Once-In-A-Lifetime or Feels Like Home: How Do You Holiday?

Are you slowly working your way through a travel bucket list of once-in-a-lifetime destinations? Or do you find yourself returning to a favourite spot over and over again? 

For many international visitors, a trip to Australia is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. They tick off the Great Barrier Reef, visit Uluru, and climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And never come back. Been there, done that.

On the other hand, there are plenty of destinations that are popular with repeat visitors. Anecdotally, for instance, half of Perth spends every other weekend in Bali! Large swathes of the Mediterranean coast are similarly familiar and comforting to northern Europeans.

So, what are some characteristics of both kinds of destination? And is one type of holiday better than the other?

My once-in-a-lifetime destinations

I got thinking about this when a friend asked me my thoughts on my recent trip to Oman. My travel companion and I had a truly amazing holiday in a country that isn’t yet on the radar for many Australians. Though I’d argue it should be!

We explored Muscat’s cultural and architectural highlights and wandered through the souq in the old town. Near Nizwa, we rambled around several forts, castles and picturesque abandoned villages. We hiked in the Al Hajar Mountains and swam in iridescent, crystal blue waterholes in stark, arid gorges. We snorkelled and SCUBA dived with turtles and a kaleidoscope of tropical fish in the Strait of Hormuz, and had a relaxing day cruising on a dhow through the “fjords” of the Musandam Peninsula.

It was an extraordinary holiday. Oman is spectacularly beautiful, friendly, clean, and easy to drive around. English is widely spoken. In fact, I struggle to think of a single negative aspect of our trip.

Surely then, I’m already planning the next trip back? Actually, no.

As much as I really enjoyed Oman, I don’t have a yearning to return. It was on my bucket list. It’s now in the happy memories folder.

I feel similarly about Angkor Wat and Cambodia in general. Ditto Egypt, Cyprus, the Maldives and Norway. I had a great time in all of them but I just don’t feel a pull to return. I put them in my once-in-a-lifetime category.

My repeat destinations

In contrast, I got to know Hong Kong like the back of my hand from visiting two or three times a year over a five-year period when I was living in Tokyo. Speaking of Japan, I’ll never tire of visiting the country and exploring its remote corners as well as rediscovering familiar city streets of Tokyo and Yokohama.

London remains one of my favourite cities after several visits. So does Bangkok. And I’ve just come back from my fourth visit to Sri Lanka – I’m already looking forward to the next opportunity to return.

Lately my happy place is a remote, low-key, off-grid eco-resort in Fiji called Nukubati that just feels like home. It’s become the quintessential fly-and-flop holiday destination. Arrive, dispense with footwear for a week, exhale and relax.

I have a friend in Perth who wants to explore just about every inch of Scotland and keeps going back. Another friend in Sydney who returns to Florence year after year for art, history and architecture. And a former colleague who loves Queenstown so much that she and her partner bought an apartment there.

My father loves cruises so much that he’s doing a status run cruise early next year just to attain Platinum status!

What are the deciding factors? 

What makes some places once-in-a-lifetime trips, and others repeat destinations?

Distance and price

Europeans and North Americans often cite the distance and effort required to get to Australia as being a disincentive to come again. So they cram in as much as they can because they don’t expect to make the long trip ever again.

Australia is also an expensive place to travel. The distances necessitate flying. Food and accommodation are expensive, and so are tours and activities.

The tyranny of distance doesn’t apply as much to Australians and Kiwis. We’re simply used to travelling for 14 hours across the Pacific or 24 hours to get to Europe. A lot of Australians visit multiple continents many times in a lifetime. Six hours up to Bali from the east coast is a trifle in comparison. Not to mention, many of us were brought up on the annual summer road trip to a beach town several hours away.

Of course, we’re not immune to preferring destinations closer to home. Generally speaking, the South Pacific and South East Asia have more appeal to Australian travellers than the Caribbean for tropical island holidays, due to the proximity and relative cost.

Not to mention, much easier reward redemption opportunities for premium cabin flights! Good reward flight availability to Manila, for example, means that I’ve had a few trips to the Philippines and I am keen to explore more.

It’s also a lot cheaper for us to go to Southeast Asian or South Pacific beach and island destinations than the Caribbean! The price of visiting the Maldives is one of the main disincentives for me to ever return.

Familiar versus “challenging”

Humans are creatures of habit. Perhaps as adults, many of us are re-living those nostalgic road trips to the same coastal spot every year by flying to the same country over and over again. There’s a certain buzz I feel when checking into a favourite hotel or visiting a familiar restaurant, bar or cafe in an overseas city. Maybe there’s almost a tinge of smugness that comes as a traveller from knowing the local rhythms and routines.

On the other hand, many travellers to Egypt (for example) report that a lot of basic interactions feel draining due to the constant barrage of touts, scams and harassment, particularly for women travellers. Despite those drawbacks most visitors still come back raving about the bucket list things they saw.

Places to visit and see versus places to be

And that brings me to the final point. All the destinations on my one-time list are countries or cities to go and visit a bunch of well-known sites like pyramids, castles, cathedrals, ruins, canyons, specific lookouts and so on. So unless you have a particularly deep interest in gothic church architecture or ancient history, there might not be a particularly strong draw to go back once you’ve gone and looked on with wonder and awe.

On the other hand, the places on my repeat list are all cities and countries where I just love to wander aimlessly and to slip into local rhythms. Those rhythms could be the frenetic energy of central Tokyo or a Cantonese BBQ with plastic tables and stools in back streets of Hong Kong. Or the rhythm could be total disconnection and relaxation, watching the tide go in and out on a South Pacific island. Either way, these are places I can simply be.

What destinations do you have on repeat? Conversely, where have you been once, absolutely loved, but unlikely to visit again?