Expensive travel planning mistakes you never knew – these aren’t equal to a fun holiday

Tour packages are abundant, and it could be a little overwhelming to find the best one for you, but a little bit of effort will never go amiss. If you call up a tour company today, they'll no doubt tell you what they offer is the best. But that's simply not true. You have to do a little shopping around for a better price, that's the only way of getting yourself a good package inclusive of accommodation, transport and so forth. It is even better if you could directly call the service providers – for example, if your tour package includes a hotel like Al Najada Doha Hotel by Tivoli, you might want to call the hotel directly to recheck the prices. If, in fact, you are travelling to Doha, you should contact hotels in Doha Qatar to get yourself the best accommodation price.

If you go for business class, you have nothing worry about. But if you belong to the majority of people who choose economy class, there are a few things you should know: the factors of a bad journey are bad posture, noise and dry air. If you can remedy those, you can have a comfortable journey, and here's how you can go about it: get earplugs; it's even better if they are the noise-cancelling type, carry a water bottle with you so that you don't have to be at the flight attendant's mercy. Also, you may need a neck pillow if you want to be in perfectly good physical health by the time you get off the flight.

Not ideal, this doesn't make any actual sense, where is the sense in bringing just two outfits with you and shopping around for the rest of your clothing requirements? This takes time and money. Also, if you haven't packed your hygiene products, it's even worse: there's no saying that you'll find exactly what you need, even if you do, you'll end up paying double the price you pay in your home country. So, it's essential to pack all your essentials, so to speak!

This is a mistake committed by almost everybody and should be avoided by you: if you don't have the faintest idea as to the holidays and the working hours in the country you are travelling to, you might wind up spending all your supposed leisure time in your hotel room, and nobody wants that. If you travel to a country on a national holiday, there might not be anything for you to see or do: for instance, if you are travelling to the Maldives during the period of Ramadan, you'll find that almost every shop is closed for business.

It's crucial that you inform someone of your plans. Your family might have an emergency, and you might run into trouble, in both these instances, you need to have someone who knows how to get in touch with you. What's more, if a lawyer wants to contact you regarding something important – whether or not you are on holiday – you need to make contact immediately. Therefore, it is essential that you keep someone in the loop.

You may have heard people say that they travelled from town to town and found suitable accommodation spontaneously. While that's a possibility, you may also end up in some shabby hotel room paying more than what you are supposed to: you shouldn't take this chance; you should book accommodation in advance – after all, you need someplace comfortable to rewind after all the fun you've had during the day.