Making or preparing a travel itinerary for a Schengen visa is important when you apply to an embassy or consulate. This helps the visa officer better understand your travel dates, plans, stays, and daily activities during your stay in your intended Schengen country.
Here we will help you prepare for a good-looking and comprehensive “Travel Itinary” for a Schengen visa application no matter what your nationality is. Furthermore, this will be valid for all 29 Schengen countries. This will be easy with no complex and structured words as the motive of this article is to make a personal travel itinerary and not a computerized machine version of it as available on many other websites.
Please stay relaxed as it is easy to make this document and it requires only about 20 minutes with the help of our tips and downloadable format which you will find in this Article. It can be used for all purposes of travel including tourism, family/friends meetings, business tours, or a medical appointment with minor changes.
Why Travel Itinerary is important for a Schengen visa application?
Let us help you first of all understand why a “Travel Itinerary” is important for a visa application. The visa officers sitting in the embassies and consulates receive hundreds of thousands of monthly applications to handle. Just imagine the number of Schengen visa applications submitted during 2018-2023 through the following table:
| Year | Visa Applications Submitted (in millions) | Visas Approved (in millions) |
| 2018 | 16 | 14.3 |
| 2019 | 17 | 15 |
| 2020 | 3 | 2.5 |
| 2021 | 3 | 2.4 |
| 2022 | 6 | 7.5 |
| 2023 | 10.3 | 8.5 |
So this proves that on average more than a million Schengenv applications are submitted in the Schengen country’s embassies yearly. The visa officers have to assess the judge and make a decision abruptly on these files.
The documents you present in support of your visa application are in scattered form and in different countries different document styles are adapted which are not easy to handle and understand for the visa office to make a clear decision on your visa application. For this reason, you should help them out through a “Travel Itinerary” and a “Cover Letter” to sum up the whole application and documents.
Difference between a Travel Itinerary and a Cover letter
There is a big difference in both terms:
Travel Itinerary
A travel itinerary is all about your trip, flights, hotel stay, and activities in the indented Schengen country you want to travel to. In simple words, it is your future of the trip.
Cover Letter
On the other hand, a cover letter is the back end of the visa application in which you mention all the details about your:
- job/business;
- family;
- family ties;
- finances;
- how you will cover the cost of the trip;
- why do you want to visit the intended Schengen country; and
- details about the whole cost of the visit and how you will finance it.
Difference between travel itinerary and flight itinerary
Many people mix these terms. Please note the differences as follows (as you have read the overview of the “Travel Itinerary” above, we will discuss below only “Flight Itinerary”):
A flight itinerary is all about your flight reservation that you make to support your Schengen visa application. You let the visa officer believe your seriousness about the travel and make them that you have well planned your trip. The flight itinerary only contains information about your name, travel to, and return dates.
This also includes the type of flight such as a round trip (mandatory), your flight reservation number, and other booking details. Please make sure that you do not have to pay for the reservation in advance and a without payment reserved ticked is good enough for the visa application.
How to make a Travel Itinerary?
People used to write this document on paper in the past, but you better prepare it on a computer with the help of a simple file writer. After you write down all the details, you print and date it, and sign it to present with your visa application. There are following important information that you must mention in the travel itinerary:
Personal Details
On the top of the document write down your name, passport number, and contact number.
Flight details
Mention flight reservation number, flight carrier, and flight/return dates.
Hotel or other accommodation details
On the top of the page, you should also write the hotel name or the accommodation you are going to stay in. Please also write here the name and the address as well.
Details about the daily activities
Do briefly mention your daily activities day by day. For example, if your plan is for ten days, write complete details about it what would you be doing, and where. This includes visiting places, attending events, meeting friends and family, attending medical checkups, or handling business meetings. This style can be used for all purposes of travel. Write in a way that the visa officer can have a skimming and scanning of the document in a nutshell.
Travel Itinerary Download for free
Just download, fill, print, and sign to make it a part of your Schengen visa application.