Travelling is a daunting thought especially for first-time travellers. You have so much planning and decisions to make before even getting there and it can definitely feel like a full-time job if you are unsure on what you are doing. The best way we found is to break it down as shown in our blog post here which is a great step-by-step guide to planning your first travelling experience!
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- Slow Travel vs Fast Travel
- How should I Travel?
- Our favourite must-needed travel resources
- Our Top Traveller’s Essentials
- Thank you for reading our Slow Travel vs Fast Travel Guide
Slow Travel vs Fast Travel
What are travel styles?
Let’s get back to types of travel.
For us, there are two main styles of travel. The first being fast travel, and the second being slow travel. Now, what do they mean?
Fast travel is when you go travelling and move through each location at a quicker pace. And as you guessed it, slow travel is the opposite! This is where the locations you travel are travelled slower.
We need to look at the best parts of each and even the drawbacks to see which of these types of travel will suit you or the places you are going.
Fast Travel
Let’s start with Fast Travel.
It all really depends on the type of person you are and the places you go. But Fast travel is all about moving fast and doing all the ‘important’ activities and places in each location. This can be a desired way to travel due to time constraints, but not necessarily due to the love of travelling fast. If you are travelling for the summer and want to visit loads of places, then you might only give yourself just enough time to do everything.
When doing this you won’t generally have much downtime to relax or wander about to find activities. This is usually following a plan and having many of your days pre-planned so you don’t miss any of the main activities!
A major benefit to doing this is you get to see many amazing places, more than what you would see if you did slow travel. You can tick off many top locations that are spread across different places in a shorter time.
However, even with the benefit of seeing more, there are definitely some drawbacks.
The first major one is money. It’s likely to cost more than slow travel as you are requiring to book accommodation or transport at a shorter notice than slow travel. Also, you don’t have to luxury of chill days where you won’t be doing activities I(so called cheaper days). As you are strapped for time, convenience is really the importance when travelling like this so make sure to budget for this.
Burnout!! Travel burnout is a real thing, especially when you are doing fast travel. If you are constantly on your feet, moving locations and dragging you backpack around, it will mentally tire you out. Some days you will need ‘days off’ so be sure to take these when required!
There’s also so much more chance to go wrong! The travel plans will be packed so any setback will make a difference. Even if it’s a delayed flight or finding out a place of interest is closed, it will push EVERYTHING back and you won’t have any time spare to make up this time.
Be careful when doing fast travel. We think it’s a good option if you really are strapped for time and don’t have a choice but would always recommend to leave 1 day free for every 10 in case of delays or problems. Trust us, you’ll need it! Also, if you have a lot to see make sure you are organised when planning so you don’t make mistakes and miss any of these once-in-a-lifetime experiences that will leave you in a grump.
Slow Travel
Now, let’s talk about slow travel.
Slow travel is a lot more popular for travellers to use even when they don’t know they are using it. Slow travel is the desired style of travel for us. But sometimes it’s not always possible. So lets deep dive into the different benefits of slow travel and the reasons why people may avoid using it!
Slow travel is great for giving yourself the time for recovery on down days so you can enjoy the best of each location. Here, you aren’t forced to run around everyday looking to complete all the best activities of each location. You can take your time and plan it well instead of cramming it in.
An example was when we travelled Bali, we booked a jewellery class for the morning but had to catch a ferry at lunchtime so had to cut our jewellery time short and almost didn’t complete our makings! If we had the option to slow travel we could of completed the jewellery class on a day where we didn’t have much else planned so we didn’t miss part of the experience.
When going back, we would like to complete the full experience!!
Also with slow travel, you have these extra days or even parts of a day to relax. These pockets of time with nothing booked are heavily needed to recover and calm your body before.
You may want to fill this time with another activity if you feel up for it, but if you are long term travelling, it’s important to have this type of downtime. This could be in a bar drinking and playing pool with friends, or even as simple as laying by the pool or beach with a book. Your body can regenerate and gain energy ready to go again.
We see a lot of travellers get the ‘travel burnout’ by not giving themselves this time off. We were the same when we started but make sure to pace yourselves so you make the most out of every opportunity!
Slow Travel gives you time to appreciate the places you have been by seeing things you wouldn’t necessarily if you fast travelled. You will see parts of each place that travellers miss and these could be the best memories for you. An example is befriending locals who you see everyday or you visit to eat at their food spot. These relationships are built overtime and cannot be accomplished in one meet.
In Bali, when taking time to recoup energy we found ourselves visiting the same breakfast spot daily at a similar time and they always greeted us well and served amazing food! They would reserve the spot for us as we became regulars in our favourite spot and would speak with them daily. It wasn’t a busy food spot but rather a quant brunch shop we ended up loving. Similar happened in Krabi, Thailand.
When you look back on your travels you will have these memories of a small food stop or a local you spoke with which you may not have if you only visited the top places in each area. You have to think, when you visit each location you are only experiencing 1% of what it has to offer usually so make sure to expand your horizons to see what else the place has to offer. And there’s not better way to do this than have a few days extra to visit the local market, speak with locals or go for a walk in the centre to see what you find!
Believe it or not but slow travel is cheaper!! If you are on a budget then you might want to look at this as an option (if you can!). Anytime you book something last minute or only a day in advance, you are likely to pay more for it. That’s why they say if you are to book a flight, book it for next year. Sometimes you cannot do this but if you are booking your transport and flights last minute as you are moving quickly through countries, you are likely to spend more doing so.
You are also limited to the itinerary you have organised so if you need to be at one place in 2 hours and the cheaper option is a train which leaves in 3 hours, you will have to find an alternative. This may be spending two or even 3 times more on private transport.
However with slow travel you can book a few days in advance. This provides more options for you including more budget friendly options. It’s always good to note that public transport is nearly always cheaper than private.
Slow Travel also has some drawbacks that many may not consider when travelling. One being that many people choose to fast travel and not slow travel so when you are meeting people, it’s easier to align your itineraries with friends if you travel fast. A lot of the time when travelling slow you may find that you will meet friends who will soon leave the place you are staying in making you envious.
A lot of popular places follow a similar route so if you are travelling at the same places with similar itineraries, you will stick together. Slow travel can disrupt this and give you a massive feeling of FOMO (Fear of missing out!!).
If you are keeping your travel plans open, you can definitely change between fast and slow as you wish but for some can be quite daunting!
Also, slow travel can be limiting if you are spending a lot more time in each location. Most people who are travelling have a plan roughly on how long they want to travel for and where. But if you want to see many countries, you may have to sacrifice a few to travel slow.
If your dream is to travel all of south east Asia, and you have 3 months, you may have to bookmark some countries for your next travel as you won’t be able to fit them all in.
Yes you have the benefit of seeing more of each country, but you may miss big bucket list things like swimming with whale sharks in the Philippines or island hopping in Thailand as you may miss whole countries all together.
Unfortunately it’s the sacrifice we have to make, whether it’s fast travel and missing the little things or slow travel and missing some bucket list activities. You cannot have it all!
How should I Travel?
All in all the type of travel is totally dependant on the type of experience you want and where you go. We would always recommend checking your itinerary and deciding based on your travel plans but it’s always good to know the benefits and drawbacks of both types.
Fast travel is such a whirlwind of activities, emotions and bucket list activities which is amazing but definitely including many highs and lows. Basically a lot more can go wrong and it’s likely to be more expensive! So be careful and strap in for an amazing ride.
Slow travel is more like a nice cruise, it’s amazing to see each location and the intricate beauties they have. But there’s only so many locations you will see as not many people have unlimited travel time. You will unfortunately be limited to less countries and locations but deep-dive into each location.
As we look forward towards our travels, we would love to slow travel as a rule. However, some places would work well for us with fast travel like cities. An example of this was our trip to Morocco! You can see our Fez Vlog Part 1 & Fez Part 2, Meknes Vlog, and Rabat Vlog which can show how fast travel worked for us!
Let us know your thoughts on fast and slow travel and your preference when travelling. We would love to know any benefits or drawbacks to either that we haven’t mentioned to see further insights to your travels.
We plan to travel long term in the future so will update in the future on our travel plans as a blog in the next 12 months! If you do want to follow our social media’s to follow our day-to-day travels, they are provided below!
Aimee’s next trip is to Croatia so look out for A LOT of Croatia content coming your way in the next few weeks! Such as this Youtube vlog here!
If you did enjoy this blog of fast and slow travel, please drop a like to help support us in post more regular content and subscribe if you want to see more things travel related!
Our favourite must-needed travel resources
Where to Fly
Trip.com – Find amazing flight deals, with over 2 million flight routes, and being one of the world’s leading online travel agencies.
Kiwi – Use Kiwi’s amazing service that is pioneering in the flight space! They use virtual interlining, which means they can provide seamless connecting flights into one single itinerary!
CheapOair – Being one of the fastest growing online travel companies in the US, CheapOair offers great flight deals, hotel rooms, rental cars and more!
Where to Stay
Booking.com – Offering over 28 million accommodations to book, we will always use booking.com! Having a rewards system built in, the more you book, the more perks you get!
HostelWorld – You cannot budget travel without hostel world! Having over 17,000 hostels, boasting over 13 million reviews, hostel world is one our of top websites for budget travel! They are now offering more ways to meet people abroad, with meet ups, group chats and more available!
Vrbo – Find stunning vacation rentals with Vrbo! Offering over 2 million paid listings in 190 countries, find memorable experiences with this accommodation service!
Where to Explore
Viator – A trip advisor company, viator offers over 300,000 experiences over 200 countries, including water sports, walking tours, boat trips, food tastes tours and more! Including activities for many budgets, check out Viator!
Eat With – Experience authentic travel experiences with locals worldwide! Use eat with to book unique and intimate dining experiences, such as dinner parties in big restaurants, big feasts with a local family, cooking classes with a local and more!
Get Your Guide – Book unique (and common too!) experiences and activities worldwide, including skip the line tickets to big attractions worldwide!
Where to get Connected
Airalo – With over one million people using Airalo, it is our go to eSIM provider for our worldwide trips! Having data packs from over 200 countries, find combined area packages and deals to suit your travel style and data needs!
Where to be Protected
ETKA – Every age from 3 to 85 can buy ETKA’s travel insurance, offering multilingual 24/7 chat support, and your insurance policy within 2-3 minutes!
Our Top Traveller’s Essentials
Backpack – Osprey Farpoint 40 – This backpack is a staple amongst many travellers! Being a lot cheaper than the luxury brands, this is a quality backpack from a well known brand. It boasts quality durability, is lightweight with a great framework and is a great option for most people! This backpack has a hip strap to help carry the bag, a breathable harness strap, and comes in multiple colours!
Compression Packing Cubes – Compression cubes are our favourite packing accessory! These cubes are similar to the normal packing cubes, but feature a compression zip, meaning you can compress your clothes down… this makes packing easier, limits the space you are using, and means more room for souvenirs etc!
Powerbank – Don’t lose power when travelling! It isn’t always guaranteed to find charging ports, so we would always suggest carrying a spare power bank, just incase you do run low on power when you need it!
Universal Travel Plug Adapter – Most backpackers/travellers visit multiple countries during one trip. And that means it isn’t guaranteed you will be using the same plug head during each place. A universal plug is great as it lets you switch between each plug head style all in one item! We love ours, it has USB slots meaning multiple items can be charged at once.
Find our full packing list guide here.
Thank you for reading our Slow Travel vs Fast Travel Guide
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