Timeline for a Travel Journey: Paper Example

Introduction

Travelling is one of the most exciting moments in an individual's life. There are many reasons why an individual or a group of individuals travel to various destinations. Some of the reasons are; visiting relatives or friends, and visiting different places during holidays. Deciding and planning for a travel destination can be a daunting undertaking (Richardson, 2010). There are some steps that an individual must follow throughout the entire traveling experience from the moment the idea of traveling comes to the mind to the point of exploring the journey and sharing the experience after the trip. The micro-moments involved include dreaming about the destination to travel to, planning to travel to the desired destination, carrying out the booking of the journey, experiencing the journey and finally sharing the experience with friends or relatives (Blanch, 2000).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Dreaming about the destination to travel to is the first step. It involves dreaming moments where individuals start thinking about their next destination (I-want-to-get-away moment) (Robb et al., 2009). At this step, an individual researches the various destinations they have in mind. For instance, an individual may search for things like "Where is Miami?" or "What to do in Miami?" An individual may check the destination on YouTube and Google.

After 'dreaming' of various potential destinations, an individual narrows down to the planning moments (I-want-this-trip-to-be-perfect moments) (Stanbridge et al., 2006). At this stage, an individual narrows down to travel destinations and he or she decides the time they want to travel. For example, if an individual has settled on visiting Miami, he or she researches on various things concerning Miami. For instance, an individual might be interested to know the distance to Miami, the best time of the year to travel to Miami and the cost involved in traveling to Miami (Apperley et al., 2000). They search for "What is the distance to Miami from a certain place?" "How much are hotels in Miami?"

The next step after planning on the travel to the destination involves booking a ticket to that destination (I-to-book-it moments). At this juncture, the individuals' book flights to the destination of their choices (Stanbridge, 2007). Before this stage, individuals must have cut on their expenditure to ensure that they have enough cash to facilitate the trip. Individuals normally check last minute deals to ensure their choice is the best.

After booking the flight to the destination of choice, for instance, Miami, individuals now visit the destination. This involves the experiencing moments (I-want-to-get-the-most-of-it moments) where individuals are on the actual destination (Blanch, 2000). Individuals try to overcome the unfamiliarity with their new surrounding and therefore try to search for various things concerning the surrounding. For instance, if the new surrounding is Miami, individuals may search for things like "hotels in Miami" or "food in Miami" or "bars in Miami" and many others just to familiarize themselves with the new environment. This will also be of importance when they need something or want to go to visit a place within the destination.

While individuals are enjoying their visit, they may want to share their experience with friends or relatives concerning their new surroundings. Individuals may take videos or photos and share on social media such as Facebook, Twitter or any other social platform.

Conclusion

Traveling to various destinations involves various critical steps that have to be taken to experience the best of the visit. In all the moments involved from dreaming moments to sharing moments, an individual's mobile phone is a crucial device as it is used in all these moments. Individuals use their phones to search on various destinations as they dream on them, they also use it to aid in planning session as well as booking of flight to the desired destination, and they also use their mobile phones to share their experience with friends and relatives.

References

Apperley, M., Fletcher, D., Rogers, B., & Thomson, K. (2000, May). Interactive visualization of a travel itinerary. In Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces (pp. 221-226). ACM

Blanch, R. J. (2000). Timeline by Michael Crichton. Arthuriana, 10(4), 69-71.

Ghislandi, A. C., Fijal, A. R., & Christopher, E. J. (1994). CATS 1990 Household Travel Survey: A Methodological Overview (No. 94). Chicago Area Transportation Study, Information Services Division.

Hasan, K. T., Noori, S. R. H., SalamI, A., & Kabir, M. A. (2011). Making sense of time: timeline visualization for public transport schedule. In Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval (HCIR 2011), Washington.

Richardson, A. (2010). Using customer journey maps to improve customer experience. Harvard Business Review, 15(1), 2-5.

Robb, C. N., Giuntoli, D. S., Kneller, H. J., & Simms, R. K. (2009). U.S. Patent Application No. 12/042,298.

Stanbridge, K., & Lyons, G. (2006). Travel behavior considerations during the process of residential relocation.

Stanbridge, K. (2007). Residential relocation and travel behavior change (Doctoral dissertation, the University of the West of England).