Better vacations with social media

First, the bad news: planning works.

If you’re anything like me, you love the romantic idea of spontaneous travel; of hitting the road with nothing but a toothbrush and a change of underwear (plus the entire Apple product line, of course). Get in the car, and let the fates determine where your vacation will take you.

We tried that approach last summer, and we had a pleasant but intermittently stressful holiday. (There are no hotel rooms available for 60 miles! I can’t find a restaurant our kids will eat at! how come you didn’t notice there were no gas stations here?) So this summer, I tried the opposite approach.

I planned our vacation down to the last detail.

I did the vacation planning with social media.

We had a truly fantastic vacation.

So now it’s time to write my thank-you notes: the richly deserved acknowledgements to the different social media services that made our blissful holiday possible. My thank-yous will include the details on the creative and tricky ways we used each service, so you can use the same tools and techniques to plain the next great vacation (or business trip) on your own itinerary.