Stepping out into a new city, you find yourself awash in the smells of foods you’ve never encountered and the tinkling, busting sounds of the people and transportation around you. You’re ready to see that bucket-list destination you’ve had buoying your dreams for years now, or you’re visiting family in your ancestral home, or maybe you’re studying abroad.
From tapping into your sense of adventure to experiencing other places, foods, and cultures, there are so many reasons to travel. But building up your skills? Yeah, traveling is good for that, too.
Traveling teaches you how to plan and how to adjust when plans don’t go your way. It goes along with intercultural learning, communication and language skills, and even creativity. The skills gained from traveling can help you advance in your studies or career, and give you something to draw on whenever you’re facing a challenge or striving to meet a goal.
15 Skills Gained from Traveling
You can gain skills from traveling that will change your life.
You might first associate travel with fun, but it’s good for you, too! The new environments, sometimes challenging circumstances, and insights that come with traveling have applications in all sorts of areas of life.
Different types of trips may build different skills, but one thing’s certain: Travel helps you grow. Here are some of the top skills you’ll develop once you book that trip:
1. Self-awareness
Maybe it seems counter-intuitive at first—after all, travel is about visiting places you’ve never seen and learning new things about the world out there. You might not expect to learn about yourself while you’re at it, but self-awareness is one of the top skills you’ll gain from traveling.
Encountering different perspectives lets you see yourself in a new way. You have the chance to grow as a person by plotting your own path and reflecting on what you value and enjoy.
2. Problem-solving
Travel doesn’t always translate to smooth sailing. Whether you’re lost in a new city, scrambling to find the right accommodations, or just navigating cultural differences through a language barrier, you’re constantly thinking on your feet in new environments. Solving common travel problems like lost luggage and transportation delays will give you the confidence to handle challenges that come your way.
3. Resilience
As you learn to tackle problems while traveling, you also develop your resilience. Maybe train or plane delays have you stranded overnight in an unexpected city, or less-than-perfect weather puts a damper on your visit to that bucket-list attraction you’ve been waiting your whole life to see.
Resilience will serve you well in your career and other areas of your life. It’s a tool that lets you stay calm under pressure and deal with conflict, and it’s something you build when things don’t quite go according to plan.
4. Adaptability
Whether you’re in a big city or a remote mountain, adaptability is key.
Adaptability goes hand-in-hand with resilience when it comes to travel skills (and, really, life skills). Moving from place to place means you’ll have to adapt to new surroundings.
You also have to adjust to changing circumstances, cope with changes, and recalibrate your expectations. No one can shift gears quite like someone who’s done it in different languages and time zones!
5. Planning
Even if you have to adjust your plans along the way, planning skills are some of the best skills gained during travel. Whether you’re looking for a guided tour or you’re traveling independently, you’re still exercising those planning muscles that’ll help you set and achieve goals. You can apply the practice you’ve had making, sticking to, and reevaluating your plan as needed to everything from managing projects at work to figuring out your own future.
6. Goal-setting
Think of goal-setting as a key component of the planning process. Setting goals lets you create a framework for what you want to achieve in your career and life…and traveling gives you the perfect lab to test out your strategies for setting and achieving goals.
Challenge yourself to set goals in a safe environment where you’re only accountable to yourself. You might want to have a conversation in the local language once a day or finally learn to surf the next time you’re traveling. Whatever goals you have, traveling hones your ability to set and work toward them.
7. Communication
Good communication is the secret to success in all kinds of relationships—family, friends, professional, you name it. And when you travel, you’re constantly learning how to become a better communicator.
You’re asking for help in a crowded train station, you’re ordering food, you’re getting directions. While you’re at it, you’re learning to read body language, describing complex situations in a simple way, and adapting to different communication styles (and maybe even languages!).
8. Budget management
Learning how to budget can let you travel to even more places.
From the first steps of saving up to travel to booking accommodations and sticking to daily spending limits, traveling helps you learn how to plan a budget. That’s true whether you’re planning a shorter vacation or jetting off to study abroad for a semester or take a gap year. Building budget planning into your overall travel plans will take the financial stress out of your adventure while developing financial skills useful for your career and beyond.
9. Analytical thinking
When you think analytically, you can see the bigger picture, recognize if something isn’t working for you, and consider all aspects of a situation so you can better prioritize. That’s exactly what traveling teaches you to do.
You’ll experience places you haven’t seen before and meet people with different perspectives while you travel, and those experiences will help you build a bigger-picture view. Take time to pause and reflect on your experiences and the impact your own actions have on the world around you to further hone your analytical thinking.
10. Cultural competence
Living and working in an interconnected, international world requires you to build relationships with people who come from different places and see the world in different ways. Pack up and travel, and you’ll gain the cultural awareness that lets you appreciate differences, recognize your privilege, and communicate with people from various backgrounds. Cultural competence is one travel skill you’ll draw on even when you’re not on the road.
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11. Creativity
It’s clear travel exposes you to other cultures, but can that make you creative? It sure can! When you engage your senses in new ways, you fire up the creative parts of your brain. Actively engaging in the local culture, especially when living abroad, gives you the biggest boost.
Whether you’re going into a creative field or not, employers value folks who can think and work creatively. Not that you need another excuse, but that means tasting that pad see ew on the street in Thailand or finding a new adventure buddy in Costa Rica is actually a smart move for your future.
12. Confidence
Traveling can help push your travel skills to new heights!
All those train routes plotted, street foods ordered, conversations started, and problems solved will give you another great tool for success: confidence. By getting out of your comfort zone, you see how you thrive when you take action when needed and try new things. Tap into your confidence to face new challenges wherever they arise.
13. Language skills
Traveling puts you in touch with various languages, forcing you to interact with the world beyond your comfort zone. Studying a language abroad is one of the very best ways to learn a language thanks to the round-the-clock immersion and practical experience you’ll get.
Language skills gained during travel can come with significant perks for your career while making traveling more fun and meaningful, but you don’t have to become fluent to benefit. Just spending time surrounded by another language boosts your cultural competence and ability to thrive in international settings.
14. Empathy
Traveling, with all its chances to meet new people and experience new perspectives, builds your empathy in a few ways. You’ll get to meet people from different backgrounds—and, often, different positions of privilege than your own. You’ll also practice meeting personal challenges and gaining insight into what it means to succeed (or fail!) and achieve goals with grace.
As you learn to practice cultural sensitivity and see what it’s like to live in different places, in different ways, you can better understand other people’s viewpoints and behaviors.
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15. Curiosity
Don’t be afraid to be curious—you never know where it can lead!
Curious people ask questions and find ways to innovate. When you’re curious, you’re constantly seeking ways to pick up information and cultivate new ideas and perspectives.
Your curiosity inspires you to travel, and traveling then sparks more curiosity. So learn about cooking in Italy, volunteer with wildlife in South Africa, and sign up for that Spanish class in Mexico. That openness will keep you learning, growing, and honing new skills.
Travel skills will take you far in life!
Whether you’re traveling solo for the first time or you’re heading off on a trip with family or friends, you’re developing skills along the way. Get curious, get creative, and start planning your next trip. The days you spend traveling will turn into skills you’ll use to navigate all of life’s roads and skies.
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