While perusing the Washington Post travel blog, I came upon a post about finding your travel personality for the purpose of finding travel destinations that you would most likely find appealing. The website in discussion, called Best Trip Choices (BTC), determines your travel personality through a short questionnaire and then provides recommendations for travel based on your personality. The quiz was developed by Dr. Stanley C Plog, a Harvard trained researcher, based on 30 years of research and has been reviewed in professional journals and textbooks. The BTC website is founded by Dr. Plog and Bahir Browsh, a lifelong travel industry professional and expert in the field.
You can take the quiz here. Click on the middle button under the yellow banner near the top.
The range of travel personality types goes from the extreme adventure traveler to the traveler who prefers predictability and stability. I took the quiz and according to its results, I am a Mid-Venturer! This puts my travel personality second only to the Venturer, the most extreme travel personality type. Fortunately, my husband’s travel personality type is also that of a Mid-Venturer. No wonder we travel so well together!
Here is the definition of a Mid-Venturer from the BTC website:
As a mid-venturer, your personality fits between venturers and those more in the center of the personality spectrum (“centrics”). You share a number of characteristics in common with pure venturers. You like to travel, especially to foreign destinations and you seek new experiences and new destinations for almost all trips you take. You are also physically active at home and on trips. But, unlike your pure venturer friends, you don’t want to take such extreme vacations and are more likely to plan your trips-set an itinerary of places you want to visit and schedules when you will be there. You also have more company. About 17% of the population has a personality that matches yours, vs. only 4% for pure venturers.
Your venturesome spirit leads you to seek out unique and interesting places to visit and especially to make each leisure trip different from others that you have taken. You may want to return to a place that seemed interesting but you didn’t have time to explore on an earlier visit, but usually you simply want to try something new. However, there’s a big difference between you and your true venturer friends: you like a comfortable bed at night (no sleeping under the stars), a warm shower, and meals that you can trust rather than taking a chance on native foods.
The description for my travel personality type continues for many more paragraphs and pretty much hits the bulls eye on my travel style. I love exploring new places, I like to plan everything so that I don’t miss anything, but I also like to sleep in a nice place at night.
The website then goes a step further and recommends travel destinations that might interest me and ranks them from Platinum to Bronze. The Platinum destinations score highly for almost any travel personality type and includes destinations like Hawaii, England, Australia, New Zealand, and several other popular tourist destinations. On the other hand, the Gold destinations score highly for my travel personality type and not necessarily others, and include France, Germany, Japan, Chicago, Hong Kong, and so on and so forth.
While I agree with many of these recommendations, it is obviously not the end all be all of travel recommendations. In fact, I feel that many types would like my Gold recommendations and the website omits many places that I have loved. Having said that, all in all I think this is an interesting personality quiz to take that might just entice you to consider destinations you might not otherwise look up.
What’s your personality type? Is it accurate for your travel style?
Travels with Sandy 
haha, i thought i’d be placed at at least the mid-venturer level, but i was quite surprised to find out that i’m supposedly more of a centric-venturer… still not quite certain if that is an accurate description of my travel style, given that i’m game for adventure travel and have gone to many hard to reach places, camped under the stars, and peeing behind whatever available shrub i can find. heh.
PS – I expected you to be an extreme venturer, so I was surprised you were classified as a centric-venturer. It must be because you like group travel at times.
haha, not big group travels to be exact, but with a small group of friends, say four people total. i like that for the shared experiences, and the economical factor. 🙂
What an interesting quiz! I’m the same as you Sandy. I’m not sure whether I agree or not. I don’t like to be among crowds of other tourists, and I prefer to make my own way to whichever destination I have in mind. I’m also known to get up ridiculously early in the mornings to beat the crowds. Although I enjoy a nice hotel, I certainly don’t require one, and have been known to slum it on occasion.
My travel adventures have definitely changed with John because he very much cares about where we stay. I also love doing something out of the ordinary, like white water rafting, zip-lining or camping to add some diversity and fun to an adventure.
While I like the glitz and glamour of big cities, I find I’m often most content with adventures that involve trekking and hiking. I love scrambling over ancient ruins, exploring caves, tracking monkeys or visiting temples and remote communities. My idea of the perfect vacation would be somewhere like India, Peru, Laos or Borneo.
Thanks for your comment Carrie! I love exploring new places, seeing how people actually live, and sampling local food, but I think I am less adventuresome than you are. 🙂
I’m a mid-venturer but it’s wrong.
You don’t want to take such extreme vacations and are more likely to plan your trips-set an itinerary of places you want to visit and schedules when you will be there
and
you like a comfortable bed at night (no sleeping under the stars), a warm shower, and meals that you can trust rather than taking a chance on native foods
are completely wrong. I’m completely unplanned to the point that I usually just buy an air ticket and that’s it. Accomodation, itinerary etc is never booked and planned. Okay, I don’t like camping, but I’ve stayed in more damp, dirty, bug-infested places than I have clean, comfortable places.
Oh, forgot to say. The suggested destination section doesn’t even come close to reflecting my reality.
Thanks for your comments Craig!
I agree that the recommended destinations section at the end are not very good. It is very limited in its suggestions.
Given the comments here, it seems that the quiz is inaccurate at times as well. I wonder what exactly it takes to be in the most extreme category. The buckets for the mid categories seem to be huge.
I have been rated as a mid-venturer. I don’t particularly agree with the suggested destinations or the general description as for cfimages above. I certainly don’t pre-book anything.
In summary, I’m not sure this quiz is any better than your average trashy magazine quiz.