9 Surefire Ways to Ruin Your Vacation ...

One of the most common ways to ruin a vacation is to leave the passports at home. Yes, some domestic flights don’t require a passport, but that’s not the point. If you're flying abroad, you’ve already gotten to the airport you’re going to miss your flight and potentially miss your connection to your hotel. Congratulations, you’ve already lost at least a day of quality vacation time!

Whilst forgetting your plane tickets won’t destroy your entire vacation, it can cost you quite a sizeable amount of money to have them printed at the airport. If you want to stop this becoming one of your ways to spoil a vacation, print them off and pack them in your suitcase the night before departure.

The holiday rush is where you arrive just in the nick of time. It involves the mad dash through traffic and the desperate search for a parking space. Sometimes you’ll get to your flight and sometimes you’ll miss it. Learning time management skills shouldn’t be a priority whilst on your vacation. It’s one of the most common ways to ruin a holiday, so if you must arrive three hours early do so.

Save the heavy drinking until you actually reach your destination. The departure lounge isn’t your local bar. Limit your drinks tab to one or two, or better yet, none at all. There have been countless stories of passengers spending a night in the drunk tank for abusing airport staff and other passengers whilst under the influence of alcohol, or even worse, your drunken antics could end up on a reality TV show! Arriving at your destination with a hangover is not smart - especially if it is combined with jet lag.

Spend as much time as possible on researching your chosen destination. Do you really want to find yourself with a great view of the construction site and the back alley with all the junkies next door? Picking totally the wrong accommodation is amongst the top ways to ruin a vacation because there’s nothing worse than hating your hotel.

There’s a reason why countries have off-seasons. In Costa Rica, it’s raining ALL the time during the off-season. In many Austrian ski resorts, there’s a distinct lack of snow. Don’t get drawn in by the low prices by booking at an obscure time of year. Not having anything but thunderstorms for two weeks is definitely not conducive to a good time.

That joke about the ten kilos of cocaine in your bag might have sounded great in your head, but unless you want the fingers of a slightly overweight security guard fumbling about in your nether regions, keep the jokes to yourself. They’ve heard it all before and they won’t hesitate to make your day harder if you want to delay the process with your unfunny stand-up routine.

To this day, I can’t understand why someone would travel without insurance. It’s such a small amount of money for such peace of mind. If you lose your luggage or something goes wrong, you can claim amounts back on your policy. You can take out travel insurance online within minutes for a fraction of the cost of a holiday. Don’t risk this becoming one of the ways to ruin a holiday in your household - take it out.

Never EVER leave your kids with the house to themselves. Teenagers will hold a party and will break something you love. It’s not worth the hassle. Send them away to a relative or invite a responsible adult over to watch them. $20,000 of damage isn’t worth your misplaced trust. All memories of a fabulous holiday go out the window (probably broken window) if you return to a trashed house/garden.

Have you ever had a vacation ruined? What happened? Please share!