5 Tips for Planning the Perfect Girls' Trip to New York

Speaking from experience, Girls' Trips take a LOT OF WORK to get on the calendar!!! Trying to find 3-4 days in common between a group of women can take a herculean effort. And many, many months lead time!

So if you've finally got the weekend secured, it's time to make your plans for your perfect girls' getaway. If you're plan is to take the city that never sleeps by storm, we've got five tips for you here to make your girls' trip to New York City a perfect one!

1) Plan one or two “anchor” activities per day. These are the MUST-do items in common in the group. You need to be realistic about what each day can hold when planning your itinerary. So decide the anchor items and build around them. That way, you know for sure you're going to do those highest priorities experiences with additional fun activities. But if you've created the rest of the day's itinerary around those anchor items, you know for SURE you have time for them.

2) Agree what level group you are: Are you “go hard” or “start fast, end slow” or “drink it all in slowly” or Or are you collectively a combination of levels? Determining this ahead of time will avoid conflicts by setting expectations. Some people in your group will want to be out of the hotel by 7:30 a.m. and won't want to return until Carmine's closes at 11:45. Others will want a much slower pace. Others may want to have a heavy day followed by a more leisurely one. Know who wants what ahead of time so your itinerary can be built accordingly and everyone goes home happy.

3) Leave plenty of margin between activities for unexpected delays, arising needs, and to accommodate moving through NY as a group. I can't tell you how many times we've experienced amazing things because we had longer time allotted for the travel between activities! For example, you may want to stop and watch street performers, or pop into a cool store you come across, or any MYRIAD of incredible things. OR you may encounter subway delays or someone may need an emergency pit stop. Build in margin!

4) Agree ahead on how you’ll handle money, e.g., tipping hotel staff, snacks on the go, and more. This includes deciding on your group philosophy (e.g. we know ahead of time that when they pass the bucket at Ellen's Stardust Diner to help pay for the performers' dancing classes etc. that we're going to chip in. Or we won't do it as a group but will as individuals, etc.). This also includes the means by which you'll track and repay. Spreadsheets and Venmo? Or something else? Several apps on the market make it easy to track and repay each other.

5) Hire an expert to create a custom itinerary based on your specific wants and goals, or join a guided group tour with an itinerary that matches your tastes. At Girlfriends' Getaways, we do both: create custom itineraries and lead guided trips. What we find time and again is that people are overwhelmed by the sheer number of options and well-meaning advice offered in the many chats and groups online.

If you ask the chat group, "what's the top 5 things I should do in New York?" you'll get 5,000 different combinations of responses. The REAL question to ask is, "what are the top 5 things that I should do in New York?" See the difference? You're not everyone else on the internet. You're YOU. You need an experienced guide to advise you on what you might like best. We can be that guide for you.

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