Have you been feeling wanderlust lately? If so, you are not alone. Lots of people are looking to hit the road and travel as pandemic restrictions slowly lessen across the world. All of this vacationing and globetrotting is likely to lead to a whole bunch of trendy new travel jargon—either organically or as marketing pushes by a travel industry hungry for all those new travelers. While you start prepping for your own big trip, here are some examples of modern travel slang that you can stuff into your suitcase.
baecation
The word baecation simply refers to any vacation spent with your bae, your romantic partner. Baecation is often used in travel marketing and advertising of romantic getaways or destinations known as lands of love.
Baecation is a hybrid construction that combines the word bae with the end of the word vacation. The fact that baecation rhymes with vacation is an added marketing bonus. Baecation is formed similarly to the word staycation–meaning a vacation where someone stays home– which has become a mainstay of travel lingo.
friendcation
As you might have guessed, the term friendcation refers to a vacation spent with friends. A friendcation could refer to any type of vacation as long as you bring a buddy or two along. In marketing and social media, friendcation is often used to refer to vacation spots that feature group activities, such as hang gliding or nightclub-hopping.
As with baecation, friendcation is simply a hybrid construction that combines the word friend with the ending of the word vacation.
eduvacation
You know something that goes great with a vacation? Learning! The term eduvacation refers to a vacation or trip that involves learning about things. The term is broadly used and could refer to a wide variety of vacation destinations and activities, such as a trip to a famous museum, a tour of a cultural historic site, or a safari that teaches about animals.
The word eduvacation is a combination of the words education and vacation. Unlike baecation and friendcation, the entire word vacation makes an appearance because without the whole thing you would just have … education.
familymoon
A familymoon is a vacation for a newly married couple—and their children. The term is used to refer both to couples that have had children with each other prior to getting married and to couples who had children from previous relationships. As you’d expect, familymoon is used in advertising and social media when referring to travel spots that are kid-friendly and have plenty of things for children to do.
The word familymoon is based on the word honeymoon, a trip taken by newly married couples. The family in familymoon refers to the couples’ children—their family. A similar word that uses the -moon suffix based on honeymoon is the fairly well-known term babymoon. A babymoon is a vacation that a couple takes to celebrate (and rest before) the upcoming birth of a baby.
gramping
It is time to bridge the generational divide and go gramping. The word gramping refers to grandparents and their grandchildren going on vacation together. While this term can refer to camping trips, it is also used more broadly to refer to any kind of trip or travel that grandchildren spend with their grandparents. Similar to familymoon, gramping is often used to refer to places that are accessible to both children and older people and have plenty of things they can do together.
The word gramping is a hybrid combination of the word camping with the prefix grand- found in both grandparent and grandchild(ren). It is formed similarly to the popularly used travel word glamping, which refers to glamorous camping in which a person brings luxuries on a camping trip.
bleisure
Let’s get down to business and … go on vacation? The word bleisure is often used in the phrase “bleisure travel” to refer to a combination of business and leisure travel. The term is often used to refer to business trips that involve some form of enjoying oneself. This could involve things such as making time for a hiking trip, fitting in some sightseeing, or bringing the kids along to have fun in between video conferences. Bleisure travel has become increasingly popular in recent times due to large numbers of people having to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The word bleisure is an oxymoronic mashup of the words business and leisure. Bleisure is used to refer to trips that in some way combine getting work done while finding time to relax or do something fun.
These travel terms, as well as many others, are often driven by travel marketing. For example, you may see the newer travel term open-jaw flight, meaning a flight that leaves from a different city from the one that a person arrived in, alongside the well-known term red-eye flight, which refers to a flight taken during the sleep hours.
Given that it is in travel agencies’ best interest to come up with snappy, marketable ways to sell vacation packages, don’t be surprised if we continue to see plenty of new travel lingo to get us all gallivanting across the globe.
