Travel Tips for All Types of Love Languages: How to Plan and Where to Go

If your love language is words of affirmation, you really enjoy hearing your partner tell you supportive things – congratulating you, giving you complements, telling you all the things they love about you.

Planning: If your partner likes words of affirmation, be supportive and positive during the planning process. Complement them on their choices in swimwear and shoes. Tell them how much you like their ideas for destinations and lodgings and packing – but don’t say things you don’t mean. Stand up for your side as necessary.

Trip Types/Destinations: What’s a great trip choice for words-of-affirmation types? If you’re active as well as affirming, try something that involves teamwork, like rock climbing, canoeing, or jungle hiking. If you’re after something less strenuous, cruises can be great for affirmative types – especially cruises with formal or dress-up nights.

People whose love language is service-based love it when their partner does chores for them, makes them dinner, or fills their car with gas, especially without being asked.

Planning: In the trip-planning stage this can be manifested by making plane and hotel reservations, buying new luggage, or grabbing the bags from the baggage carousel while your partner gets a bite to eat – but again, be careful not to barge ahead on some of these things without first asking your partner.

Trip Types/Destinations: Great vacations for service-lovers are beach or destination vacations, especially with a property rental, where one partner can do the cooking, buy flowers, bring cold drinks down to the beach, and basically spoil the other rotten – which is exactly what they want.

This one is pretty obvious: Partners who are into receiving gifts love receiving gifts from their partner.

Planning: Trip planning in this case may involve one partner doing all the planning and then presenting the other partner with a gift of travel. (Often these gifts are non-returnable, so be absolutely sure it’s the right size before you pull the trigger.)

Trip Types/Destinations: Great vacations for gifters are the romantic staples – Rome, Paris, the beach, a cruise. However, any trip can be a great excuse for gifting flowers, candy, or a romantic dinner by the water.

People whose love language is quality time just want to be with their partner – and travel definitely speaks this language.

Planning: Vacation time is the epitome of quality time, and it starts with planning, where the two of you work together on crafting the perfect vacation for both of you, one that has plenty of – you guessed it – quality time.

Trip Types/Destinations: In terms of great quality-time vacations, it’s hard to beat a get-away-from-it-all type of vacation, where it’s just the two of you, a cabin in the woods, and all outdoors. If that’s too primitive for your tastes, try a cruise – but not an activity-heavy cruise with a rollercoaster and a racetrack. Instead, consider an ocean-freighter cruise to South America where it’s just you, a Scandinavian crew, and 500 shipping containers. Nothing but time.

Physical touch is another self-evident love language. These touchy-feely types love holding hands, kissing, hugging, and so forth and so on.

Planning: For these types, travel planning is an exercise best done together, in as close a proximity as possible. Paper maps are great tools for physical-touch types, as there’s not only the tactile feel of the map but the closeness of you and your partner poring over the map together.

Trip Types/Destinations: For physical-touch vacations, it’s hard to beat resorts. A resort vacation enables you to be close on the beach, in restaurants, at clubs, and even at the spa, encouraged by romantic surroundings and staff who are experienced with this sort of thing. No worries about excessive PDAs there.