How To Choose Where To Travel On A World Trip

Last Updated on 23rd April 2021

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So you’re thinking about how to start travelling the world? Perhaps you’re just looking for advice on how to choose your next travel destination. Thankfully, I have a little bit of experience in the subject of travelling the world and choosing where to travel, so I’ve put together this guide that will hopefully give you a bit of inspiration for choosing your next travel destination.

While the tips below can certainly be applied to just choosing where to go on holiday next, they are probably more designed towards long term travelling and deciding where to travel on a world trip.

From pricing things up, to vaccines and visas, here are all the things you should consider when choosing where to travel.

The cost of initial flights to get there

One of the main things you’ll need to think about when it comes to choosing where to travel next is the cost of the flights to actually get there.

While this isn’t something that necessarily stops me from going to a particular place, it is something that makes me consider the order in which I travel and how I prioritise which countries I want to go to first.

For example, at the start of our trip around the world, we knew that we wanted to head to New Zealand first for around three months in order to housesit for half the time and then travel around the South Island in a campervan for the second half of our trip. Therefore, we didn’t actually mind paying the cost of the initial flights out to NZ as we’d planned to head there all along (and it turned out that it only cost us £400 each for the flights).

If you’re planning to travel to various countries as part of your world trip, then it’s worth considering the order in which you want to visit each place, in order to price the cost of flights up. For example, you might want to head to Southeast Asia for your trip, with Singapore being your first stop in mind. However, it might actually be cheaper to fly into Malaysia and then make your way to Singapore via land.

How long it takes to get there

Again, this particular consideration isn’t something that bothered me too much when we were making our way over to New Zealand because I knew how long the flights were and I’d already done it before when I moved there in 2011.

How long it takes to get to a particular destination however, might be one of the contributing factors that helps you to decide where to travel next. If you’re not a big fan of long haul flights and you’d prefer to visit somewhere that only takes a maximum of 4-5 hours to get there, then consider travelling to a country/countries a bit closer to home.

Visa situations – how to choose where to travel

Depending where you’re planning on travelling to, you might need to check whether you need a visa in order to enter the country. Some countries have no visa entry requirements and you might be able to land in the country and stay for a certain number of days without having a visa at all, but some countries will require you to actually apply for a proper visa and provide evidence that you have one.

While travelling, we used the Visa HQ website which is an awesome resource for checking which visas you need for each country. You can enter the country that you’re a citizen of and the country you want to travel to on the website and it will tell you whether you need a visa in order to visit there, and the requirements for the visa application.

Think about whether you need vaccines

Another consideration that you’ll need to take into account when planning where to travel next is whether or not you’ll need vaccines in order to travel to a particular place.

Many countries won’t have specific requirements for particular vaccines, but many will and with the development of the Coronavirus pandemic, there are talks that you might need to be vaccinated against it in order to travel to certain countries.

The NHS website is a great resource for finding out which vaccinations you might need for particular countries and we went through the NHS for a number of our vaccines before we went travelling. You can get some of them for free as part of the health service, but you will be required to pay for a select few as well, depending on which ones you need.

How good is the weather at specific times of the year?

The weather of a country is one factor that many people think about when deciding whether to travel there or not. For me, the weather isn’t always a huge deciding factor; I don’t mind the cold and snow and I also don’t mind the sunshine and warmer temperatures as well (although I’m not a big fan of it being too hot!).

However, the weather is a good thing to look into when choosing where to travel, especially if you’re visiting places like Asia where they have definitive wet and dry months. You probably don’t want to be heading somewhere that’s just about to enter into the wet season for a few months (although you will likely find things to be a bit cheaper, so that’s also something to think about…)

The safety of the country

How safe a country is, is always something that should be thought about when choosing where to travel to, but I also think that you should go into these kinds of decisions with an open mind. Naturally, you probably don’t want to visit war-torn countries, or places where certain tourists aren’t welcome, but as long as you’ve thought a little bit about the safety element of the place that you’re visiting, then you should be good to go.

Language barriers – how to choose where to travel

Language barriers are a common thing that puts some people off from travelling to a particular destination; the thought of not being able to communicate with the locals properly can sometimes be a little intimidating.

However, if you’re planning a big trip to various countries that speak a different language to you, it’s definitely worth trying to learn a few key phrases of each language before you visit a certain country. Not only will it be considerate of the locals, but it’ll also likely make you feel a bit more comfortable as a traveller knowing that you’ll be able to at least scrape by with a few key words and phrases.

How expensive the country and activities are

Once you’ve thought about the cost of getting there, plus how much it will cost you to get vaccinations and visas for each country that requires them, you should then think about how expensive the country and activities are once you’re actually there.

For me, if I know that I’m visiting a relatively expensive country such as New Zealand or Singapore, I’m aware of this fact before I go, so I take the necessary preparations in order to be ready for the cost of things. For example, while hotels might be extortionately priced in Singapore, street food is ridiculously affordable, so those things sort of balance out.

Also, in New Zealand for example, we hired a campervan for 5 weeks in the South Island which was pretty costly, but it meant that we had our transport and accommodation all rolled into one and we also had the ability to cook our own food in the van as well which meant we cut the costs of eating food out and about.

The ease of transport once you’re there

The ease of getting around a country is another thing that you’ll want to add to your list of things to think about when it comes to choosing where to travel.

Some countries, such as those in pretty much all of west and central Europe, are incredibly easy to get around using public transport such as trains and buses. However, if you’re heading to places where there isn’t as much public transport available (such as New Zealand, for example), you might have to think about other transportation options such as hiring a car or campervan to get around the country.

Our road trips in NZ and Australia were some of my favourite parts of travelling, but you need to be aware of the added cost and responsibility that comes with this, so ensure that you’ve factored these costs into your travelling budget when determining where to travel to.

Food and allergy situations – how to choose where to travel

For many people, if you’re lucky, the issue of food allergies won’t be something that you even have to consider. However, if you do suffer from an allergy or intolerance (such as Matt with his severe nut allergy), this will be something that you’ll have to think about when planning your travels.

It’s certainly not something that should put you off going to a certain place altogether; with Matt’s nut allergy we still went absolutely everywhere we wanted to and ate all the food we wanted to for the most part, but we just had to be a little bit more wary when ordering from street food stalls, for example.

Hopefully you’ll now feel a little more prepared when it comes to choosing where to travel. Of course, you don’t have to think too much about it at all and you might want to be as spontaneous as possible, but if you’re somewhat of a beginner traveller and you’re not quite sure how to plan your trips, I hope this post has provided you with plenty of insight and inspiration!

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