Some Questions to Get the Travel Party Started

Adventure is a State of Mind

It’s important to make sure that you and your potential travel partners are well matched when planning a trip together. (See the post How to Avoid Ruining a Relationship.) Don’t assume that just because you are friends, you will get along well with each other while traveling.

While comparing travel styles is important to the success of planning independent travel with friends and relatives, it can also be a fun activity to get to know each other better. Below are some potential questions to ask, but you don’t need to limit yourself to just these. These questions will help you get started, especially if you’ve never had a conversation like this, but if you’re curious about other behaviors and opinions that could impact how you travel, ask questions about those things as well.

• What time do you like to go to bed and to wake up in the morning? Are you more of a morning person or a night person?
• How cool do you like the room to be when you sleep? (This question is obviously only important if you anticipate you’ll be sharing a room.)
• How important is it to you that the room be completely dark or completely quiet for you to sleep at night? How does this impact where you want to stay?
• What are you like when you haven’t gotten enough sleep? (Jetlag affects us all differently!)
• How long does it take you to get ready in the morning? (Good to know when planning daily schedules.)
• What is your morning routine like?
• When do you like to eat your meals and how flexible is that schedule?
• When is your biggest meal of the day?
• Do you eat to live or live to eat?
• What do you do if you get lost? Are you likely to panic? To problem solve? Or is it just one more adventure for you?
• How do you respond if things are not going as planned? (See above regarding possible responses.)

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.

Robert Louis Stevenson

• Are you more of a leader or a follower? Do you like to plan or to let others do the planning?
• Do you prefer to know everything you are going to do in a day when you wake up in the morning or are you more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of person?
• How much activity (physical or mental) do you like to do in a day?
• What are your favorite activities during a vacation?
• What are your least favorite activities?
• Where would your dream vacation take place?
• What is your favorite memory of a trip you’ve already taken?
• What is your budget for a trip? (It seems like an obvious question, but it’s alarming how often no one asks this question until there are misunderstandings or hard feelings about financial decisions that have already been made.)
• How much time can you spend on a trip?
• What is your favorite weather and why?

• What is your favorite time of year and why?
• Do you prefer cities or nature and why?
• Do you prefer to drive or to be driven?
• How do you like to handle disagreements?
• How much alone time do you need and how often?
• What skills can you bring to an independent travel adventure? (This can could include many, many things, but it may be especially useful to ask about things like map-reading abilities or a knowledge of foreign languages.)

What is important for you to know about your travel companions?