This post is inspired by day one of our 30-day At Home Travel Challenge, helping to keep you inspired for future travels during isolation.

Ahhh, Pinterest: the perfect platform to justify endless scrolling as a “productive exercise”. More than an infinite abyss of pretty and beyond-insta worthy pictures however, Pinterest is an ideal tool for planning and organising your travelling adventures. 

We’re going to dive into how you can best use Pinterest for designing your dream holiday. But first, for those new to this side of the Internet…

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is essentially a visual search engine. Scroll through “Pins”: pieces of content which people create or which you can save directly from websites. See a Pin you like? You’ll then save it to one of your “Boards”. You can name and save your Boards however you like, and you can keep them private or public. As you save and create more Pins and Boards, Pinterest will start to get an idea of what you’re into, and will make sure your home feed is brimming with the kind of content that’ll get your heart fluttering.

Remember back in the day, when you would cut pretty pictures out of magazines and stick them onto your wardrobe, wall or… pin board? Well, Pinterest is ultimately your digital version of that. Very handy, and uses far less sticky tape! Win!

How to organise your travels using Pinterest?

Do you ever get a case of information overwhelm when researching your travels? Are you one minute looking up the essentials of climbing Machu Picchu, then suddenly you find yourself staring at dreamy images of white-sanded Australian beaches, before somehow you’re reading up on Lapland at Christmas time… and you just want to remember all of this information so that one day, you can visit all of these wonderful places? Enter the benefits of Pinterest, keeping all your travel inspo, travel research, and everything else in between, together!

Step 1. Create your boards

First up, create your Boards. If you have a specific trip or itinerary planned out already, you might want to create quite a specific board (e.g. “Australia East Coast 2021”). If not, gather your inspiration and info into a few more generalised boards – for example ‘Australia’ or ‘Gap Year’. 

Once created, you can then further customise your board, including:

  • Creating Sections: These are like ‘sub-boards’, and can be really useful for further organising your information. For example, within your ‘Australia’ board, you might have some sections including ‘Sydney’, ‘Byron Bay’, ‘Melbourne’, ‘Best Beaches’ and ‘Essential Information’.
  • Adding Collaborators: Looking to travel with a friend? Add them as collaborators to your board, and you can both pin your findings together!

Step 2. Get pinning

Your Pins can come from almost anywhere. Using Pinterest as a search engine, look up both specific and generalised terms; and search via both Pins and Boards (to do this, click on the drop down arrow at the end of the search bar). 

Conveniently pin straight from websites, with the Pinterest Browser Button, and many blogs you visit will have inbuilt the Pin button into images. You can also Pin from Instagram, which is a saving grace if you’re like many of us who are in #travelinspo overdrive while on the ‘gram. To save an Instagram image to your Pinterest Board, simply click the three little dots at the top right of the image, click “Share to…” and hit the Pinterest icon. From there, save it to your relevant Board and you’re done! 

The more you Pin, the more Pinterest will provide relevant Pin suggestions. You can also follow people and brands who Pin the kind of content you love, so you’ll be kept updated with their images.

Step 3. Collate your findings

There’s never really a time you need to stop pinning. But after a while, the next fun part of the process kicks in: taking time to look through everything you’ve pinned. What are the common themes you’ve pinned? How can you now organise an itinerary that includes your must-sees and to-dos? What essential info have you found, which you can now organise in advance?

And that’s the beauty of Pinterest for traveling! It’s your own curated home to source inspiration, organise your research, and finally put everything together to create the most epic adventure.

Want to join the fun in our 30-Day At Home Travel Challenge? Come join us on Instagram, and share your isolation activities with us @wakeuphostels!