My wife and I have taken some great vacations together. We have also spent years taking the same vacation and having two completely different experiences, and for a long time I thought that was just how it worked when two people with different personalities traveled together.
The trip that finally made it click was the Mediterranean. One day was a private tour of the ruins at Pompeii. Another day was spent learning about the wine region and sampling varieties. I was completely in my element, she came along. Another day while our daughter and I went on a water taxi adventure and climbed the walls of an old fort, she spent went to a beach in Cinque Terre. She relaxed on a beach chair, waded into the ocean up to her knees when the mood struck, and enjoyed the views. For her, that was the best day of the trip.
We were on the same vacation and yet when we were together one of us was doing exactly the right activity and one of us was doing exactly the wrong one.
I could not understand how anyone would not want to get up at eight in the morning and walk through ancient ruins. It genuinely baffled me. What I eventually understood is that the question was never about ruins. It was about why we were traveling in the first place. My why and her why are not the same. No destination on earth is going to fix that without a conversation, some compromise, and a willingness to do what makes us happy, even if that means we’re spending the day apart.
I make my living understanding what people want from travel and somehow managed to completely miss what my own wife wanted from it for years; not my proudest realization. But it is part of how purpose-driven travel came to be. Not from a business book or a marketing strategy. From years of watching my wife be quietly miserable on vacations I thought were excellent.
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Her version of a perfect trip looks like this. A beautiful beach. Sleep in. Hang out in the sun. Lunch on the property. Snacks throughout the afternoon. Dinner that is no fancier than chicken fingers and fries with dessert after. She does not swim. She is not particularly interested in pools. She wants to sit at the edge of the ocean and wade in to her knees when the mood strikes and that is the whole plan. Once I stopped trying to add things to that plan and started protecting it instead, she started coming home from vacations actually restored.
That is what relaxation travel is. Not a vacation for people who lack curiosity. Not a lesser version of travel. A deliberate choice to stop, breathe, and exist without a schedule. The people who need it tend to know they need it, but don’t always have the language for it when they call us to start planning a getaway.
One of our customers wanted to go away with three other friends, all in their late 50s and early 60s, who wanted a girls get away. Four nights, just the four of them, no spouses, no kids, no grandkids. Their lives were full in the particular way that age-group tends to be full. Babysitting grandchildren two days a week, evenings and weekends at kids sports, part-time work, volunteering, their own households still running at full speed. The busyness did not stop when they expected it to. It just changed shape.
What they wanted was four nights where nobody needed anything from them. Sit by the pool, play cards, do puzzles, read, and be in each other’s company without an agenda. They ended up at Cap Cana in the Dominican Republic. Four women, a lot of shade, a deck of cards, and a glass or two of sangria which added up to exactly the trip they needed. One of them mentioned afterward, almost in passing, that she came home with renewed patience for all the busyness in her life. That is not a small thing. That is the whole point.
The most important question I ask before booking any relaxation trip is simple: beach or pool. It sounds almost too obvious to be worth discussing but most resorts are genuinely one or the other, and getting it wrong quietly ruins the trip.
Another client, Patrick, went on a long weekend with his wife with a clear picture in his head of spending most of their time on the beach. The beach turned out to be narrow, shaded for most of the day, and the sand was not what he had envisioned. His budget didn’t allow for the experience they wanted. Fortunately they’re easygoing people and made the best of it. Spent most of their time at what turned out to be a beautiful pool, relaxed, had a good trip, and came home ready to tackle real life.
The following year Patrick came back with a specific request: a beautiful beach. That one clarification changed everything about where I sent them. Same purpose, same result, but an entirely different experience.
Everyone has a list of priorities and desires and it’s important to remember there are things I can control others I can’t. Some, like rain and temperature, waves and undertow, annoying vendors on the beach and crowds hoarding beach chairs are all obvious examples of things I can’t control. But one thing that falls into the uncontrollable category and is often overlooked or misunderstood is sargassum. Seaweed. Naturally occurring, and during certain times of year it washes onto Caribbean beaches in quantities that affect the look and smell in ways that are hard to ignore if your entire plan was to enjoy relaxing on a beautiful beach. No resort can guarantee a clear shoreline every morning. What good resorts can do is manage it, through barriers, smart positioning, and staff who clear the beach throughout the day so it does not stay long. My job is to know which resorts take that seriously and to make sure that if your dates fall in a high-risk window, you are at the best possible property and you know what to expect.
Relaxation travel may not photograph like a safari or Instagrammable landmark, but for the people who need it, and there are more of them than the industry’s obsession with experiences and itineraries would suggest, it is not a consolation prize. It is the right trip, chosen with purpose, for exactly the right reason.
If your honest answer to what you want from vacation is some version of nothing, we want to hear that. Nothing is a purpose. It is actually one of the clearest purposes I work with, because once I understand that is the goal, everything else gets a lot easier to get right.
Reach out and tell us what nothing looks like and we’ll plan exactly what you need.
