Independent travel means traveling by organizing your own trips, doing research on what you want to see, do and eat prior to the trip, creating your own itinerary, organizing your own transportation, and booking your own accommodations.

Independent travel does not automatically mean budget travel or traveling on a shoestring, you are free to spend as little or as much as you want on accommodations, food, and sights, and you can camp out or stay in five-star resorts. With independent travel, you have complete freedom.

Maybe you will stay in cheaper accommodations for a week and splurge for a ritzy stay for the last few days of the trip.

Maybe you will eat street food for lunch and dine a at Michelin starred restaurant at night. Because you are an independent traveler you have this freedom and more importantly, because you’re a Travel Curious traveler you know more than the average traveler and certainly a lot more than the traveler on a tour about the place you are traveling to, you have options due to knowledge.

Benefit of being travel curious and being an independent traveler is you get to create the perfect trip for you. Instead of a compromise on a packaged tour that ticks off three of your boxes but has filler you aren’t that excited about is you can create the perfect trip that ticks off all of your boxes!

Do more, see more

Independent travelers can pack a lot into a trip, being in control of your itinerary allows you to make the most of your time. When you fly into a country on a tour group, you’ve usually lost a whole day to travel, rarely will anything be booked on that day of arrival. What a difference you have when you’re creating your own trip, getting in the afternoon? You pick up your rental car, you check in your Airbnb and you take advantage of that famous museum’s late closing on Thursdays and get to see it without crowds, and you already know about that bistro close by with outside seating next to the river where you will head afterward for a nice late dinner. 

Independent travelers travel at their own pace. Packaged tours have to take into consideration the pace of the slowest tourists on the tour and then add in even more time as padding. You will go see the local colorful market in the morning, be hiking by midmorning and stop at the waterfall viewpoint for lunch, all experienced while the package tour people saw the same market after breakfast, never did the hike and don’t know about the waterfall.

Tourist versus Traveler

A tourist usually implies someone getting away, usually for a short time, visiting a specific destination for a vacation before returning to their everyday existence afterwards. It also carries the unfortunate connotation of someone who’s just there to look at things rather than become emotionally involved in anyway.

Travelers tend to be on the road for longer trips, and while they do want to see the sights, there is also a slower agenda with the goal of seeing more than the top five things at a destination. Travelers want to connect with a destination, get below the surface, see more, do more and connect with the locals and experience the real culture of real people.

Personally, I think the best trips are when you combine being both a traveler and a tourist!

Creating once in a lifetime experiences that last a lifetime. Life is short and life is for living.

Getting of the beaten path

Meeting locals