A week of venue visits is decided twice, once on the evening before it starts and once in the third hour of every day. The decision is routing. Plan one groups the days by district: Monday the palace cluster, Tuesday the Ring hotels, Wednesday the former industrial halls, Thursday the leftovers, Friday the return visits. Plan two groups them by ranking: the three strongest candidates first, whatever the tram says, and the long tail after. The two plans visit the same rooms and produce different weeks.

The comparison at a glance

Read cold, the district plan looks strictly better. It is, in every column but one: the ranking plan front-loads the visits that decide the trip, which changes how every later visit is conducted.

Time

The district plan wins the arithmetic. Venues inside one wedge of the map chain naturally, five inspections in a day with lunch in the middle of them, and the whole week ends having spent maybe two hours on transport. The ranking plan pays a daily toll in connections, and its venue count drops to two or three because each visit begins with a crossing. Over five days that toll buys one thing: by Tuesday evening the top candidates are already compared, and the rest of the week fills in detail instead of suspense.

One structural difference hides in the district plan and deserves its own line: buffers. When five venues sit inside one wedge, a cancelled visit costs nothing, the freed hour just walks to the neighbour. On the ranking plan a cancellation strands an hour of travel, and the day either stretches or drops a venue. Over a five-day week the district route absorbed two cancellations without visible damage, which is the kind of resilience a schedule shows only under fire.

Cost

Both plans ride the same transit cards, so the cash difference is trivial. The real cost difference is external: the district plan lets visits run long, and long visits extract more from a sales manager, which has a way of turning into waived fees and better holds. The ranking plan spends its budget on taxis when the schedule slips, and slipped schedules are its habit, not its accident. On a five-day week the district route came out thirty to forty euros lighter and one negotiation ahead.

The taxi arithmetic stayed honest in both plans until the evenings. District days ended within walking distance of the base, so the budget bought zero cabs all week. Ranking days bought four, each one the price of a schedule slip rather than a plan, and cabs, like late replies, arrive at their own speed.

Fatigue and the quality of the notes

Fatigue decides which week produces usable notes. District days end with the mind full of comparable rooms, five ballrooms seen in sequence, differences still vivid at dinner, and the evening notes practically write themselves. Ranking days produce sharper conclusions about the top candidates and blurrier ones about everything after Wednesday, when the long tail starts looking like a procession of corridor pictures. The third hour of every day, not the itinerary, is where both plans are actually won. Coffee before the second venue, water on every walk, and one afternoon slot left empty for overrun: the week that respects those three rules produces fewer regrets than either route on paper.

One habit rescued the tired afternoons in both plans: the written frame. Five ballrooms in a day blur into furniture unless each visit ends with three lines written on the spot, height, light, price, before the next address is opened. The district plan made the habit easy because the notes were written over lunch; the ranking plan needed the discipline carried into the tram.

Who each plan fits

• The district plan fits long shortlists, first visits to a city, and planners who compare by writing notes at night.
• The ranking plan fits short shortlists, trips under three days, and decisions where two candidates are already close.
• A mixed week fits most trips: ranking order on Monday, district logic from Tuesday onward, once the top of the list is settled.

The verdict

Route the week by district as the default, and keep one exception: when exactly two venues are the real decision, see both on Monday morning regardless of geography, because every later visit is conducted with better questions once the front-runner is known. The rest of the week should walk in circles around the map, not around the ranking, and the choice of base should follow the district plan's map, not the ranking plan's trams. Five ballrooms in one afternoon is a worse story and a better decision.