What's your traveling personality?

Friday, August 29, 2008

Two people can take the exact same trip and come away with completely different impressions. Many travel experts offer a short quiz to help define your travel personality.

If you love going places, you may be an adventurous traveler. This means generally you love going places you've never been, keep your passport current--just in case--or laugh at the very idea of a travel guide book.

You are spontaneous and curious and like learning about the world by experiencing it. You look for last minute deals that provide you a chance to explore new places.

If you make a list of all possible activities and then do them all, find it hard to stay in one place very long and get and keep everyone up and moving you are an active traveler.

You like to work hard and play hard. You take advantage of everything you can find on vacation and look for spots that offer both indoor and outdoor activities.

You are a structured traveler if you don't like surprises and plan details far in advance. You may tend to return to your favorite spots over and over.

Structured travelers like to have a plan in place and look for low stress. You even have an alternative plan if something should go wrong. You like to look at your hotel room by online video so you know exactly what to expect.

Laid back travelers handle stress without much anxiety. You choose a relaxing vacation one time and an active one another. You often wait until you arrive at your destination to decide what you will do while you are there.

You are low maintenance and don't need a plan or lots of sights to visit. You can go with the flow and change course without batting an eye.

Having different travel personalities can be difficult on relationships. If you're part of a duo and have personality differences in planning, economics and taking advice you might want to recognize the potential for disagreements.

Often, one of you is the planner. The other leaves the arrangements to the planner and hopes for the best.

There are ways to reconcile your differences. Once you get to Europe, free your spirit. Planners need to remember to leave time for just sitting in a café soaking in the atmosphere. Free spirits need to remember to be tolerant and try to get a day to yourself to do nothing.

To find out your travel personality try taking a quiz at a new Web site, www.Besttripchoices.com

The questionnaire, developed by travel researcher Stanley Plog, divides travelers into six personality types. At one end of the spectrum are "venturers" who like to strike out on their own to remote places. At the other are "authentics" who prefer Disney World as an adventure.

After identifying your travel personality type, keep clicking to find suggestions on destinations and activities that have been scientifically matched with research-generated satisfactions cores.

After identifying their travel personality type, visitors to BestTripChoices can keep clicking to find suggestions on destinations and activities that have been scientifically matched with research-generated satisfaction scores.

The basic questionnaire is not new, it was developed in the late 1960s to help airlines identify why some people had no interest in flying.

Based on that success, the personality quiz became a standard tool used by destinations, hotels, tour companies and other travel service providers looking for ways to best pitch consumers. Publishers, car manufacturers and other types of companies have used it to tweak their marketing campaigns, too.

Plans call for BestTripChoices.com to grow in depth during the coming year. Besides the quiz and associated destination rankings and descriptions, it offers a useful trip-planning section with detailed information on everything from global tipping practices to best credit cards for travelers.

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