By Sally Pei Han Chang, BA Psychology Graduate
Recent research from ABTA suggests that people aged 25–34 place particularly high value on travel, with many linking it directly to their psychological wellbeing. At first glance, this feels unsurprising. Travel offers novelty, escape, and rest, things that have always been appealing. But from within the generation itself, it doesn’t feel quite that simple.
Travel today is no longer just a break from everyday life. It has become something more layered, a space where identity, wellbeing, and digital culture intersect.
If You Couldn’t Post It, Would You Still Go? Between Expression & Interpretation
Gen Z is often described as a generation shaped by the digital world, one that documents, shares and curates experiences. Travel, in particular, has become something easily shaped into a visual narrative. But not all sharing comes from the same place.
For some, posting is not about validation or approval , but about authentic expression. A way of capturing beauty, mood, and memory that only makes sense to ourselves. For many in our age group, our Instagram grid is like a digital diary. Choosing where to go, what to wear, what to photograph, can feel less like performance and more like creating something personal and meaningful.
And yet, once something is shared, it enters a different space. What is intended as self-expression can be interpreted as performance. What feels intimate can appear curated. The meaning of the experience is no longer entirely within your control. In this sense, the tension is not simply between authenticity and validation, but between intention and perception. Perhaps this is why Gen Z sharing culture has begun to shift , not necessarily posting more or less, but becoming more selective, more intentional, more aware. The question quietly changed from “Will they like this?” to “Do I love this?”
Sharing travel experiences exists in a duality between what is lived for oneself, and what is seen by others.
Time Outside the System
One of the reasons travel feels so meaningful lies in something less visible.
Travel offers something increasingly rare: time that is not immediately tied to productivity or return on investment. In our on-demand lives, time is often structured around performance and measurable outcomes: academic, professional, or financial, where value is closely tied to output. In the modern world, there is an expectation that time should lead somewhere, produce something, or contribute to a future goal.
For Gen Z, this pressure is even more prominent. Growing up in a digital world shaped by comparison and visibility, time is not only structured around achievement, but also how achievement is perceived. Research suggests that exposure to curated online realities is associated with increased social comparison, academic stress and a persistent fear of missing out (FOMO), leading to worsened mental health (Singh, 2025).
Within this context, both hustling culture and the recent shift toward ‘soft living’ responded to the same pressure. One continues to prioritise achievement and forward movement, while the other attempts to reclaim rest and balance. Yet, neither fully escapes the underlying belief that time is a currency that always must be used well. The tension moves beyond a surface question of ambition versus rest toward something deeper: the unspoken expectation that life should always be optimised to in order to be meaningful. Travel, by contrast, interrupts this logic. In a world obsessed with self-improvement and success, perhaps the more unfamiliar act is not striving for more, but allowing moments to exist without needing to justify them.
Time becomes slower, less defined. A day might pass without anything “achieved,” yet feel strangely full. A long walk, a quiet meal, a view that holds your attention longer than expected, these moments do not serve a clear purpose, yet they feel meaningful. Travel creates space to pause and reflect, allowing experiences that are not driven by external outcomes but by intrinsic values. Research on travel behaviour suggests that time spent travelling is not merely a cost to be minimised, but a meaningful experience to observe, think or simply be present (Mokhtarian, 2018).These moments shift the value of time away from productivity and toward experience, contributing to greater psychological wellbeing (Chen et al., 2014).
During my solo travel, one moment stayed with me: the sudden realisation that I can actually experience aliveness without any achievement. This is perhaps why travel feels valuable in a way that is difficult to quantify because its meaning is not always measurable. Travel, in this sense, is not only about movement, but about the stillness it makes possible. As Pico Lyer (2014) suggests, meaning is often found not in doing more, but in being present.
Travel and Attitudes to Well-being
Research suggests that travel motivations are shaped by a range of personal and contextual factors. For example, differences in age, gender, and environment can influence whether individuals are drawn to personal development, social connection, autonomy, or novelty (Marques et al., 2025). Alongside these differences, there is a growing tendency among younger generations to frame travel through the lens of wellbeing. For Gen Z in particular, mental health is spoken about more openly, and decisions are increasingly evaluated based on their psychological impact. It is also important to recognise the value Gen Z places on mental wellbeing, with many being more open to discussing mental health and more proactive in seeking therapy. Two in five Gen Z individuals are reported to regularly attend therapy, while over half have sought professional mental health support at some point. Their openness is also reflected in attitudes, and as these conversations become more widespread, the stigma surrounding mental health appears to be gradually diminishing. Therapy is increasingly seen not as a last resort, but as a constructive and normal part of maintaining wellbeing.
For a generation that feels a constant pressure to achieve but understands the importance of psychological well-being, travel has become an act of self care. It’s an opportunity that legitimises time just to ‘be’.
Beyond Borders: Travel and Cultural Capital
While travel has shown to reflect a growing internal self-awareness, it extends this development outward. Travel can be seen as a powerful means of developing cultural capital, functioning as a “grand tour” through which individuals gradually build knowledge, confidence, and lasting, intangible advantages.
Travel becomes not only a space for reflection, but also a way of engaging with perspectives beyond one’s own. In this sense, travel contributes to a form of cultural capital: not as something inherited but gradually acquired through experience. It is reflected in the ability to navigate different cultural contexts with sensitivity and openness. Drawing on Bourdieu’s framework, travel can be understood as contributing to objectified cultural capital. Exposure to different cultures, languages, and environments reflects a form of distinction shaped through experience, while repeated encounters with unfamiliar contexts can open up new ways of thinking, perceiving, and behaving over time (Bunnell & Gardner-McTaggart, 2022).
More profoundly, travel may enable individuals to reshape their life philosophy, build confidence, and inhabit forms of habitus that extend beyond their original cultural context (Gmelch, 1997). These forms of capital are not only personally meaningful, but are increasingly valued in globalised environments such as international education (Chi & Vu, 2023) and business (Bunnell & Gardner-McTaggart, 2022). They have also been linked to outcomes such as career development and enhanced employability (Santos et al., 2018).
Final Thoughts
Taken together, these layers begin to explain why travel carries such weight for younger people today. For Gen Z, travel is increasingly valued not as a means to an end, but as an experience in itself. It is not just about going somewhere else, but about stepping outside structured time, encountering different ways of living, and observing oneself in unfamiliar contexts. At the same time, it reflects a deeper search for alignment, with personal values, with identity, and with a broader sense of meaning. Travel, then, is no longer an escape or change of scenery. It has become a way of seeing and meeting different versions of oneself, with greater clarity. This also brings us back to a question raised earlier: If these moments were never posted, never seen, would they still matter?
For many, the answer is yes. Because some of the most meaningful parts of travel do not require visibility to hold value.
References
ABTA , travel with confidence. (2025, November 27). Travel trends for 2026. ABTA. https://www.abta.com/industry-zone/reports-and-publications/abta-travel-trends-reports/travel-trends-2026
Bunnell, T., & Gardner-Mctaggart, A. (2022). The cultural capital of senior leaders in elite traditional international schools: An enduring ‘leadership nobility’? International Journal of Leadership in Education, 28(3), 574–592. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2022.2032370
Chen, C.-C., Petrick, J. F., & Shahvali, M. (2014). Tourism experiences as a stress reliever. Journal of Travel Research, 55(2), 150–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287514546223
Chi, D. N., & Vu, N. T. (2023). The development of cultural capital through english education and its contributions to graduate employability. In Global Vietnam: Across Time, Space and Community (pp. 141–164). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4338-8_7
Gmelch , G. (1997). Crossing cultures: Student travel and personal development. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 21(4), 475–490. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0147-1767(97)00021-7
Marques, J., Gomes, S., Ferreira, M., Rebuá, M., & Marques, H. (2025). Generation Z and travel motivations: The impact of age, gender, and residence. Tourism and Hospitality, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp6020082
Mokhtarian, P. L. (2018). Subjective well-being and travel: Retrospect and prospect. Transportation, 46(2), 493–513. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-018-9935-y
Santos, A. S., Reis Neto, M. T., & Verwaal, E. (2018). Does cultural capital matter for individual job performance? A large-scale survey of the impact of cultural, social and psychological capital on individual performance in Brazil. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 67(8), 1352–1370. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm-05-2017-0110
Singh, A. (2025). The screen and the strain. In Cultural Pressures and Mental Health Challenges in Gen Z’s Digital World (pp. 393–416). IGI Global Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3373-4516-1.ch015
Wigmore, S. (2025, February 12). How generational travel habits are shaping the future of tourism. KANTAR. https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/research-services/travel-habits-of-generations-pf
