We once backpacked through Vietnam, catching local trains and staying in small towns, then flew to Hong Kong on the way home and checked into a 5-star hotel for five days. Same trip, same two people, completely different styles.
That’s why we don’t think there’s one right answer to “what kind of traveller are you?” Most of us aren’t one type. Your travel style is more like a set of dials you set for each trip, depending on where you’re going, what you want from it and what the trip asks of you.
Below are the four dials we use, why ours move from trip to trip, and what to do if you honestly have no idea where yours sit yet.
In this guide
Why we don’t think in traveller types
Search for “types of travellers” and you’ll find plenty of lists and quizzes that sort you into a label: the planner, the adventurer, the luxury traveller, the free spirit. They can be fun, and you might recognise yourself in one or two.
The trouble is that real trips don’t stay in one box. A hiking trip and a city break ask completely different things of you, and someone who’s happy in a 1-star guesthouse on one trip may very much want a good hotel on the next. A label tells you who you are. The more useful question is what this particular trip needs, and that’s what the dials help you work out.
The four travel style dials
Think of each dial as a scale with a tendency at each end. You can sit anywhere along it, and the needle can move from one trip to the next. There’s no right setting and no score at the end. It’s simply a way of noticing what you want before you start planning.
Pace: Slow Immerser or Experience Collector
How much do you want to fit in? At one end is the Slow Immerser, who would rather stay longer in fewer places and get to know them. At the other is the Experience Collector, who wants to see as much as a place has to offer while they’re there. Both are good ways to travel.
Our needle moved twice on the same trip to Japan. We had three days in Kyoto, and there’s so much to see there that we packed a lot in. A day trip to Nara from Kyoto was on our list too, but we were enjoying exploring Kyoto so much that we never went. After that we had an overnight stay in Koyasan, which was lovely and relaxed, and we joined the monks for meditation.
A few questions to ask yourself:
- Do you come home happier after seeing a lot, or after getting to know one place well?
- How do you feel about packing up and moving on every day or two?
- Would missing a famous sight bother you, or would you shrug and go next time?
Independence: Independent Wanderer or Supported Explorer
How much support do you want along the way? Independent Wanderers like to work things out themselves: the bookings, getting around and deciding each day as it comes. Supported Explorers like someone else to handle some or all of the logistics, whether that’s a coach tour, a small group or a private guide. Support doesn’t make you any less adventurous. Sometimes it’s what makes the trip possible.
We’ve done most of the range. We did an APT tour of Canada with Darren’s mum, Maureen, which included an Inside Passage cruise in Alaska and going GoldLeaf on the Rocky Mountaineer. It was really well organised and we had an amazing guide. But I’ve found I personally don’t like really big group tours. You get a set amount of time at each stop, and with a lot of people there’s usually someone who isn’t ready to leave on time, so the time gets shorter. At Mount Robson, for example, we got out, took our photos and got back on the coach.
On a later trip we self-drove much the same area and ended up hiking some of the trails around Mount Robson, because there are some really good ones. At Lake Louise we’d done the hike up to the lookout with the tour; with more time on our own, we did the lake hike as well.
A small group is a different thing again. On our first trip to South America we chose a small group tour through Peru, and there were only five of us.
In Sri Lanka, we preferred to leave the driving to someone who knew the roads, so we had a private guide and driver. It isn’t overly expensive, and if you’re travelling as a family group it can work out quite inexpensive compared with a tour. We wanted a bit more comfort than getting ourselves from place to place on public transport, but we didn’t want a tour either, because we wanted to be able to change things along the way. We had an itinerary, but we could spend longer somewhere or stop by the road, and that’s how we ended up at a school concert (more on that below).
Then there are the trips where we’ve hired a car and done it all ourselves, in Iceland, Canada and New Zealand.
Ask yourself:
- Does working out trains, transfers and bookings sound like fun, or like stress?
- Would you rather have the freedom to change plans, or have someone else make the decisions?
- Is there a middle option, such as a small group or a guide and driver, that gives you some of both?
Comfort: how much does where you stay matter?
At one end, you’re happy to keep it simple. At the other is the Comfort Appreciator, for whom a good room is part of the trip. We’ve found the answer depends far more on the trip than on us.
We backpacked Vietnam because we knew we’d be on local transport a lot, including local trains, and we needed to move between places easily. We stayed in some of the cities and some country areas, including small towns that didn’t have expensive accommodation anyway, so a backpack made sense the whole way. Then on the way home we spent five days in Hong Kong and decided we wanted some 5-star luxury.
When we spent two weeks in Paris and Amsterdam, we stayed 5-star from the start. We were based in the city and walking a lot, and it’s nice to come home to good accommodation after you’ve been out walking all day.
Ask yourself:
- Will you be moving every day or two, or staying put?
- How much time will you actually spend in your room?
- Would you rather spend the money on where you sleep, or on what you do?
Whichever you choose, it helps to have the money already set aside, and this is how we save for a holiday.
Adventure: how active do you want to be?
This one runs from taking it gently to the Active Adventurer, who wants hiking, snorkelling or kayaking built into the trip. Be honest about what you’ll enjoy rather than what you think you should do. A trip doesn’t need to be an adventure to be a good one.
In Peru we wanted to hike the Inca Trail, and that one choice ended up setting other dials too.
What pulls you there
The dials cover how you travel. What pulls you is why, and you don’t have to pick just one.
Connection Seeker. For some people the best part of a trip is the people they meet. In Sri Lanka, our guide spotted a school concert at a local school as we drove past. He suggested we stop and have a look, so we could see what local schools are like. We were standing at the back when a woman we assumed was the principal saw us with our guide, came over and asked us to come with her. She took us to the front row, moved the local police officer out of the best seat, and sat us there. We spent half an hour at the concert with the parents, teachers and kids. It was such an amazing experience, and so cute.
Restorative Traveller. Some trips are about rest. In Fiji we stayed at Koro Sun Resort on Vanua Levu, and that trip was about sitting on the deck of our floating bungalow with a book, then going up for happy-hour cocktails and not doing a lot. We still did a half-day trip around the island, stand-up paddleboarding, canoeing and snorkelling, but rest was the point.
Your own reason. Yours might be food, wildlife, history, photography or something else entirely. Knowing what pulls you helps you choose where to go, and what to leave out. If you’re weighing up beaches, cities, culture or adventure, Beach, City, Culture or Adventure: What Kind of Trip Suits You? looks at what each type of trip is really like.
Your dials affect each other
This is the part the quizzes miss. Set one dial and it often sets others for you.
For our first trip to South America we decided to do a tour through Peru, and the tours came in two versions. There were backpacking tours with 1- and 2-star accommodation that included hiking the Inca Trail, and 4- and 5-star tours where you caught the train up to Machu Picchu instead. We wanted to hike, so we chose the backpacking tour. Our Adventure setting decided our Comfort setting, and the kind of tour we did too.
It worked the same way in Vietnam: moving often on local transport is what put us at the backpack end of the Comfort dial.
So if a dial feels stuck where you don’t want it, look at which other choice is setting it. Changing that one might free the rest.
Same travellers, two very different trips
Here’s how our dials sat for Vietnam, and for Paris and Amsterdam.
Travelling with someone whose dials are different
Even two people who travel together all the time won’t always want the same settings. Darren’s still working and I’m retired, and most of the time, when we come back from a trip I’ve planned, he jokes he needs a holiday. He’s really busy at work, so he likes trips like Fiji, where we do a few things here and there but spend a lot of the time just relaxing and enjoying it, and going for a cocktail. I want to go and see things and experience things, and Darren loves doing that too.
That difference is one of the reasons we travel the way we do now. We give ourselves extra time to slow down and enjoy things, so that when we come home we’re not tired from being go, go, go the whole time.
Travelling with family adds more dials to the mix. With Darren’s mum, Maureen, we chose the APT tour of Canada because it covered a lot of what she really wanted to see, and having the Rocky Mountaineer and the Alaskan Inside Passage cruise all together made it easier. But we’ve also organised everything ourselves with Maureen, from driving trips through Ireland to catching trains between places in Italy, and she’s been fine with all of that as well.
If you’re planning a trip with family or friends, the dials can be a good way to work out together whether your travel styles will suit the same trip. We’ve written more about how we plan trips with family and friends, and the things to agree before you go, in Travelling with Friends or Family: How We Plan Trips Together.
How we plan around our dials
You’ve probably seen the memes where one person organises everything and checks the passports, and the other turns up at the airport and asks where we’re going. Darren’s not quite like that. We choose where we’re going together, then I do the planning and ask him, “Are you happy with this?” Most of the time he says, “Yeah, that’s fine.”
Planning doesn’t mean filling every hour. I make a one-page plan for each day, and it’s never a full day. Its main job is to make sure we don’t miss things that are only open on certain days or at certain hours. The rest of the time is for wandering: turning down the street that looks interesting, or saying “what’s this?” and going to have a look.
And plans can change. That’s how Nara fell off our list in Kyoto.
Lisa’s Tip
Make a one-page plan for each day with the opening days and hours of the things you most want to see, and leave gaps. It’s a guide, not a schedule.
Don’t know your travel style yet?
It doesn’t matter. For your first trip, choose something you think you’d like to do, and learn from there. If you’re still deciding where that first trip should be, how to choose your first overseas destination walks through the questions we ask.
If you don’t want to work out how to get from place to place yourself, an organised tour might be perfect for you. If what worries you is getting from the airport to your hotel, or using public transport somewhere new, organise a driver to meet you at the airport. You don’t have to know everything before you go.
Your settings will change as you travel more, and from one trip to the next. What tends to stay the same is the curiosity that got you thinking about going in the first place. Start there.
Until next time… keep wandering.
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