Talk:Reasons to travel

Scrap this topic?

The articles categorized here are very different, and there is nothing to say about the topic in general. We can consider to scrap the topic and sort sub-topics with preparation, concerns or cultural attractions. See also Talk:Preparation. /Yvwv (talk) 01:09, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Reasons to travel

Swept in from the pub

The super-topic reasons to travel has a very heterogenous collection of subtopics, and there is nothing in general to say about the topic. Should we scrap the topic, and direct the subtopics to other topics, such as prepare, concerns, talk, activities and cultural attractions? /Yvwv (talk) 21:13, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I still think it is a logical group, and the articles fit badly in the mentioned alternative groups. Some of these others are much more messy, and adding one more category to them will not help. I think the topics structure should be reorganised, but I don't have any idea of how it should be done – other than piecemeal solutions do not seem to work. –LPfi (talk) 05:07, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Categories of travellers

I don't think being alone, senior or LGBT, or having children, are reasons to travel. They are already in Concerns#Categories of travellers. Doubling the content (the list of links in this case) makes the hierarchy messier and less predictable. –LPfi (talk) 10:42, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

It's obvious when you lay it out. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I think that makes sense for the situations mentioned above, which are covered at Concerns#Categories of travellers. However, a few others that were previously listed on this page are not listed on the Concerns page- specifically Organizing a group trip, Vacation camp, and Retiring abroad. Those 3 pages are also bread crumbed to this page, but no longer listed here. Where should they be listed? JakeOregon (talk) 20:53, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Vacation camps and retiring abroad are certainly reasons to travel, and group trips come close. I think they should be here, sorry for my carelessness. I am restoring them now. I don't think they should be under that heading, but the other headings are no good match either. –LPfi (talk) 10:06, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

FYI: 1/3 of Japanese are "never travelers"

Swept in from the pub

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/japan-never-traveler-culture-cmb/index.html —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:15, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I wonder what the statistics would be for other countries. Certainly I've met Canadians who've never been out of the country. Pashley (talk) 00:00, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

My fellow Americans are allergic to passports. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:19, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Allergic, and/or they lack the vacation time and money to travel abroad? It's not an accident that Europeans travel to other countries so much more often, and Australians have a culture of international travel because they are effectively on a continent by themselves and there's been a traditional tie to the British Isles that the U.S. has lacked for a long time because of the much longer history and circumstances of our independence. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:25, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

The article said that 20% of Japanese people have passports, and I think about twice as many American adults have valid passports (though maybe not quite that many between the pandemic and current passport processing delays). About 70% of American adults have visited a foreign country. A day trip or a weekend in Mexico or Canada is pretty common in some areas. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but most of the country is nowhere near close enough to the border for that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Passports are very common here in Germany, though I can't really say a lot about other countries' passport habits. However, within a twelve-hour drive, I can get to more than ten foreign countries from my home: All nine neighbouring countries of Germany plus Liechtenstein, Hungary, Italy, San Marino, Slovenia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and possibly Spain, Serbia, Montenegro and/or Romania. While from the US I've heard and read that a twelve-hour drive doesn't even get you out of some states. I doubt you could reach, for example, New Mexico or Alabama from Nebraska in twelve hours. Pm147-Sm152 (talk) 00:52, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Driving across Texas is 10-ish hours, the long way. And railroads are virtually nonexistent. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:05, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

The part of the Trans-Canada Highway in Ontario about 1500 km. There are places in northern Canada a long way from any border; e,g. Going south from Yellowknife to to the US border is something like 2000km, 1250 miles. Alaska might be closer, but still a considerable distance. Pashley (talk) 04:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

There are also parts of the United States in the South Pacific, of course. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:25, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Only American Samoa, tho (excl. uninhabited islands/military bases). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 02:12, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Correct: American Samoa and Jarvis Island —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Ikan, most of the country doesn't live close to the borders, but quite a lot of the people do. Southern California has ~23 million people near Mexico. The Pacific Northwest has ~8 million people within an easy day's drive of Canada. Another several million people live in western Texas. Almost all of the northeastern US (~57 million people) is within a few hours' drive of Canada; from New York City (~9 million people in the city proper) to Montreal is a six-hour drive. Chicagoland (~10 million) to Toronto is an eight-hour drive; Detroit (another million) is the halfway point.

Taken altogether, I'd guess that more than third of Americans live within an 8-hour drive of a neighboring country. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:42, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I responded to "A day trip or a weekend in Mexico or Canada is pretty common in some areas." 8 hours' drive each way is damn far to go for a weekend, let alone a day trip, unless maybe you're a Texan - they're used to driving long distances. (Quite apart from the fact that many New Yorkers don't drive at all.) Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:17, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

As someone who does very long road trips (mine to Tasmania last summer was over 6,000 km), I can reasonably assure you, Ikan, that nobody drives 8 hours one way for a day trip (the most I've done for a day trip was 5 hours from where I live (Sydney) to Barrington Tops National Park, though it mainly terrain that added time, not distance). While everything is bigger in Texas (ofc, everyone knows that Texas is larger than the entire universe), I doubt even Texans drive that distance for weekend trips. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 04:59, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, I've known Texans to literally say: "That isn't far: it's only an 8-hour drive." My response was that if you drive 8 hours from New York, you can go through several states and end up in Virginia or Maine, and that we consider that a very long distance. But Texas is such a big state and people are just much more used to driving long distances there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely. Distances are different in the plains states. For one thing, it's not a challenging type of driving.

Years ago, my husband worked for a place that kept summer hours, so everyone left work on Friday at 11:30 a.m. You could be 8 hours' away before sunset, spend Friday night, all day Saturday, Saturday night, and all of Sunday morning at your destination, and still be home in time for a good night's sleep before getting back to work at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. (The early start was the main downside to the summer hours.)

Where I live now, some people think that driving for half an hour (e.g., to a specialty store or to a medical appointment) is verging on the unreasonable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:51, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I take your point. So it's not only Texans who consider an 8-hour drive not long, but what you're saying is that people in any of the Plains states (like the Dakotas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma) also feel that way. Whereabouts (generally - of course I respect your privacy) do you live now? Ikan Kekek (talk) 15:57, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm in California now. I understand that the views of driving vary by region within the state. One of my California-based colleagues lived in a mountainous/rural area and seemed to think little of driving an hour.

Perhaps it's based on what you're used to? When I lived in an exurb area decades ago, an hour's drive was not surprising (my optometrist was 35 miles/50 km away, for example, and it never occurred to me to look for someone nearer), and we would drive 12 hours in a single day on a trip. Now I think that more than an hour's drive is a serious imposition, and I'm not sure if I could sit in a car for four hours straight. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Without a doubt it's based on what you're used to. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:27, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

As someone who's said that exact statement before, I'm guessing they mean it's not that long to drive 8 hours instead of flying? --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:35, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

It's all a matter of perspective: here's me just got back from driving to northern Brittany, 200 miles as the gull flies (OK, my father did the driving) and that seemed like a bloody long way. The way out was around 45 mins to Portsmouth, a 4-hr catamaran crossing to Cherbourg, and then 2 hr 30-min driving in France. The way back was even less driving - 30 min in France and maybe an hour in England - and with a 9-hour ferry crossing. Despite the relaxed mini-cruises to break up the driving with deck strolls and meals and duty-free shopping, the journeys were full on and my dad was sighing about "all this driving".--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:52, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

:-)

And then trips out of the capital are always so long, compared to those to there. That's why we have to visit our friends in Helsinki; we live too far away for them to come here. –LPfi (talk) 15:50, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Me resisting the urge to laugh so hard when I heard 200 mi as "long"... /s. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 22:26, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

That's just big city dwellers who can't be bothered to grace the "countryside" with their presence ;-) Any journey that hinges on a ferry crossing is going to seem long. We saw dolphins though, along with various Channel islands! ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 19:04, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Anyone who lives far enough away from any major cities is used to driving long distances. If you have to drive three hours each way (six hours roundtrip) for doctor appointments, then an eight-hour drive for a tourism destination is not that big of a deal. Flying internationally or even domestically is also much more difficult and expensive if the nearest international airport is a three-hour drive away and you have to arrive at least two hours before the flight. —The preceding comment was added by Nicole Sharp (talk • contribs)