Decide the budget band first. Money is where most group arguments start. Before anyone books a flight, agree a nightly room budget, a rough figure for food and tickets per day, and whether this is a hostel trip, a mid-range trip or a splurge. The smallest budget sets the band, or its owner spends the week saying no.
One planner, with editors. A plan that lives in six chat threads is not a plan. Put it in one shared Waystop trip, invite the others as editors, and change stops and times there rather than proposing them in the chat. Everyone sees the same day, and the person who booked the dinner adds the address once.
One anchor a day, free afternoons. Agree one thing per day that everyone does together: the timed museum slot, the day trip, the big dinner. Leave the afternoon open. Groups that schedule every hour end up waiting outside shops for each other; groups with one anchor meet at it on time, because the rest of the day was theirs.
Money without the spreadsheet. One card pays each bill and the payer notes it. At the end the totals net out to a couple of transfers, and in Waystop “Sam paid for dinner” becomes who owes whom in the trip’s own currency. Settle before the flight home, while the goodwill is still there.
Book the group slots early. Anything that must take all of you at a fixed time goes first: the cooking class, the guided tour, the restaurant table, rail seats together. Restaurants that seat a walk-in pair turn away eight, and timed-entry museums sell out of adjacent slots before single tickets do. Book those a month out and let the rest stay loose.
The pace problem. Someone wants every church; someone wants a nap. Say out loud, early, that peeling off is allowed: a smaller group goes to the market, the rest sleep in, everyone meets at the anchor. Making eight people walk at one speed tires one and annoys the rest.
The group chat rule. The chat is for now (where are you, we are at the second table), not for planning. Decisions go in the shared trip, where they survive the scroll. A question dropped in the chat at midnight gets no answer and some irritation.
On the day. Confirm the anchor time at breakfast, put the meeting point in the stop note, and let the afternoon go. Keep one card paying and the payer noting, and settle up over the last dinner, before anyone has a flight to catch.