Bella's Beautiful Life

Planning a vacation can be slightly overwhelming when it comes to surfing an endless stream of websites for ideas while trying to pick a location, search for motel reviews, and find fun (and cheaper) places to visit and take pictures at. You’re still going to have to look at hotel reviews, but did you know that you can quite easily plan a vacation with Instagram?  Here are a couple ideas to help you plan you next vacation or weekend trip with Instagram.

Ask for recommendations

Post a photo to your Instagram (if it’s a photo of where you’d like to go this is a big plus, make sure it’s a stock photo and that you don’t have to give credit for it). In the description let others know you are planning a vacation, tell them the place(s) you want to visit. Ask for suggestions of places to stay, visit, eat, etc. Make sure you add hashtags that relate to your vacation destination but aren’t super popular. For example, if you put #LosAngeles your post will be with over 42 million other posts. If you put #california your post is with over 55 million others.

Search with Hashtags

Searching hashtags goes along with what we talked about a second ago. Search more specific hashtags to narrow down your search. Instead of #sanfrancisco or #sandiego try #Pier39. This is super simple (and fun!) to do. It is as simple as typing in your dream destination and scrolling through the top hashtags.

Search ‘Places’

Searching places is similar to searching hashtags. You’ll probably have to scroll for a while to find something you really like, but you’ll definitely add something to your destination list. If you want you can even check out the destination’s story for up to date happenings.

Create destination collections

I know I personally really like Instagram’s save feature and the ability it gives you to create custom collections. It’s a super easy way to collect ideas months in advance. If I am on my phone I save photos I like on the Instagram app and organize them into a few basic collections. When I use Instagram on my computer and I see something I like, I usually pin it to one of my secret Pinterest boards.

If you’re waiting in line somewhere you can save ideas and later when you get home you can create a Pinterest board to save all of your vacation inspo. Saving ideas to a Pinterest board is a great option because sometimes people delete half the images on their Instagram account (or even delete the account), which may result in you losing your prized vacation idea. If you save them to one of your Pinterest boards you don’t have to worry about losing them.

Check out local Instagram accounts

Many hotels, restaurants, and certain vacation spots have Instagram accounts. This is a great way to scope out potential dinner spots and decent places to spend the night. You can even check out the ‘tagged’ page to see what others have posted about their visit there. Scroll through the list of who they follow, you may be able to stumble upon another great place to visit.