Ancestry Travel 101: How to Have a More Meaningful Travel Experience
There are plenty of reasons to love travel: good food, great weather, a sense of adventure, a break from work and responsibility.
But the BEST trips—the ones we remember for the rest of our lives—go beyond cocktails on the beach and an Instagram feed full of pretty photos.
The truly unforgettable trips are the ones that feel meaningful.
Maybe it’s a friendship made, a bucket list dream achieved, a fear or challenge overcome, or the chance to make a difference—“meaningful” means something different to everyone. Whatever it is, that experience enriches your life in a real, lasting way.
We’re all about lifechanging trips here at TravelBash, so when ancestry tourism hit our travel trend radar we were excited. What could be more perfectly bespoke than a trip literally planned around your DNA?
If you haven’t heard of ancestry travel before, here’s a quick primer:
What is ancestry travel?
Essentially, ancestry travel (also called DNA tourism, genealogy tourism, or heritage travel) is a trip taken to explore places of special significance to your family’s history.
Easy access to at-home DNA testing kits and a growing desire to find connection and meaning in an increasingly disconnected world explain why ancestry tourism has exploded onto the travel scene over the past few years. There’s nothing quite like walking in the footsteps of your ancestors to make you feel truly rooted in the world.
Although ancestry tourism is all about unlocking the story hidden in your DNA, your trip doesn’t necessarily need to involve digging through dusty archives or meeting long-lost cousins if you don’t want it to! Lots of travelers are happy to simply visit the homeland and learn about their cultural roots in a more general way.
How to plan your own heritage trip
A couple decades ago, if you wanted to really delve into your family’s history, you had to shell out for a professional genealogist to painstakingly track down information and piece together what they found.
Nowadays, you can order a DNA testing kit online for a fraction of the cost, spit in a tube, stick it in the mail, and have your entire genealogical history delivered to you in a month.
We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?
That DNA testing kit is the first step in planning your own ancestry trip and there are several options to choose from. AncestryDNA, 23andMe, and MyHeritage are all popular brands with prices ranging from under $100 to $200, depending on how in-depth you want your results to be.
Once you’ve submitted your DNA for testing, things really start to get interesting. People are often surprised by their results, which can reveal a much more complex genealogical story than the one they’d heard from parents or relatives.
This is one of the reasons we love heritage travel—it inspires you to visit parts of the world you’d never really thought about exploring before.
Using your DNA test results as a launchpad, you can begin to sketch out the details of your trip. Having a meaningful time abroad requires some thought during the planning process, so there are a few things you should keep in mind as you organize everything:
> How many places do you want to visit?
Are you looking for breadth or depth on this vacation? Do you want to hit multiple cities and towns around the country to get a feel for the place as a whole, or would you rather spend time thoroughly exploring a single significant location (such as an ancestral home)?
> How will you get around?
Once you’ve landed at your destination, what’s the best method of transportation based on your travel goals?
If you’ll be heading to remote locations in search of old homesteads or far-flung family members, it might be best to rent a car. If you want to get a real sense of the landscapes in your homeland, taking the train is an excellent way to watch the world go by as you travel.
> Where will you stay?
We love a glitzy hotel as much as the next traveler, but for this sort of trip, it’s best to keep things as local as possible (you’re here to immerse yourself in the history and culture, remember?).
Opt for guesthouses, B&Bs, or small hotels owned by locals for more insight into the lives of the people who live where your ancestors once lived. If you’ve got distant relatives with guest bedrooms clamoring to host you during your trip? Even better.
(Make sure you’re getting out of the big cities and exploring smaller, more local towns as well!)
> What are you hoping to get out of this trip?
When planning your ancestry trip, it’s important to get a bit introspective and ask yourself what sort of experience you’re after.
Do you want a broad-strokes picture of your ancestors’ homeland? To connect with family you didn’t even know existed before the DNA test? To experience life the way your predecessors did centuries ago?
This is the sentiment that will guide your entire journey, so make sure to give it some careful thought.
Combining the excitement of travel with the deep sense of connection that comes from uncovering your roots, ancestry tourism gives you a more meaningful way to explore the world.
Remember to leave extra room in your luggage for unexpected mementos and extra room in your itinerary for picture-taking, swapping stories with locals, and getting happily lost along the way. It’s as much a journey of self-discovery as it is anything else.
Join an exclusive community of jet setters who expect more from a travel agent. TRvLB offers customized planning, on-the-ground partners, and personalized service. Find out more about membership and how our travel designers can help you plan your ancestry trip.
Courtnie is the founder & CEO of TravelBash. After years as an ambitious fundraiser, she took her passion for travel full-time. She has lived all over the U.S. and abroad and after planning her own destination wedding, she decided to help other couples plan their big day abroad too. She has written “Passport to Paradise: The Complete Destination Wedding Guide,” a top seller on Amazon. She has also been featured in Travel + Leisure, Destination I Do and The Washington Post. As a certified travel advisor, expert event planner and natural connector, she uses her powers to create VIP travel experiences.
