Millennial Money: Mystery travel lets you focus on the fun, not the details
Mystery travel involves setting off on a trip where you only know the destination once you board the plane
Travel planning can be a real chore. Booking flights, deciding on the right hotel and building an itinerary might be fun for some, but others dread it. That’s why some travelers are opting for an unorthodox travel strategy that eliminates the planning stage altogether. It’s called “mystery” or “suprise” travel, and the destination isn’t revealed until the day of departure.
This idea isn’t new. Some friend groups plan regular mystery travel vacations, with one person or family planning and booking the itinerary for everyone else.
Lanie van der Horst, a travel blogger, asked her husband to plan a trip. He decided to keep the destination — Byron Bay, Australia — a secret.
“I literally cried when he told me that he had a trip planned that I didn’t have to think about,” van der Horst says.
LET A TRAVEL COMPANY PLAN YOUR TRIP
As these surprise trips have become more popular, travel booking companies have begun offering them. Customers pay a flat fee for the trip and set certain guidelines such as dates and preferences, but the destination remains a surprise until the last minute. For group travel, this means that everybody will be surprised when the destination is revealed.
Mystery travel is not only exciting and simple to plan, but it can also nudge travelers to explore destinations they may never have considered otherwise.
“If you like white-water rafting, you may have already been to the well-known spots in Arizona and Colorado,” Roshni Agarwal, co-founder of The Vacation Hunt, a mystery travel service, said in an email. “But did you know that the U.S. National Whitewater Center is in Charlotte, North Carolina?”
HOW IT
Read more on abcnews.go.com
