When you’re packing for a regular holiday, you’ve only got yourself to take care of. Essentially, you could chuck some pants and your passport in a knapsack and be okay for a week. But a group holiday is a different beast altogether; a group trip’s success lives or dies by some key essentials.
Luckily we’ve got you covered – here’s your packed guide to the 10 things you need to take on every group trip. A group holiday checklist if you will.

1. A speaker (or three)
As the old proverb goes, ‘wherever groups of people be, you need speakers, two or three’. And if that’s not a saying, it should be, because imagine a scenario where you finally get away with your mates and the only way to listen to music is huddled around a tinny iPhone propped in a pint glass for ‘amplification’. Yep, case closed.
2. Multiplug and adaptor
A good friend of packed once told us that the secret to his long term relationship was always taking a multiplug extension cord on holiday and we can fully relate. With a multiplug extension cord, your group can all charge from the power of just one adaptor and you become the hero of the trip.
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3. Suncream and aftersun
Suncream becomes a shared currency on a group holiday. You’ll be swapping and passing it around like Pokemon Cards in the noughties, so just accept that you need to bring a couple of large bottles of a slightly higher SPF than you think, because you’re not harder than the sun. Aftersun is less vital, but chat to anyone who’s ever been a little too sunkissed and then applied Banana Boat fresh from the fridge, and they’ll tell you it was the best moment of their trip.

4. Chargers
Phone chargers. Speaker chargers. Camera chargers. Electric toothpaste chargers. If you need to use it, bring the thing that makes it work. Trust.

5. A pack of cards
‘Cards’, you might scoff. ‘When do you think we’re going away, 1954?’ But until they invent a drinking game that’s as sociable, silly, and likely to work with no wifi as ‘Ring of Fire’, you’re going to want to bring a pack of cards. A group holiday checklist essential.

6. Toothpaste
Sure, you could just sneak a sliver of everyone else’s every night, banking on the fact that someone in the group will be more responsible than you and will definitely, 100% bring enough for everyone. But that’s the kind of thinking that leads to the destruction of society, so just bring some of your own and share it ungrudgingly when everyone else forgets it, okay?
7. Monzo/Revolut/Transaction free debit card
Traditional banks charge you every time you take money out or pay for a round of drinks in a bar. Let’s face it, the pound is weak enough without literally throwing your hard-earned cash away. Monzo, Revolut, whatever you use, just make sure you bring a sensible travel debit card.

8. The right shoes
Imagine being the reason that your whole group can’t climb a mountain, is denied entry to a bar or misses scuba diving. Check what activities are on the cards and pack accordingly.
9. Medicine, lots of medicine
An easy-to-overlook, holiday checklist essential. Think hangover cures, insect bite cream, dicky tummy saviours and, optimistically, condoms. It’s always better to be over-prepared than underprepared.

10. Passport and boarding passes
Group holidays are the things you look back on when you’ve got no time left for tequila shots at sunrise. Don’t be the only one left behind.
So that’s it. packed’s guide to the essential items you need on every group trip. And in the words of Baz Luhrmann’s famous song: ‘If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.’
And toothpaste.
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