Behind the Travel Styles
A research-informed approach to understanding how people travel.
The triptheory.co Travel Styles were created to help make travel preferences easier to recognize and easier to use.
In developing the framework, we looked to established tourism research on why people travel, how they balance familiarity and discovery, how much structure or independence they prefer, how experience shapes expectations, and what contributes to memorable travel.
Those ideas informed our thinking. The eight Travel Styles themselves are a practical triptheory.co framework designed for real-world travel planning.
Ideas that informed the framework
Travel motivation
John L. Crompton's work on push and pull motivations helped distinguish the reasons people want to travel from the destinations, experiences, and features that attract them.
Familiarity and discovery
Stanley Plog's work informed our thinking about the spectrum between comfort and predictability on one side and novelty and discovery on the other. We use this as a preference continuum, not a fixed traveler type.
Structure and independence
Erik Cohen's tourism typology contributed to our thinking about how travelers differ in their desire for guidance, autonomy, familiarity, and freedom while traveling.
Experience changes perspective
Philip Pearce and Uk-Il Lee's Travel Career Pattern helped inform the idea that travel experience can change expectations, confidence, motivations, and the kind of support a traveler may want.
What makes travel memorable
Research by Kim, Ritchie, and McCormick on memorable tourism experiences informed our thinking about qualities such as novelty, meaningfulness, local culture, involvement, refreshment, and quality. We use these ideas to think about fit, not to predict satisfaction.
Turning ideas into Travel Styles
We translated those broad ideas into practical travel preferences such as:
The Travel Styles reflect recognizable combinations of these preferences. They are intentionally flexible. A traveler may see themselves in several styles, and preferences can change depending on the trip, destination, companions, or stage of life.
From Travel Styles to Personal Travel Style
The eight Travel Styles provide an easy way to understand the framework.
The Personal Travel Style experience looks more broadly at how a traveler’s preferences come together. It considers patterns across multiple dimensions rather than forcing someone into a single category.
Discover Your Travel StyleWhat this framework is, and isn’t
The triptheory.co Travel Style system is a research-informed travel-planning framework.
It is designed to help travelers and advisors recognize meaningful preferences and use them in planning. It is not a psychological assessment, a personality test, a scientifically validated classification system, or a prediction of whether someone will enjoy a particular trip.
Ready to explore the styles?
See the eight Travel Styles and the different ways people like to experience travel.
Explore the Eight Travel Styles