Ideas for Travel Goals
Are you looking for inspiration for travel goals and travel bucket list ideas?
I’ve come up with tons of suggestions for you below!
Creating a list of travel goals or a travel bucket list is a great way to get clear on your travel dreams and get you one step closer to making them happen. I personally love making lists so I’ve had various travel goal lists over the years. I even found a bucket list I made back in high school that had a bunch of travel-related items on it, and ten years later, I was thrilled to see I’d already accomplished many of them.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably as crazy about travel as I am.
Most people’s life goals don’t necessarily involve traveling to far-flung corners of the globe or challenging yourself to go out of your comfort zone abroad, but it’s different for travel lovers.
Writing down your goals is the first step to making them into a tangible reality, and I highly recommend doing it. You can put pencil to paper and write a physical list in your journal or planner, or you can create a digital travel goals list. You can even go a step further and create a travel vision board where you make a collage of images representing your travel goals. I personally do this every year.
Types of Goals to Set
So what kind of travel goals can you set? There are tons of different options!
I’ve broken down the list below into several different categories:
- Experiences: These are experiences you can have while traveling, such as staying with a family on a homestay in a foreign country, taking a cooking class, or going to a music festival abroad.
- Challenges: These goals are more along the lines of checking off X number of things — for example, visiting all 50 states in the US or seeing the New 7 Wonders of the World.
- Destinations: Finally, these are destination-specific ideas for your bucket list, like hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, seeing the Great Pyramids, or having a picnic in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Some of these ideas are taken from my own personal travel goals list (trust me, I have a lot!) while others are bucket list items that will appeal to travelers with many different interests.
Experience Travel Goals
- Run a marathon in another country
- Go on a safari
- Stay with a family on a homestay in a foreign country
- Attend the Olympics abroad
- Trace your family roots on an ancestry trip
- Go skydiving
- Take a cooking class in another country
- See the Northern Lights
- Go scuba diving
- Volunteer in a foreign country
- See a concert for your favorite artist in another country
- Go on a cruise
- Take a multi-day train trip
- Pick a destination at random and go there
- Travel with your parents, grandparents, siblings, or other relatives
- Go bungee jumping
- Enroll in foreign language classes in another country
- Take a solo trip
- See a sporting event in another country
- Go to a music festival abroad
- Take a totally offline trip
- Fly in first class
- Eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant
- Go on an epic trip with friends
- Travel somewhere on your birthday
- Revisit a favorite destination from the past
- Go on a yoga retreat
- Spend the night in a castle
- Go on a sailing trip
- Take a road trip in an RV
- Embrace packing light and travel somewhere with just a small backpack
- Travel on two wheels (by bicycle or motorcycle)
- Learn how to surf
- Celebrate a holiday in another country
- Live abroad for at least one year
Challenge Travel Goals
- Travel to at least one new country per year
- Take at least one weekend trip per month for a year
- Visit 30 countries before 30, 40 countries before 40, 50 countries before 50, etc.
- Visit every country in the world (197 or so depending how you count them)
- Visit 100 countries around the world (a slightly more attainable goal)
- Travel to all 7 continents
- Visit all 50 states in the US
- Visit all 10 Canadian provinces
- Visit all 32 states in Mexico
- Visit all regions of a country (e.g. France, Italy, the UK)
- Visit the European microstates (there are six of them)
- Visit every country in Europe
- Visit every country in North America
- Visit every country in South America
- Visit every country in Africa
- Visit every country in Asia
- Visit every country in Oceania
- Bring an item with you and photograph it everywhere you travel (e.g. a teddy bear)
- Collect a small souvenir like a magnet from every country you visit
- Visit every island nation in the world (around 45 depending how you count them)
- Visit the New 7 Wonders of the World
- Go to every national park in the US (there are 63 of them)
- Visit 100 UNESCO World Heritage Sites (there are 1,200+ of them)
- Visit the 13 sovereign states, 12 dependencies, and 7 overseas territories of the Caribbean
- Summit the highest peaks on every continent
- Eat at a McDonald’s in every country you visit (they’re in 120 countries around the world)
- Visit every Disney theme park in the world (there are six of them)
- Buy and mail yourself a postcard in every country you visit
- Visit every former Soviet Union republic (there are 15 of them)
- Swim in all five major oceans of the world
Destination Travel Goals
- Hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru
- Travel to Oaxaca, Mexico for Day of the Dead
- Attend Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany
- See the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt
- Take a hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia, Turkey
- See the ancient Mayan ruins of Tikal in Guatemala
- Visit Antarctica
- See the Colosseum in Rome, Italy
- Visit the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia
- Climb up Table Mountain for amazing views in Cape Town, South Africa
- Walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain
- Experience Carnival in Venice, Italy
- Travel on the Trans-Siberian Railroad
- Have a picnic in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France
- Visit the Grand Canyon
- Celebrate the colorful festival Holi in India
- Visit Easter Island in Chile
- Go to the top of the Empire State Building in NYC
- Stay in an overwater bungalow in Bora Bora
- Sail through Ha Long Bay in Vietnam
- Visit the Great Barrier Reef in Australia
- Walk along the Great Wall of China
- See the ancient ruins of Petra in Jordan
- Celebrate Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana
- Take in the views from the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Visit the Acropolis in Athens, Greece
- Experience cherry blossom season in Japan
- Take a trip to the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador
- See the breathtaking Iguazu Falls
- Visit the Taj Mahal in India
- Trek the Himalayas
- Relax at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland
- Explore the otherwordly Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia
- Visit the Versailles in France
- Stay on the island of Santorini in Greece
Travel Bucket List Ideas
These are some of the best travel goals for your travel bucket list.
As I mentioned earlier, creating a list of travel goals is a great first step towards turning your travel dreams into reality. I love making lists, and I especially love the satisfaction of crossing something off a list.
It never hurts to dream big with your travel goals either. You might be surprised by what you can accomplish, even if it seems totally outlandish and impossible right now. Happy traveling!
