How many people have you heard repeating their desire to travel half as much as you do, if you’re lucky enough to take at least two trips a year on average? Often that alone is enough to keep the travel-bug fuelled fire burning, but even the most frequent of travellers can sometimes lack the motivation to keep going. Here are some ways you can maintain the motivation to keep travelling and enjoying the true essence of why we travel in the first place.
Plan ahead of time
When you are planning to visit a city or a country for the first time, give yourself some time to research your lodging options, travel options, and the restaurants where you will be eating. For example, if you are visiting the United Kingdom, you may want to know the best Hotels in Lowestoft or wherever you are going. You can then estimate your expenses accordingly.
Alternatively, if you are on a budget, you can choose to book hostels, as they are generally much more affordable than hotels. In fact, hostels are the best options if you are a solo traveller. This is because you can make tons of friends there. If this option interests you, checking out a hostel Jerusalem, Paris, or New York (depending on your interest) could be worth it. But yes, deciding where to stay and shortlisting a good place takes time. This is why planning ahead of time is important.
Hit each destination twice
If it’s a destination you’re going to visit for the first time, you should plan to hit it twice. Otherwise there is a lot to discover at a destination you’ve already been to, giving it a chance to vindicate itself in the event that it had given you a bad first experience.
Don’t try to capture every single moment
This ties-in with hitting each destination more than once, ideally twice, but not more than three times as this is when you can get de-motivated to travel, in general. Basically one of the two times is to get acquainted with the destination and all that it has to offer, but you’re not going to try and capture every moment with your camera. Leave the Insta-perfect shots and vids for the second time around, or you can do it the other way around.
This will ensure you maintain your ability to seek out the true essence of the key elements which make any trip fun, and travelling in general.
Look beyond the clichés
Forego reading yet another one of those “7 things to do in such-and-such place” articles for a change and go with the most open mind possible. This is how you discover the simplest of travel pleasures, many of which won’t cost you a single cent more than what you’re already spending on the trip, like the picturesque and secluded sanctuary that is a seaside bench looking over Haverigg Beach (in Cumbria’s Duddon estuary), etc.
Indulge in supplementary entertainment
We often “put too much pressure” on ourselves or on a particular destination we’re visiting to satisfy the entirety of our travel hunger. This is one of the biggest killers of the motivation to keep travelling, but fortunately it can be hedged against by indulging in some supplementary entertainment. It has to be supplementary entertainment that can stand alone, were you indulging in it as part of your regular life, such as enjoying some real-money betting on a selection of your favourite online uk casinos and the different games available.
Watch some indie travel vloggers
Take it a step further and watch vloggers who aren’t necessarily putting themselves out there as travel vloggers in particular. These are the types of travellers who fall backside-first into some of the most unique travel experiences waiting to be enjoyed.
Otherwise watching travel YouTubers is indeed a great way to maintain your own motivation to travel. This way there is no shortage of ideas for experiences and approaches that are a lot less tainted by commercial travel institutions that just want you to spend your money with them in particular.
WRITE about your experiences
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, but if you’re writing actual words then you don’t have to speak a thousand of them at a time! Writing about your travel experiences is the only true way you can capture everything about the trip, such as how you felt when you caught a whiff of a certain scent, nearly fell off the side of the boat, took your first look into the eyes of a holiday lover, etc.
The only thing better at keeping you motivated to travel is going back to read what you wrote about. It’ll be like you’re experiencing everything all over again, with the inevitable anticipation of more to come, of course.
Try to monetise your traveller lifestyle
While this can be a double-edged sword, monetising your traveller’s lifestyle can perhaps be the ultimate motivational factor. It’s not easy, but can definitely be done if you make it your profession, with one of the ways through which you can do it being that of publishing your written content along with your pictures, vids, etc.
Think around sponsorships, referral commissions, and advertising, keeping in mind the gaping hole in the underexplored travel topics niche. For all those moments when some elements of travelling are a pain, at least you can say you gained something out of it.