The article will cover the following:

• Pure Travel
• Personality and Travel
• Values and Travel
• The Travelling Activity
• The Perception of Foreign Places
• A Theory on Quality of Life of Leisure Travel Satisfaction

Pure Travel

Pure travel, according to Maurice Farber [1], is the travel for pleasure, for sight-seeing and experience, compared to travel for a very specific reason like business trips or travelling to visit someone. The big question is why people are willing to travel vast distances, leave behind loved ones just to explore a new place. Motivationally speaking, people have a basic curiosity, an inner drive to explore. These motives surface unexpectedly like most drives in animals but of course exploration for a koala means moving to the closest tree for reasons other than the motive of people to travel the globe. Farber also notes that people experience the suspense of going somewhere only because of mentioning the name of the desired place that they want to visit. For example, when someone says: “I will travel to Nicaragua or Rome next week”, half of the excitement lays on the travel itself and the other half lays on the pronunciation of the names of these places. Another condition is that travel is so desired because it carries a social prestige. It would be naïve to not consider that the socio-economic status of people affects travelling purposes. 

Therefore, the prestige that comes together with travelling can be considered both a privilege and an inner motive, for social acceptance. 

Personality and Travel

Personality has also its impact on the activity of travel. It may be somewhat an old notion that of Plog[2]  (1972), who proposed two types of personality that lay along a continuum, ranging from allocentrism to psychocentrism. The psychocentric personality type experiences a territory of boundness, insecurity and powerlessness. People that have this type of personality also have a non-active lifestyle and are considered non-adventurous. On the other hand, allocentric individuals tend to be self-confident; they are intellectually curious and feel mainly in control of their lives. An element that has importance for Plog’s scale is situational context, which explains the two personalities’ preferences when it comes to travelling decisions. Psychocentrics tend to prefer a high degree of familiarity when they travel, and because of that they mostly enjoy vacation in groups, or else “packed” tours. You may have already guessed what type of vacation allocentrics prefer. They want to travel to exotic places and unique destinations and they usually choose to travel independently. They are the lonely wolves of travelling, while psychocentrics are the pact. Plog’s theory has received both support and criticism by scholars, and it is still unclear if it should be considered extremely valid due to various measuring problems it encompasses.

Values and Travel

Values also seem to influence travelling. Values are abstract beliefs about behaviors or end-states of existence that transcend specific situations and act as heuristics to guide the selection or evaluation of behavior and events[2]. These events and behaviors are chosen exactly because they reflect internal states that drive decisions between stimuli and responses and they affect those responses as well. Values are hierarchically ordered in the cognitive mind of a person, based on the importance that they assign to each. The ultimate goal is for individuals to maintain their self- congruence when they experience conflict and values help us prioritize. This extensive introduction leads us to conclude that values among others are based on the situational context as well and together with personality shape leisure activities like travelling. An example would be that people who value security more than adventure get more stressed while travelling and this might defeat the purpose of them travelling for leisure. 

The Travelling Experience

After targeting the person, we should talk a bit about the travelling activity [1] . Let’s consider a phenomenon that may have happened to you and that it has definitely happened to me. You are on the train, travelling and a total stranger who sits close by; approaches you and starts discussing and without even realizing it, she has narrated her whole life and has revealed some of her deepest secrets. The situation resembles a movie: the anonymity of the person and the fact that you may never see this person are the conditions that allowed the reveal of this person’s story. Interpersonal relationships while travelling do not necessarily meet the dynamics of those in everyday life. contextual standards of casual relationships that we have with peers. Circumstances while travelling appear to remove the classic interpersonal standards. This happens as well because the traveler is “torn between two worlds” both geographically and psychologically! Together with this feeling of the creation of new standards, comes the freedom that accompanies travelling where the person experiences himself from an unbound perspective, mostly unfamiliar in “real life” where restrictions stop existing and boundaries become a bit more blurry. Sexual freedom for example is very common when travelling or the desire of it. It is not uncommon among younger and fresher couples to discuss if they should break up or not before summer vacation under the circumstances of not travelling to the same place of course.

The Perception of Foreign Places

Interesting to elaborate is the perception of foreign places[1] . There are numerous experiences of travellers that have visited the same places who have portrayed completely different images based on their different perceptions. Not necessarily of the place only, but also from their view of the world. Consider this. A traveller who favored the Soviet Union as a political reality, and travelled to Russia viewed this country as full of amazing monuments and that with a generally happy population. On the other hand, an anti-soviet person, who travelled to the same place, described Russia as a country filled with misery, terror and uncertainty. Social perception, a concept that lies in the literature of perception psychology, explains many of these phenomena. The objective situation is one perception element and what is seen by a traveller for example depends on the needs, hopes, fears and expectations of the perceiver. Selectivity plays an important role here: the two individuals that are faced with exactly the same sight-seeing will undoubtedly be drawn to different elements! 

A theory on Quality of Life of Leisure and Travel Satisfaction

Finally, John Sirgy proposed a theory on the quality of life and leisure travel satisfaction[3]. It is based on goal theory and, more specifically, it involves how goal-related constructs like goal selection, implementation, and attainment influence subjective well-being. Four main principles explain how tourists can experience high levels of subjective well-being (life satisfaction or overall happiness) in life if they choose leisure travel goals that have high levels of positive valence and expectancy. After formulating these goals, tourists engage in activities at the destination to experience goal attainment. 

Here are the four major principles:

1. Goal valence - Leisure travel satisfaction is enhanced by pursuing leisure travel goals in which goal attainment is likely to induce high levels of positive affect in the targeted life domains. 
2. Goal expectancy - Leisure travel satisfaction is enhanced by pursuing leisure travel goals that are likely to be attained; thus, goal attainment would ensure the experience of high levels of positive affect in the targeted life domains.
3. Goal implementation - Leisure travel satisfaction is enhanced by taking action to actually reach these travel goals. Goal implementation increases the likelihood of goal attainment and the experience of positive affect in the targeted life domains.
4. Goal attainment - Leisure travel satisfaction is enhanced through the attainment of leisure travel goals, thus ensuring the experience of positive affect in the targeted life domains.

All in all, traveling might sound simple: an escape from our everyday lives, going somewhere to chill, have a good time and meet new people… But of course everything is a bit more complicated than it sounds. The personality, values, perceptions and goals of travellers play a role in the traveling experience, shaping it without us realizing it. Interpersonal relationships are altered, and so is our perception of the world. Of course, there are a lot more theories and concepts relevant to travelling, and don’t forget the role that the marketing industry plays too.

I hope I did not ruin the magic of travelling for you! This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to enjoy traveling anymore, as it is after all, one of the greatest and most beautiful things! 

Have a nice trip ☺ 

Additional resource: 

• Book that you must read if you haven’t already, also won the Nobel Prize: Olga Tokarczuk – Flights (Itinerarium) 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36885304-flights

Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller's answer [4]. 

References

[1] Farber, M. L. (1954) Some Hypotheses on Travel. Psychoanalytic Review, 267-271

[2] Madrigal, R. (1995). Personal Values, Traveler Personality Type, and Leisure Travel Style. Journal of Leisure Research, 27(2), 125–142. doi:10.1080/00222216.1995.11949738

[3] Sirgy, M. J. (2009). Toward a Quality-of-Life Theory of Leisure Travel Satisfaction. Journal of Travel Research, 49(2), 246–260. doi:10.1177/0047287509337416 

[4] Tokarczuk, O. (2017) Flights