Family Vacation Web Quest
Congratulations! Your group has been given the
opportunity to plan a vacation. You will be assigned a
major city in the United States, which you will drive to on
your trip. Your group will be traveling together.
Guidelines:
Budget:
$4,000 for your group.
You need to spend at least half of the total budget on your trip,
and you cannot go over the allotted amounts. This includes all
expenses: Gas for your car, hotels, meals, and activities.
Timeframe:
Your vacation needs to be somewhere between
7 and 14 days. You should plan it for the first week of August.
Roles:
Navigator
This person will plan the driving portion of your
trip. This will include researching the number of miles between
locations, calculating the gas costs, and the length of time it
takes to get from one place to the next.
Hotel and Meal Planner
This person will research hotels
in the city you are going to, as well as along the trip if you will be
driving more than one day. You will select a hotel and plan
breakfast, lunch and dinner for each of the days of your trip.
Make sure that the hotel and meals fit within the allotted
budget.
Activities Director
This person will research activities in
your destination city and plan which activities your group will
participate in every day. Make sure that the activities fit within
the allotted budget.
Tasks:
1) Research
Use the ‘Vacation Planning Document” below
2) Itinerary
Create a detailed schedule in a Microsoft
to gather information for your role.
Word table for each day of your trip. This should include
driving times, hotels, meals and activities for every day of
your trip. Look at the sample itinerary for a guideline. Use
this sample schedule for your itinerary.
3) Budget
Develop a budget in Microsoft Excel. This
needs to be very detailed, and include all expenses related
to your group’s travel. Use this sample spreadsheet for
your budget.
4) Presentation
Once the first three parts are
completed, develop a Powerpoint presentation about your
location. Your slides should tell us about your location, the
places you would like to visit there, and some activities.
You will present the Powerpoint to the class.
Family Vacation Planning Sheet
Location: ____________________________________
People traveling _______________________________
Budget: First three people = $4,000
Travel Dates ___________________
Navigator:
You need to calculate the cost of driving from your home to your
destination. Mapquest can be helpful for this. Go to
www.mapquest.com.
Record the total mileage: ____________
Assume your car gets 20 miles per gallon, and that gas costs
$2.25 per gallon. You need to calculate the cost for gas to get
from your home to your destination.
Divide __________miles by 20 equals _____ gallons.
Multiply _________ gallons by $2.25 = _________.
This is the cost for gas to get from your home to your
destination. As you work with your group to plan out where you
will go each day, you will need to repeat this exercise for any
other traveling that you will do on your trip, as well as your return
trip home. View the sample schedule and the sample budget to
see how to keep track of mileage.
Hotel and Meal Planner
You may need to stay at hotels on the way if it is a long
driving trip. You will also need to stay in a hotel at your
destination. During the driving portion of your trip, you should
plan to stay in a hotel every 400-500 miles of your trip. Work
with the navigator to see where you should plan overnights. Then
you will need to plan a hotel for the number of nights you are at
your destination.
Some websites that you may want to try for hotel quotes:
www.choicehotels.com (Quality Inn, Comfort Inn, Clarion)
www.marriott.com
(Marriott, Courtyard, Spring Hill Suites)
www.hilton.com
(Hilton hotels and suites.)
You may also be able to google your location, and get to a web site
where area hotels advertise.
Meals
You will also need to estimate meals for each day of your trip.
During your research, you may find some actual hotels in your
location, or you can make up some restaurants. Here are some
guidelines:
Breakfast: You may have “continental breakfast” included with
your hotel rate, which would be free. If you go out to breakfast,
plan on $8-$10 per person. If you order room service, plan $15
per person.
Lunch: You might eat somewhere quick, like a McDonalds, which
would cost about $5 per person. A sandwich or pizza place would
be about $8-$10 per person, and a sit down restaurant would be
about $15 per person.
Dinner: You should have some variety in your vacation plans. If
you order pizza or some other take-out food, it will probably be
about $8 per person. If you go to a national chain such as
Bennigan’s or Chili’s, I would plan on about $15 per person. A
nice restaurant might be more like $25-$35 per person. Make
sure that you are also working with the Activities Director, since
some meals might be combined with activities.
Activities
Activities can often be an expensive part of your trip. Please
list the activities your family will be participating in, and estimate
the cost. Activities will vary significantly depending on what part
of the country you are going to. Make sure that you do ample
research of your location to know what is available when you visit.
For examples, you might go to National Parks, and go on tours and
hikes and white water rafting. You might go to a major city that
has amusement parks, and other attractions. You might go to a
historical city, or one that has lots of theatre and sporting
events. Be very creative, and make this a really fun and
interesting part of your project. Research the activities that you
would like to go to, the cost, and then capture some pictures for
the Powerpoint presentation you will create at the end of the
project.