, date, flights, etc. Let’s go through some tips to plan a stress-free girls’ trip with your best friends:
1. Create a Whatsapp Group
Step one when learning how to plan a girlfriend getaway: create a group chat and add your friends. Whatsapp groups are great for planning, keeping everyone updated about the trip, and sharing pictures!
2. Appoint a Leader
It’s best to have someone in charge of the planning process to make everything well coordinated. Also, appointing someone who makes the tough decisions can eliminate a lot of stress while planning the trip.
3. Make a Budget
Before you start planning a jam-packed itinerary, you need to consider a major part of the trip: money. The best way to ensure a great girls’ weekend getaway is by having a budget discussion before planning.
Find out how much everyone can spend for the trip without breaking the bank. Based on this discussion with your girls, you can make travel plans accordingly, ensuring the budget is affordable for everyone. You don’t want a friend feeling overwhelmed or secluded because the budget is too extravagant.
4. Identify the Needs of Your Girlfriends
Every one of your friends will have an idea of where they want to go and how to spend their trip. To learn how to plan a girlfriend getaway and make it perfect, make sure you understand what everyone needs.
If most of your friends have been so overwhelmed by work and need to destress, you can decide to go on spa treatments and enjoy great dining. If they want outdoor adventure, they can go to a location with opportunities for activities like hiking and kayaking.
5. Start Early
If you want a girls’ weekend that will go past the group chat, then it’s best to start planning as early as possible. You may need months of planning before you get everyone on the same page, book the trip, and agree on a weekend that will work for all your friends. If you are thinking of going on a summer vacation, it’s best to start planning during the winter months.
6. Decide on a Destination
Once you have a budget and understand your friend’s needs, the next step is to agree on a destination. There are many girls trip ideas and selecting one location out of the hundreds of vacation-worthy destinations may take time.
If you are tasked with planning a girlfriend getaway, a perfect way to choose a place is by speaking with your friend groups. Discuss what they want to do during the vacation and the perfect place to do it.
Maybe your friends are looking to sit by a beautiful palm beach with a glass of wine? Or maybe they are more interested in trying out new food and exploring dining options?
Based on your discussions with everyone, you can make a poll of 2 or 3 possible destinations and have your friends vote. A good tip for planning a getaway is to ensure you don’t overwhelm your friends with many options. You need to be decisive, so instead of sending out a list of 10 places to pick from, stick to two or three. Also, you can choose a destination yourself based on the budget.
7. Decide How To Spend The Time
Usually, how you spend your time will depend on the type of trip. If you’ve gone to a beer city or wine country, there will, of course, be a lot of wine tasting and hopping around local breweries. If it’s an outdoor adventure, you will probably spend a lot of time in your hiking boots, on a horse, or in a camping cabin.
Everyone will have their own ideas on how to spend the time, so a great tip might be creating a wish list of what your friends want to do. Some may want to tour the state parks while others want to experience the foodie scene or zoom around on a jet ski. That doesn’t mean it has to be one thing or the other. Instead, compile the list of what everyone wants and research places or hotels that will accommodate their needs.
8. Decide When To Go
One of the biggest challenges in how to plan a girlfriend getaway is deciding on a date when everyone can travel without affecting their important schedules or events. Also, when you go will largely depend on where you are going.
Some locations, for example, are best in the winter period while some are perfect for a summer vacation. Let everyone know the best season to take the trip and discuss possible dates you can go.
9. Look for a Great Accommodation
The next step is to pick a lodging option. A major part of girls’ trips is togetherness, so try to find an accommodation that facilitates quality time with one another. You don’t want to have your friends on three different hotel floors because that will make bonding difficult.
At the same time, you may not want to be in a single suite where you have to wait in line to use the bathroom or find it difficult to have alone time. A good idea is to find a balance so that everyone can have their private space without being far away from each other.
10. Make Reservations
A lot of times, people make plans for a girls vacation forgetting to book the trip. If you wait till the last minute before booking the trip, you may find it difficult to get hotel rooms, find a cheap flight, or get a table at the Michelin restaurant your friends looked forward to. So, book your flight tickets, hotel rooms, restaurants, rideshares, and everything you can in advance.
11. Create a Fun Itinerary
Planning an itinerary is a great way to ensure everyone has fun! Make a list of places to go, live entertainment to enjoy, restaurants to eat, historical sites to check out, clubs to dance, and so on.
You should be very flexible with your itinerary when you’re on the trip. New places or activities may spring up, so try and create a flexible itinerary to accommodate surprises.
Don’t organize a weekend of wine tasting and hiking, if your friends would rather have pizza and watch a movie. Communicate and don’t stress if things don’t go as expected. Plans can change as long as everyone is having fun on the trip.
12. Get a Travel Insurance
Your girl group will benefit from travel insurance, especially in unexpected situations. Travel insurance is crucial to secure your travel investments and ensure safety in case of emergency.
Take your time to learn how travel insurance can cover your girl’s group, especially in situations where someone cancels their trip. Also, it’s best to have all your travel companions purchase their own travel insurance, especially if you are leaving the country.
13. Coordinate Packing With Your Travel Partners
Do you know what would be heartbreaking on a girls’ trip? Seeing everyone pull out their bikinis or party dresses when all you packed were ripped jeans and some t-shirts. You can prevent this from happening by discussing what to pack with your friends to make sure no one is left behind.
Also, consider creating a group packing list so that you can all share one hair straightener, shampoo, or curler instead of having everyone bring one each.
14. Schedule a Bonding Session
It’s easy to get all occupied with the trip, forgetting to spend some quality time with your girls. To prevent this from happening, you should plan at least one bonding session where you get to hang out with your friends without distractions.
It could be a spa day, a slumber party, or a shopping trip. You may also want to pick a theme, clothing style, or color coordinate for the bonding session.
15. Don’t Forget the Photo Ops
You are on a girls’ trip to soak in the experiences and create new memories but don’t forget to document. Take pictures of places you visit, make videos of your best friends having a great time, and document your special moment on the trip. Better yet, book a session with Flytographer and let them capture the memories!
16. Compromise and Maintain Fairness
There may be fights, disagreements, or misunderstandings during the trip. Someone may take the last bottle of wine, unaware that a friend already has her eyes on it. There may be arguments about who takes which bed, who gets what, and so on. Try to keep things peaceful between everyone, help iron things out, and negotiate a compromise. The last thing you want is to experience a poor girl’s getaway because person A and person B couldn’t get along.
You can also set rules like no dishes left in the sink; checks will be split when everyone goes out to dinner; no touching labeled items in the fridge; scheduling a cooking rotation; and so on. This is to reduce the occurrence of misunderstandings and arguments.
Palm Springs? A Wine Region? New York City? A National Park? There are endless destinations to spend the long weekend with your girls. When learning how to plan a girlfriend getaway, it’s essential to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding the budget, location, itinerary, and date. Now that you know the tips to work out a girls’ trip, you can call your besties and start planning!