The start of a new year has a special kind of magic. It’s a moment in time that allows us to pause and reflect without demanding immediate action. We take stock of where we’ve been, where we want to go and we allow our imaginations to run wild.
For many travelers, that means dreaming up new trips, searching destinations and filling up our calendar for the months ahead.
Before we choose where we’re going, though, the new year gives us another opportunity. The opportunity to choose how we want to travel.
Travel intentions are a chance to examine our relationship to travel and decide what it can look like in the year ahead. Traveling with intention means traveling in a way that feels balanced and purposeful, aligned with our values and beneficial to our well-being.
In this article, we’ll share more on what travel intentions are, why travel intentions are useful, how to set your own travel intentions and thoughtful travel intentions you can choose for the year ahead.
What Are New Year Travel Intentions?
New Year travel intentions are principles that guide how we travel in the coming year. They’re not resolutions in that they’re not about rules, lists or requirements. And they’re not goals in that they don’t have to be quantifiable or finite.
A travel intention is a mindset.
It’s a lens to consider what kind of travel we want this year. How we want it to make us feel, what we want it to teach us, and how it can help us live our lives in a better way.
Travel intentions can be about slowing down, living more in the present moment, and being kinder to ourselves. They can be about deepening connection or expanding our worldview. They can be about spending time outside, learning new skills or making travel sustainable.
Instead of focusing on places and things, travel intentions help us decide how we want to move through the world, who we want to connect with and what we want to leave behind.
Why Set Travel Intentions at the Start of the Year?
The start of a new year is a perfect time to set travel intentions for several reasons.
First, the new year creates a natural opening for reflection. The routines of the year are just broken, the expectations and pressures of the year are not yet fully formed, and we’re generally more open to change and new ideas.
This helps us consider travel in a more thoughtful way.
Second, when we travel without intention, our choices are easy to slip into automatic mode. We get swept up in trends, social pressures or convenience and don’t consider whether this is the travel experience we truly want.
Travel intentions help us break free of this autopilot and align our choices with our priorities.
Setting travel intentions at the start of the year helps us:
Avoid making travel decisions from a place of reacting or responding to external factors
Align trips with how we’re really feeling, what we can afford and what we have time for
Make travel feel more meaningful, less rushed and therefore more satisfying
Reduce travel burnout and overwhelm
Create continuity between trips, rather than disconnected and one-off experiences
Travel Intentions vs. Travel Goals
Travel goals and travel intentions are not the same thing. It’s worth clarifying the difference.
Travel goals tend to be specific and measurable:
Visit five new countries
Take one international trip
Travel once per quarter
Travel intentions are directional and internal:
Travel with curiosity, not urgency
Prioritize rest and presence
Travel in a way that supports local people and communities
Goals can be helpful, but if we’re not setting them with intention, they can easily become burdensome, disconnected or a source of anxiety. Travel intentions act as a framework to ensure goals are serving you and your well-being.
Often, as we travel with intention, our goals naturally shift or form, without feeling forced.
How to Set Travel Intentions That Fit Your Life
Travel intentions will be most useful if they’re truly personal. They should be about your current circumstances and not an imagined version of yourself.
Before setting New Year travel intentions, ask yourself:
What felt good about travel last year?
What felt like too much or disappointing?
Did travel energize me or drain me?
What constraints do I need to work around this year?
What kind of traveler do I want to become?
Your answers may surprise you. You might realize that having fewer trips was better than more, or that you actually loved local travel more than long-haul. Listen to what your instincts are telling you when setting travel intentions.
Ideally, a travel intention will gently challenge you, but not overwhelm you. Intentions are meant to facilitate growth, not guilt.
Thoughtful New Year Travel Intentions to Try
Below are some of our favorite travel intentions that you can try for yourself. You don’t need to take them all on! One intention, if chosen thoughtfully, can have a big impact on how we travel.
Intention 1: Travel More Slowly
Slow travel is a game-changer for many travelers. Rather than rushing through as many activities or places as possible, slow travel is about deepening your connection to where you are.
Traveling slowly could mean:
Staying in one place longer
Visiting fewer places on each trip
Building rest days into your itinerary
Prioritizing cafes, walking and local routines
Slow travel helps us reconnect with being in the moment and also helps with reducing travel burnout.
Intention 2: Travel With Presence
The modern traveler is often glued to our screens. Social media, email, photos, videos: we constantly document, share and compare.
Traveling with presence might mean:
Purposefully limiting your social media time while traveling
Taking photos mindfully rather than compulsively
Spending more time observing, less time recording
Presence doesn’t mean refusing to take photos or post about travel, but rather choosing to prioritize the lived experience over the shared one.
Intention 3: Let Travel Support Rest, Not Escape
For many of us, travel is the last place we want to be when we’re tired. Our natural instinct is to plan trips that will refresh and energize us, only to fill them with so much activity that we come home more exhausted than when we left.
Travel with rest is the intention to choose a trip that supports your body and mind in truly restful ways.
This might involve:
Choosing accommodations you really love and feel comfortable in
Giving yourself permission to have unstructured days
Saying no to sightseeing fatigue
Travel is often not restful because we make it so. Choosing rest as an intention can change that.
Intention 4: Travel Within Your Means
Financial anxiety is a stealth stressor on even the most beautiful of trips. Setting an intention to travel within your means helps us travel with peace rather than anxiety or restriction.
This might include:
Budgeting for travel in advance
Traveling with smaller budgets, if necessary
Choosing local or regional travel
Redefining what “worth it” means to you
Travel with financial intention ensures that when you do travel, it really is enjoyable, and not tainted by worry.
Intention 5: Build Deeper Local Connections
Travel can be a passive experience. We snap photos and move on, sometimes only engaging in transactional or superficial conversation.
Travel with the intention of connecting more deeply with local people helps us shift travel from observation to participation.
This could involve:
Talking to local people beyond transactional interactions
Choosing locally owned accommodations
Attending a community market or event
Learning the basics of the local language
These interactions often end up being some of the most rewarding parts of a trip.
Intention 6: Travel More Sustainably
Sustainable travel is a popular buzzword right now, but in truth it can be as simple or complex as we make it.
Travel with a sustainability intention could involve:
Avoiding unnecessary flights
Taking public transportation
Supporting responsible tours and businesses
Being more thoughtful about waste and resources
Making small efforts in this direction can make travel feel more meaningful when we consider our impact as travelers.
Intention 7: Use Travel to Help You Grow
Travel often nudges us outside our comfort zones. We face different challenges with patience, adaptability and open-mindedness and are changed in the process.
Traveling to grow can involve:
Traveling solo at least once
Facing a fear of travel
Trying something new or unfamiliar
Traveling with the intention of growth and then reflecting after each trip makes travel a teacher as well as a break.
Intention 8: Travel Closer to Home
There is a persistent pressure in the travel world to travel far away. Travel close to home and we don’t take it seriously enough. But some of the best travel experiences we’ve had have been right on our doorstep.
Traveling closer to home can involve:
Traveling closer to where you live
Taking more short breaks
Revisiting a place with fresh eyes
Travel closer to home is often more accessible, affordable and surprisingly fulfilling.
Intention 9: Document Travel for Yourself
We document so much of our travel these days for the purpose of social media validation, sharing or comparison. Instead, we can set an intention to use travel documentation for the purpose of personal reflection.
Keeping a travel journal
Recording voice notes
Writing postcards to yourself
Saving private photo albums
Travel documentation can be a meaningful tool for memory-making and reflection instead of sharing.
Intention 10: Reflect After Every Trip
Travel almost always ends in a rush. We land home, unpack and try to get back to our normal routine. Rarely do we take time to truly process what we learned or experienced.
Traveling with the intention of reflecting and processing each trip can involve:
Journaling about each trip and asking “what did I learn?”
Noticing how your perspective shifts
Creating an intention to reflect means travel becomes experience-to-insight instead of rinse and repeat.
Bringing Travel Intentions into Everyday Life
Travel intentions are more useful when they’re revisited throughout the year. Write them down. Put them on your desk or somewhere you’ll see them. Refer back to them when planning or booking a trip.
You don’t have to follow them perfectly. Intentions are not rules or a checklist. They are reminders.
If life changes, your travel intentions can change with it. Intentions can be fluid and responsive to real life.
When Travel Intentions Change Mid-Year
Intentions often shift throughout the year. Energy ebbs and flows. Real life comes and goes. An intention we felt aligned with in January may not suit us as well in June.
Adjusting or changing intentions is not a failure, it’s being responsive.
Review your travel intentions at regular intervals (perhaps every quarter) and ask yourself:
Are these intentions still serving me?
Do I want more rest or more adventure right now?
What have my travels been teaching me about what I need?
Let your intentions be a conversation instead of a contract.
Travel Intentions as a Way of Life
At their best, travel intentions don’t just apply to travel but begin to bleed into how we live our day-to-day lives.
Traveling intentionally can help us move through the world more slowly, more curiously, more intentionally. Travel feels less like a break from our lives and more like a reinforcement of the life we want to live every day.
Travel Intention: What We Travel Towards
Traveling with intention doesn’t necessarily mean more travel. It doesn’t mean busier or farther. In fact, it’s the opposite. Traveling with intention helps us move past comparison and urgency and into presence and purpose.
This is a new year in travel, not a resolution. Intentional travel is the opposite of forcing or forcing goals onto ourselves. It’s about setting an intention to focus on the process, not the destination.
As you think about the year ahead, what it will hold and how it will unfold, take a moment to consider your travel intentions. What experiences do you want to cultivate instead of just the places you hope to visit? When we let our travel be guided by intention, even small journeys can have big impact.
The year ahead needs less travel, not more. It needs better travel, more reflective of who we are and more aligned with who we’re working towards becoming.
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