About Travel Destinations Plan: The Person Behind Every Guide

There is a specific moment I come back to whenever someone asks me why I started this site.

I was standing at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon with my daughter, who was nine years old at the time. She had been complaining about the drive for the last hour. She was tired, hungry, and unimpressed by what I had described as “the most incredible thing you will ever see in your life.” I had clearly oversold it.

Then we walked to the rim.

She did not say anything for almost two full minutes. Neither did I. We just stood there, looking at 1.8 billion years of Earth’s history carved into a mile of rock, the Colorado River a silver thread far below us, the late afternoon light turning everything orange and then red and then purple as the sun dropped.

Eventually she looked at me and said: “Why did nobody tell me about this before?”

That question stayed with me. Plenty of people had written about the Grand Canyon. There were thousands of articles about it. But most of them described it the way you might describe a fact in a textbook: informative, accurate, and completely incapable of communicating what it feels like to actually stand there.

That is the gap I built Travel Destinations Plan to fill.

Who I Am

I am a travel writer, a family travel specialist, and someone who genuinely cannot sit still for more than a few weeks before needing to be somewhere new. I have been traveling seriously for over 12 years, across more than 60 countries and all six inhabited continents. I have taken children to safari camps in Kenya and teenagers to street food markets in Hanoi. I have navigated Japanese train systems with a toddler on my hip and hiked Croatian coastal trails with a ten-year-old who swore she would never hike again. She has hiked many times since.

Before Travel Destinations Plan, I worked as a travel journalist and content writer. I have written for travel publications, tourism boards, and independent blogs. I have seen how travel content is produced at scale, and I understand why so much of it reads like it was written by someone who has never actually been to the places they describe. I decided to do something different.

I write every article on this site myself. I have personally visited, researched, or lived the experiences I describe. When I tell you that the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia are most beautiful in October when the tourist crowds have thinned and the beech trees are turning gold, that is not something I read on another website. It is something I experienced on a specific October morning when I had the lower lakes boardwalk almost entirely to myself.

That specificity is what I want every article on this site to deliver.

My Travel Credentials

Destinations I have personally visited:

Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Rwanda

Asia: Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia (Bali), Cambodia, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, South Korea, China, Jordan, United Arab Emirates

Europe: United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Ireland

Americas: United States (35 states), Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador (including Galapagos)

Oceania: Australia, New Zealand

Specialist areas:

• Family travel: taking children from toddlers to teenagers to every type of destination worldwide
• Budget travel: managing world-class experiences on real budgets
• Destination planning: building itineraries that work in practice, not just on paper
• National parks: extensive experience across USA, Europe, Africa, and Oceania
• City travel: deep familiarity with major world cities and their best neighborhoods, restaurants, and hidden spots

What Travel Destinations Plan Is

Travel Destinations Plan is a destination guide site with one purpose: to help you plan trips to the world’s finest travel destinations with the confidence that comes from reading advice written by someone who has actually been there.

Every guide on this site is built around three principles.

First: specificity over generality. You will not find vague advice like “book in advance” without being told exactly how far in advance, through which platform, and what to book first. You will not find “check the local weather” without being told which specific months to avoid and why. Specific advice helps you plan. Generic advice does not.

Second: honest assessment over promotional writing. If a destination is spectacular but genuinely difficult to navigate with children, I say so. If a famous attraction is not worth the queue, I say so. If a city is expensive but absolutely worth the money, that gets said too. The goal is to give you the information you would have wanted before you went. Not a brochure.

Third: experience over research. Every destination I write about in depth is one I have visited personally. Where I draw on research to supplement my own experience, I say so. Where I have personal experience that contradicts the conventional wisdom, I share it. First-hand experience is the only thing that makes travel writing genuinely useful.

The site covers travel destinations at three levels. Country guides give you the full picture of a country’s best places and regions. City guides give you the specific activities, neighborhoods, and practical planning you need for a single destination. And specialist guides cover categories like family travel, budget travel, solo travel, and bucket list experiences for every type of traveler.

Why I Write for Families Specifically

Of all the categories of travel I have covered over the years, family travel is the one I care about most. It is also frequently the most complicated, the most expensive, and the most exhausting category of travel there is. I write about it because it delivers something that no other category can.

Children who travel grow up differently. Not because travel is inherently superior to other experiences, but because encountering a genuinely different world at a young age, when the mind is most open and most impressionable, creates a specific kind of curiosity and a specific kind of comfort with difference that is very difficult to develop any other way.

I have watched a nine-year-old process the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in complete silence and then spend the rest of the day asking the kind of questions about history and human nature that most adults avoid. I have watched a six-year-old approach a deer in Nara with a gentleness and respect that she had never shown a pet at home. I have watched teenagers who spent the flight to Kenya attached to their phones put those phones away on the first game drive and not pick them up again for three days.

Those outcomes are worth the planning, the cost, and the logistical difficulty of traveling with children. My job is to make the planning and logistics as straightforward as possible so that families can focus on what actually matters.

A Note on How This Site Works

Affiliate links: Some articles on Travel Destinations Plan contain affiliate links to hotels, tours, booking platforms, and travel products. When you book through these links, I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend services and products I would genuinely use myself. Affiliate commissions help keep this site running and free to access.

Independence: Travel Destinations Plan is independently owned and operated. I do not accept payment for positive reviews. I do not allow sponsored content to influence editorial recommendations. Every opinion on this site is my own.

Accuracy: Travel information changes. Prices, opening hours, entry requirements, and operational details can change between the time I write an article and the time you read it. I update articles regularly and include last-updated dates on every page. Always verify current details directly with the destination, venue, or booking platform before traveling.

Privacy: This site uses cookies and standard analytics tools to understand how readers use the content. This site also participates in the Google AdSense program which may display targeted advertisements. Full details are in the Privacy Policy which you can access from the footer of any page.

Get in Touch

Travel questions, destination recommendations, itinerary help, or simply sharing where you have been and what you found there. I read every message and reply to as many as I can.

Email: support@traveldestinationsplan.com

On social media:

• Pinterest: @traveldestinationsplan
• Instagram: @traveldestinationsplan
• Facebook: Travel Destinations Plan

If you have a specific planning question about a destination covered on this site, the best place to ask is in the comments section of the relevant article. That way the answer is visible to other readers who may have the same question.

Work With Travel Destinations Plan

If you represent a tourism board, hotel, tour operator, or travel brand and are interested in working together, please get in touch by email. I accept partnerships that are genuinely relevant to the Travel Destinations Plan audience and that I can represent honestly based on real experience.

I do not accept paid-for positive coverage, undisclosed sponsored content, or any arrangement that would compromise the editorial independence of this site.

Travel Destinations Plan: expert guides to the world’s best destinations, written by someone who has actually been there.

Sarah Mitchell | Founder and Editor | traveldestinationsplan.com

Last updated: June 2026