Is Your Travel Style a Family Trait?

When it's time to take a trip, how do you approach the planning? Are you the type to make a schedule outlining every travel activity months in advance, or would you rather leave the trip details to someone else and go with the flow? Is the annual family reunion trip the highlight of your year, or are you happier exploring some place overseas on your own?

While many people travel to have new experiences and create new memories, others do so to continue family traditions and introduce the newest family members to those traditions. Many factors likely influence your travel style, but your personality may have the biggest impact on how you choose to experience the world.

How Personality Traits Can Shape Your Travel Style

The way you approach travel reflects your personality in ways that you might not expect. One study on modern tourism examined the five-factor model of personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and how personality scores on those factors were associated with travel. Those who took trips abroad, for example, tended to be open to new experiences, novelty-seeking, and more extroverted.

AncestryDNA scientists have also explored the genetic influence on different personality traits, including those that could impact your travel style. Your DNA could suggest personality traits like these that you may have inherited from your mother or father.

• If trying new things invigorates you, you might seek out unfamiliar foods, explore cities vastly different from your home base, or embark on unconventional adventures.

• Self-confidence may make you more comfortable exploring unfamiliar places or areas with cultures or climates different from your own.

• People who enjoy doing things alone may appreciate solo trips more. Traveling alone may also help build self-confidence.

• Risk-takers may be more willing to travel without a structured schedule and to embrace adventure travel, such as backpacking across a country, kayaking, or mountaineering.

• Goal setters might create organized, detailed travel plans that outline their must-see landmarks or vacation goals.

• People prone to persistence or determination may be more inclined to take ambitious trips that require grit to get through long or especially challenging travel days. Or those qualities might play a part in tackling a family history research project before a reunion.

• Optimists may be more willing to change plans mid-trip if something doesn't go as expected.

Other genetically influenced traits may inform practical travel choices. For example, people with low heat tolerance may be less willing to visit hot climates. Those prone to motion sickness may opt to stay closer to home or to avoid trips by sea.

Why Personality Traits Don't Always Translate into a Traveler Type

In general, people tend to fall into one of these general categories of travel types:

• The planners may create a detailed itinerary outlining where you're going, how you'll get there, and what you intend to do throughout the trip.

• Guided-tour travelers might opt to use a travel agent to plan their trip, valuing the ease of benefiting from someone else's expertise.

• Repeat-destination travelers value tradition and familiarity, so they might return to a location that holds deep personal meaning.

• Solo travelers may prefer to see the world on their own, favoring independence and self-reliance. They tend to see travel as an opportunity for self-discovery.

• Adventure travelers love a good challenge and view travel as a way to push their limits.

But while travel-related personality traits can have a genetic component, your travel style is likely to be much more nuanced. Your idea of adventure or solo travel is likely to be very different from someone else's. And your way of trying new things may involve repeated trips to the same place so that you can explore that destination more deeply.

Life experiences and circumstances also play a significant role in whether, when, and how you travel. For instance, you may seek out adventure travel in your 20s, but shift to guided tours in your 60s. Or the reverse could be true—you may want to pursue solo travel in your retirement years.

Your Family's Influence on Your Travel Style

Travel patterns and traditions often develop before you're old enough to embark on your own trips. And it may not always be about traveling for vacation. For example, if your family migrated to a new country when you were young, or if a parent's military career led to frequent location changes, then you might naturally be more open to new experiences when planning a vacation.

On the other hand, if a parent traveled frequently for work, then family vacations may have been more about spending time together, with weekend trips to the beach or going to your family's annual campout in the mountains.

Whatever type of vacation or travel experience was typical for your family, you may naturally be more comfortable with similar experiences as an adult. Still, your personal travel style isn't determined solely by family patterns or by genetically influenced personality traits: it's probably a rich blend. Your wanderlust may prompt you to climb Mount Everest, while the rest of the family prefers to hang out by the swimming pool!

Records Can Help You Trace Your Family's History of Travel

As you think about the journeys reflected in your own family tree, you might want to look for records that can help to tell the story of their travels. For example, if your ancestors crossed borders or traveled by train, ship, or airplane, they likely left records behind that can help you identify their journey.

As you explore these records using the Ancestry Immigration & Emigration database, you might discover ways to verify family stories and oral histories. These records might also give context to old family letters, photos, or heirlooms.

See if Your Family's Past Inspires How You See Travel Today

Travel has an interesting way of weaving together the past, present, and future. Thinking about your own travel style and your family's historical journeys may give you a fresh perspective on how you make choices and how your ancestors' actions influenced your family's future.

Not yet an Ancestry member? Try an Ancestry free trial to explore your family's historical records. Curious to see what your DNA suggests about personality traits? Take an AncestryDNA test to learn more. If you've already taken an AncestryDNA Origins test, you can review your results through your Ancestry subscription. And when you're ready to think about combining family history and travel, check out Heritage Tourism by AncestryProGenealogists.