Planning and organizing your own trip is of course great. You’re your own tour guide and you have everything in your own hands. But there are a view things to take into consideration when you’re thinking about doing everything on your own. Here is an honest overview of the advantages and disadvantages (things to take into account) of planning your own trip.

Advantages

• You’re free as a bird, you can choose wherever you want to go (within budget of course 😉 )
• You have the freedom to create your own itinerary. And travel at your own pace. Going where ever you want to go. And staying in places as long as you want to. That’s a big plus for me!
• If you have a chronic pain or fatigue disorder, a 15-23 days organized tour around a country isn’t always a possibility anymore. For me at least it isn’t. They have a too busy program. So the advantage of going on my own is that I get to go to only the things I’m actually physical capable of.
• If you need a day of relaxing between busy days, just plan a day of laying by the pool or on the beach.
• You can shop around for the best hotel offers. 
• Choose where you want to stay. Like in the busy center of a town (if you like going out at night) or in a more quiet area. In a beautiful hotel by the beach, or in a less expensive hotel at a 5 minute walking distance from the beach.
• You can shop around for the best flight offers. And choose your own seats.
• If you book your own hotel and flights, and you book them often with the same booking site, you’ll may get discounts on next bookings. I get a nice discount at booking.com and expedia.com
• You can shop around for nice day tours and compare prices and conditions.
• The joy of the vacation starts before you even left your house. All the research and planning just fills you with anticipation. And for me, is part of the fun of traveling. Knowing I did it all by myself and creating my own itinerary.
• It’s often cheaper when you book everything yourself. When you let an organization create your trip or if you go on an organized round tour in a country (with a group of people), the price is often much higher than when you go by yourself.

Disadvantages

• There’s a lot of planning involved, which takes a lot of time. I mean, a lot! Researching everything, looking up reviews, going to Pinterest and websites for the best tips on things you want to see and do. Searching for which hotels to chose. Booking everything. It’s really a lot of work.
• If something goes wrong, there’s no one to hold accountable for it. It’s on you. And you need to figure things out yourself. There’s no travel guide you can turn to.
• If you travel with someone else, and you’re the one who has done all the planning, you turn into the travel guide while you’re on holiday. The other person will look to you for all the knowledge and answers.
• You have to have a credit card. Without one, there’s no way you can arrange all the hotels, flights and more. And in other countries (like the United States) everyone seems to have a credit card (at least, a lot of people seem to do), but in Europe that isn’t always the case. And it’s much harder to get a credit card. So that’s something you have to take into account. If you want to travel by yourself, make sure you have a credit card. With enough spending limit on it.
• When you go on an organized vacation/round trip in a country, with a group of other people and a tour guide, you’ll have less to worry about. Everything is arranged and the guide probably has done that trip multiple times, so no surprises there. All the transport is arranged. When you plan your own travel, you’ll always have to plan ahead and make sure you know how to get from point A to point B. And spend time in advance figuring out for example how the transport system works in a country, how taxi companies operate, which ferry to take etc.
• You’re more likely to get scammed, if you don’t do enough research up front. For example by taxi’s and (fake) tour guides. So again, this takes time to look up and figure out.

Conclusion

If you have the time, and you like to create your own itinerary, at your own pace, and like the idea of planning it all on your own, just go for it! It will certainly be worth the effort. At least, it does for me. It really makes me so happy when everything works out. And at a price I find acceptable.

If you like it when everything is organized for you, or you don’t have a great amount of time you want to (or can) put into researching everything and planning your trip, and you don’t mind paying a little extra for the comfort of not having to worry about anything, then go with an organized trip.