So, Vegas was surprising. Long story short, a 15-year friendship is over. Regardless of it all, Vegas was a real learning experience so here are a few do’s and don’ts for when you’re traveling with friends.

Do:

1. Discuss what your expectations are: it’s important to make sure you’re on the same page on things you want to see and do so that the vacation isn’t one-sided.
2. Respect preferences and set boundaries, whether it’s with smoking, drinking, or anything else – remain respectful of your friends and the people you’re traveling with.
3. Set boundaries if you’re taking a long vacation (a week or more) together; chances are you’ve never lived with the person or stayed with them for longer than a few days (if at all), so no matter how great your friendship is, you never know how a person is after a while of cohabiting.
4. Figure out budgets and spending money – this will make it less stressful for each other when paying for certain things or covering for each other when needed.
5. Understand that things don’t always go as planned, but that’s kind of the beauty of traveling.
6. Try to keep your traveling days short (3 days or so) for the sake of your friendship, but if there’s a good deal and you need to extend those days, talk to your friend and make sure there are no issues during your trip. It’s better to diffuse a situation right when it’s starting than to let it go on and eventually boil over resulting in–you guessed it–part ways.

Don’t:

1. Travel if one of you is sick… but if it can’t be helped, take care of each other. You’re not vacationing just to stare at your hotel room’s walls.
2. Bring a significant other. Chances are you’ll either be exhausted from playing middle ground or you’ll end up making someone extremely uncomfortable during the entire trip.
3. Undermine or dismiss your friend’s opinion just because you’ve got more knowledge of a location than them, connections, or other reasons. Listen to each other and make decisions together.

4. Make the trip all about you: if that’s what you want, simply solo travel and focus on your own itinerary. Chances are that if you’re traveling with a friend, it’s because one of you (or both of you/your group) WANT to travel together, spend those days together making new memories, and are willingly taking time out of their personal and working schedule to spend time with you.
5. Ignore your friend’s feelings when something goes awry; the more you let things continue in a negative aspect, the worse the outcome will be (learn from our mistake, please!)