Define what is Travel. Understand travel meaning & aspects with examples

Best ways to understand what is travel meaning & how best to define it

Kshitiz Thakur | New Delhi

What is Travel

Define Travel

What is Travel? Let us start with defining travel and understand travel meaning and what it is.

We can define travel as a journey from one place to another far off, distant and a different place. Travel is what you do to make and complete a journey. The time and the distance covered for the journey between two places is the act of travelling.

These sentences will help you understand travel and its definition and also associate it better and properly with its meaning:

Travel on a journey
Travel on a trip
Travel to see friends
Travel to meet
Travel time on a journey to that place

Let us now elaborate, analyse and break down the definition of travel and understand what travel means.

Expand travel definition to arrive at meaning of travel

What is travel to you? What answers does the question what do you mean and understand by travel brings to your mind? And I am very sure you will have a quick answer. This is because we all know and have a ready answer when asked what do you mean or understand by travel. We all have our own versions, answers and even our own definitions.

What I want to share with you here is a little secret into the definition, meaning, understanding of travel. We are going to explore the whole world of travel. Yes, there is a whole world or universe of meanings, versions and definitions that opens up right when ask what is meant by travel or how you understand and define it.

Before going further and deeper, here is the simple definition and meaning of travel. Travel simply means the action of going from one place to another. When you moving towards anywhere it refers to as travel. It is the act of travelling or moving. Being an action, it also needs or involves a way which means how you travel. This can be either by foot or using some means of transportation like bicycle, bike, car, bus, train, plane, ship, etc.

Right, here we go then!

Is travel that simple or little more complicated to understand?

Let us now begin to understand what is travel meaning.

What do we mean by Travel

The answer is both. Actually it is not complicated but a little more detailed if we go a step deeper into understanding it.

As we understood from the simple definition above that travel is any act of going from one place to another by any means. So, is any movement between different places or any act of movement as simple as walking can be called as travel?

NO!

Travel has to have reasons where the act of movement is only referred to as a mode or means to achieve that movement from one place to another.

Let us clear this first, before we go into the different reasons for which people travel.

We can understand this simply by observing how we use the term “Travel” and in what context. And how appropriate does that sounds.

Let understand travel meaning with few examples.

We mentioned walking above as a means to travel. Let us go a little deeper into walking to understand travel.

Here are five scenarios or actions where we use the word WALK.

Take a walk
Walking on a beach
Take your dog to a walk
Go for a walk
Go for a walk with someone

Now, can you replace the word walk with travel and still sound appropriate, reasonable, relevant and meaningful?

Let us see. I am copying the 5 sentences and doing a simple Control H to replace walk with travel. Try reading out these five sentences loud.

Take a travel
Traveling on beach
Take your dog to a travel
Go for a travel
Go for a travel with someone

Two questions for you now.

Does it sound right when you speak out these sentences loud?

Does few of these sentences still mean the same.

Do you “Take you dog to a travel” every morning or evening in your locality. OR you actually “Take you dog to a walk” instead?

Does “Go for a walk” means exactly the same as “Go for a travel”?

The answer to both questions is NO!

Walk does have a destination or a place. You go for a walk means you just walk for a while and come back. Travel has a place or destination to go and walking here becomes one of the means or modes to travel to that place.

Now I believe you would be more clear in understanding the real meaning in it when we define travel as the act of moving between two places, A and B where it means the action when you leave the point A to reach the point B.

Travel has more meanings. The reasons for which we travel add more meanings to it.

Form the explanation above, one things is now very clear that travel means having a place to go for. Having a place to go also means having a reason to go there. This means we all have our reasons to travel.

These are reasons which make people travel. And these reasons give new and different meanings to travel.

This is also why we have different reasons & ways to travel. Here are 69 types of travel people make or may love to include in their future travel plans.

Let us know travel more by answering these two questions

Why do we travel? What makes people travel?

We travel for a reason and travel means travel only when there is a reason. Travel is the act of travelling. Travel is the noun referring to the activity of travelling.

There are different terms which mean or are a form of travel or involve travel. These terms are commute, travelling, business tours, being away for business, being on a holiday, trips, journey, vacation, etc.

All these terms, and there are even more, point us to different meanings and references of travel.

What most people refer travel to is tourism. In popular and general way travel means to go for a vacation, fun or leisure. This is what tourism is, an important aspect which makes travelling actually a travel.

Therefore travel has more meanings and is much more than just travel from point A to point B. Let us look at these.

Travel means the act of travelling
Travelling can be a daily routine
Travelling can be non-routine and for leisure purposes
Travelling can be non-routine and for business purposes
Travelling can be non-routine and for some other objective

And travel derives its true meaning when it becomes tourism. And if you did not know it is a huge industry in itself which has its roots in the desire to go places for reasons. Because of this Tourism as an industry has gained utmost importance for economies and countries, globally. Look at the key 5 importance of tourism for every country & economy.

Travel meaning as per their reasons

In the first of our examples for walk, we understood it does not have a place or destination or a purpose. Now let us look at different forms of travel which have purpose.

Travel as commute

There is a term called commute or commuting. Commute or commuting is one form of travelling which means to travel daily to work or school and back. Many of us take this type of travel in our daily lives. This is routine, this is boring, yet this is one form of travel.

Travel for leisure

This is what we all know and refer to as travel. This is also called tourism. Travel as tourism is defined as travelling to a distant place for fun, leisure and enjoyment. This is not routine travel. The reason why this is not routine is that we travel to different places and for different purposes for tourism.

Travel for business

This is called as business travel. There are several names for it like travelling for business, travel for work, official travel, official business trips, business trip, business tours, etc.

This again is not routine as we travel to different places. The purpose for such travel is business yet there could be many reasons like meeting with clients, dealers or vendors.

There is another part of business travel, is a very specialized type of travel. MICE stands for meetings, incentives, conferences, and events. MICE is three parts business travel and one part leisure travel. In MICE travel, business persons travel to attend events like meetings, exhibitions, conferences, etc. They also travel for leisure purposes in the incentive travel where companies provide their employees with group trips.

Non-routine travel for other purposes

This again comes under tourism but is not strictly holidaying, vacationing or travelling for leisure. The way to understand and know this is through the various general types of tourism like health or medical tourism, sports travel, travel for studying, travel for outstation functions or family events, travel to meet friends, travel for adventure, travel to study history or cultures, etc.

To conclude meaning and understanding of travel

Let us leave you with a few sentences where travel is used to conclude understanding of what is travel.

I travelled a lot in 2019
I plan to travel to and experience a new country in 2020
One of my new year resolution for 2020 is to travel more, wherever it may take me
I plan to travel with my wife during the first year of my marriage
I am looking for a job which involves travel
I get so tired daily as I have to travel a lot every day for office and even have to change 2 metros and then take a bus too.
What is your favourite way of travelling?
The future project cost will have a significant amount of travel expenses