The Definition of Travel

Travel is the general movement of individuals between different distant geographic locations. Travel can usually be done by automobile, foot, bicycle, plane, train, bus or boat, with or without personal luggage, and could be one way travel or circular journey. A cruise ship offers the ultimate in luxury travel with everything taken care of for passengers on board. One way travel is when you depart from a destination and travel to another destination, usually in the same way as you left your original destination.

Traveling can be defined as an act of going to a destination and returning. So when you are travelling you are always moving, whether you are on a train or a plane or even walking. The word journey in this sense is used in order to define travel. To define travel further we have to say that the journey itself is the act of change and the eventual return to a particular place.

There are many ways in which we can define travel but the simplest ones are as follows: to go from one place to another, or to travel towards a final destination. The simple definition is obviously more concise and easier to understand than complex concepts like commuting, which actually means the act of travelling to a specific place and then continuing to a final destination. Commuting refers to the act of travelling from one place to another. In this case, when travelling, you are constantly changing locations and therefore the verb of commuting would be more appropriate. So to commute means “to travel” or “to continue”.

Another verb that describes the act of travel is traveled. The word traveled simply means “to travel or move”. So, for example, to travel to New York and back would be traveled “to travel from one place to another and back”. It can also mean “to remove oneself from one place to another”. For example: “To get away from the city for a holiday”. These definitions are all relative to the verb used and the specific situation in which the action occurs.

So let us look at two examples of travel as part of the broader topic of tourism. Let’s first take the word tourism and expand it out to include all forms of activity involving travel. Traveling to other countries for the purpose of leisure, relaxation, entertainment or research is tourism. Sport tourism involves visiting a country for the purpose of sporting activities.

Of course, when we speak of tourism, it means a generic term that covers all sorts of activities. And tourism may be the subject of a specialized field. Let’s use the example above and assume that the travellers are “returning” to the United States after spending some time in New York City. We still need to refine the definition of tourism so that it includes “a general term describing the process of travelling to another place for the purpose of leisure or for the purpose of experiencing a different culture.”