It’s last call for Global Traveler’s annual reader survey, where you name the best of the best in business and luxury travel.  And, as it did yesterday, it’s making me think about the questions that acquaintances and friends ask us.

It’s one thing to vote for your own pick for best tourism destination, as we ask, based upon your experience and weighing all the parameters that you find important. It’s entirely another thing when a friend or acquaintance who knows how much you travel asks, “Where’s the best place to go?” I always thinks that depends upon what the questioner is looking for–relaxation? adventure? education? and who they’re going with — significant other, kids, alone? Then there’s the time of year and the person’s budget to take into consideration. But the bottom line, I think, is how well-traveled the person is already.

When the person asking the question is awed by how much I’ve traveled because they haven’t done much of it themselves, I tread lightly. If they like cities, I suggest London; for the Caribbean, I suggest St. Maarten/St. Martin, because they can get a taste of two worlds. My own best trip ever was probably to South Africa, in part because I got to spend three weeks there–some time fishing in the Transvaal, some time admiring Cape Town (my own choice for most beautiful city, scenery-wise), some time in Kruger National Park admiring the sheer variety of animal life and some time at Mala Mala for bounding around in a Jeep for a Hatari-like experience.

Our personal favorites can have less to do with where we went than who we were with, or what happened when we were there. When making recommendations — or voting, for that matter — we have to filter those out.   And when someone says, “Wow, you’ve been everywhere; where is your favorite place to go?” we must remember that they really don’t want to hear the road warrior’s true answer: “Home.”

-Mary Hunt, Editor, eFlyer

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 9:22 am and is filed under Africa, Adventure Travel, Mary's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.