What Type of Travel Persona Are You? 

I was recently in an impromptu speaking class and one of the students had to give a speech on the spot about an app she wished existed. She went on to talk about how chaotic her life gets at times and that she often travels on a short preparation and in bursts of brief trips, mostly having 24 to 48 hours per city. She wanted an app that will tell her exactly what to do if she only had 48 hours per place. I instantly connected with her topic because I recognised this is me! I am a highlight traveller just like her. I used to be a bit ashamed of it because my friends often would take a few months to prepare for a trip and would plan to spend 2-3 weeks in one place or same region of the country “to really get the feel of it” and get to know it more or less deeply. Although I thought that sounded nice, I really had no desire to spend my whole year worth of vacation in one country. And maybe that’s a North American curse, because we have way less vacation time compared to standard six weeks people get in Europe (and are spoiled with cheap travel too), but I often want to pack as much as possible into 1-2 weeks, make the most out of it, because my time, budget and attention span are very limited. So I always enjoyed the hop on hop off type of travelling – see a few most interesting things to me here and there, pause somewhere in the middle, and move on or come back to my regular life, the life I created for myself intentionally over the years that does not need escaping. 

The audience in the class seemed to have connected with the speech and I realised I am not alone. It’s not just me who loves changing the scenery every day or two and living in a short stint of rapid novelty flooding. My regular life has routines and intentional slow downs in the days and weeks, so I can afford to put myself through occasional bursts of high energy output living like intense travel or intense work. I now came to understand it probably has something to do with my personality and is likely normal. We all have our preferences: my husband loves laying on a beach sipping on cocktails, while I die of boredom on the second day. He is a normal human too and nothing is wrong with his favourite vacations, we just have to be strategic about how we plan them.