Can Travel Expectations Influence Your Experience?

A visit to Taiwan came highly recommended to us by friends as a budget friendly destination with great food and interesting attractions, but a flight in to a more inconvenient airport, misrepresented accommodation, and less than beautiful scenery quickly started to cause our experience to not live up to our expectations of the visit. In keeping an open mind while exploring more of the country, and employing a few tactics like seeking out foods and activities we enjoy, we were able to turn our experience around and came away really enjoying our trip. This change in our experience made us think about how our high expectations coming into Taiwan may have caused us to inaccurately weight our few initial negative experiences, and how expectations in general can influence the way you view a place. On this episode we talk about how factors like people's opinions, where you're coming from, and how long you're going to stay in a place can influence your expectations going into the destination, and ultimately your experience there. We discuss some tactics on how you may be able to turn around your view of a place where you're initially having negative experience by implementing a few strategies like establishing realistic expectations before you travel, seeking out foods and activities you enjoy, and planning your travel route around cost of living or a trip highlight. Keeping an open mind and working from your own experiences rather than overall recommendations from others can go a long way in helping you to make the most of your trip! Enjoy! If you enjoy the podcast, join the community on Facebook, Instagram + sign up for the monthly newsletter. Join us for our new weekly online hangouts every Tuesday in June where we'll be joined by travel experts to discuss topics like teaching English abroad and Digital Nomad life. Be sure to bring any questions and travel stories you'd like to share! Music Credits: www.bensound.com