How many days do you need for a trip?

Begin with the total number of days you can travel, including weekends and public holidays. Then subtract travel days: long-haul flights, airport transfers and adjusting to time zones often take most of a day at each end of a trip.

What remains is your real time on the ground. Planning around that number, rather than your departure and return dates, gives you a much more realistic picture of what is possible.

Every time you change accommodation you lose time to packing, checking out, travelling and settling in. As a rough rule, two nights is the minimum for a stop to feel worthwhile, and three or more lets you relax and take day trips.

Big cities with many neighbourhoods and museums, such as Paris, Rome or Tokyo, usually deserve at least three or four days. Smaller towns or countryside bases can work with two or three nights, especially if you're mainly using them for day trips.

A useful guideline is to plan roughly one base per three to four days of your trip. A one-week trip works well with one or two bases, while a two-week trip can comfortably include three or four.

Fewer stops usually means a better trip. You see more of each place, spend less time travelling and have space for unplanned discoveries, which are often the highlights.

A long weekend of three or four days suits a single city. A week suits a city plus one contrasting region, for example Paris and Normandy, or Lisbon and the Algarve. Ten days to two weeks suits a multi-city route, such as Rome, Florence and Venice, or Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.

If you have only a short time in a far-away destination, consider focusing on one region and saving others for a future trip rather than trying to cover the whole country.

If most days involve checking out of a hotel, or your plan has no free afternoons, it is probably too ambitious. Try removing one stop or one major activity per day and see whether the trip feels more enjoyable.

The guidelines above assume a moderate pace. If you like to see as much as possible, you can shorten stays slightly; if you prefer long lunches, slow mornings and time to wander, add a day to each base instead.

Who you travel with matters too. Trips with young children or older relatives usually work best with fewer stops and longer stays, because every move between hotels takes more effort. Groups also tend to move more slowly than solo travellers, so build in extra time.

Crossing several time zones can affect your energy for the first day or two. Plan a gentle first day without important bookings, and put your most demanding sightseeing a little later in the trip.

Long overland journeys are tiring as well. If a travel day takes more than a few hours, treat it as mostly a travel day and plan only a short walk or a relaxed dinner on arrival.

If a place is within an hour or two of your base, a day trip is often easier than moving hotels: you travel light, keep the same room and come back to familiar surroundings in the evening.

Moving on makes more sense when the next place is far away, when you want to experience it in the evening or early morning, or when you're heading in one direction anyway and won't need to return.