craigdonove: What I Did Before My Summer Vacation

Vacation is a time to relax, to recharge, to eat with reckless abandon. It's for lying by the pool, catching up on neglected reading, and embarking on new adventures. The catch is that there's a whole world of travel planning before takeoff. Organizing your own party can be a challenge, but have you ever organized a trip for a group? I hope you packed your patience.

Photo by Thursday Night Bites

More often than not, I find my own vacations are born of opportunity rather than desire. I travel for sporting events, to see family, because it's the holidays, or in the case of this year's summer vacation, for a wedding. Since six of my fellow wedding guests are traveling to northern California from the east coast, we're taking two extra days to make a trip to Napa. From choosing hotels to making restaurant reservations, planning a trip for eight (four couples) requires no small miracle of organization.

Collectively, we've spent many hours on both the wine tour and restaurant planning. Though we're happy our adventure will take us to a pretty impressive number of wineries and to dinner at Ad Hoc and Farmstead, the planning didn't come simply. Here are the top five lessons I learned about how to make sure no bottle is left uncorked and no charcuterie plate uneaten when traveling with a group.

Plan ahead and be flexible or face the consequences.
Not everyone can be in charge, but someone must be.
Social networking is your friend.
Go old school. Pick up the phone.
Stay organized.

Plan ahead and be flexible or face the consequences. We nailed the basics for this trip, but didn't do a great job getting on top of the most important aspects—food and wine. By the time we got our collective act together, it was a bit of a circus. While we have winery schedules complicating our planning, we've also paid the price for our tardiness on the restaurant side. When traveling just as a couple, grabbing a last minute online reservation in lieu of over-planning is adventurous. Leaving reservations for eight to the last minute? Foolish at best. Ditto on the wineries: many require a lot of advance notice for a large group, even in the off-peak season, and summertime is prime time for Napa. If I had it to do over, I'd lock our reservations a month in advance. Making changes is faster and easier than starting from scratch. Have a Plan B… and a Plan C.

Not everyone can be in charge, but someone must be. We found our most important planning tool was having one person speak for each couple. The four of us served as a voice for our respective couples, ensuring all dietary restrictions as well as food preferences were accommodated. Do you have a Celiac in the group? Might there be an Ichthyophobe at the table? These are details, if left unattended, with the potential to ruin everyone's good time. Having someone represent each part of the group also helps ensure shared responsibility so that one person doesn't get stuck with the bulk of the planning.

Social networking is your friend. I have a few friends who love food and dining out as much as I do, but not enough to create a comprehensive list of Napa restaurants and wineries. In addition to online reviews, I turned to some of my favorite Tweeters and Facebookers for additional recommendations. Comparing their lists to my own research and to suggestions gathered by others in the group yielded a pretty consistent list of favorites. This was a massive help in prioritizing our destinations. I mean, really, who doesn't like talking about their favorite places to eat and drink?

Go old school. Pick up the phone. What's that? Your smart phone can be used to make phone calls?! I get it. I hate using the phone as much as the next technophile, but you can't have a dialogue with a website. So go ahead. Overcome your fear and dial those ten digits. Engage with your voice instead of your fingertips. Particularly when managing group dining, restaurants can often work with you beyond their online reservation offerings. Talking to a real, live person not only gives you the chance to uncover all your options, but many restaurants prefer to be contacted directly for group reservations. We were also reminded that websites aren't always up to date and policies change. Speaking directly to someone at the restaurant or winery helps avoid trouble upon arrival.

Stay organized. There are hundreds of ways to do this. My preferred method is a good, old-fashioned Excel spreadsheet, posted online for the others in the group to access. Include all the relevant details including addresses, distances, reservation times, and confirmation numbers. Providing everyone with a consistent source of information ensures no diner is left behind.

Vacationing with a group can be one of the most fun or most stressful experiences in travel. Taking painstaking extra planning steps feels laborious in the moment, but I'll take a few extra steps up front to ensure the only decisions we're making upon arrival is choosing between red and white.

Post written for Urbanspoon by Noël Narvaez-Barnes of Thursday Night Bites