Travel
The latest from Travel on Lifestyle Desires.
When the bargain holiday stops feeling clever
The AVG Travels collapse shows how bargain package holidays sell control and escape until missing tickets, refunds and trust crack the deal open.
The holiday you sneer at is telling on you
Travel snobbery turns Bali, cruises and coach tours into class theatre. The holiday you mock may say more about you than the traveller.
The trip gets better when your phone gets boring
Phone-free travel works best when you swap apps for a camera, paper map and limited data, then let the first 48 hours pass.
The 2026 travel paperwork to check before you book
Travel in 2026 still works fine, but it wants more admin first: shorter Thailand stays, the UK's ETA, Europe's new systems and one last official check before you fly.
What the bathroom floor knows before a trip
Travel toiletries rituals expose the gap between our best intentions and a 100 ml clear bag, especially on the long-haul trips Australians know too well.
More
When a beautiful hotel follows you home
Reschio Collections turns the mood of an Umbrian stay into linen, leather and ritual, part of a wider luxury push to sell not just rooms but a whole private world.
Why grief travel is making wellness tell the truth
Grief travel is turning retreats into places for ritual, memory and discomfort, exposing how fast wellness can package mourning as an experience.
Why Puglia keeps seducing travellers chasing a slower summer
Puglia's chicest stays are selling more than stone walls and pools. The real allure is a holiday built around time, stillness and not quite doing enough.
Why the dream weekend now fits in a tiny cabin
Airbnb's tiny-home wish lists say less about property lust than a national craving for short, quiet, close-to-home escapes that feel possible again.
The Maldives just moved closer to Melbourne
Melbourne to Maldives direct flights shrink the stopover slog, turning a once fiddly fantasy into the sort of long-haul escape Australians might actually book.
What a wellness retreat really sells
Australia's wellness retreats are selling different scripts for exhaustion in 2026, from soft luxury to permission to disappear for a weekend.
The suitcase that wants to be a wardrobe
A wardrobe suitcase will not cure overpacking, but its shelves can make a cramped hotel room feel briefly orderly, which is exactly the seduction.
When the American holiday starts feeling invasive
A new ESTA proposal is colliding with cost and mood, turning the once-default US trip into a holiday many Australians no longer feel like justifying.
Why the Ord River still feels like a trip you disappear into
On the Ord River, the luxury isn't polish but distance: 55 kilometres of water, wildlife and Kimberley light that make most Australian travel feel over-programmed.
The war clause hiding in your holiday
Travel insurance war cover is narrower than many Australians assume. Before you cancel, check the trigger, the advisory level and what losses still count.
The road out of town: four weekends from Sydney, mapped by season
I left Sydney on a Thursday in July, two hours later than I'd meant to. The city exhales on a Friday afternoon and half a million people point their bonnets toward the same escape routes. Here is what I've learnt about the four escapes that actually deliver.
Bicheno keeps making the welcoming-towns list. I think I know why
Bicheno landed at seven on Booking.com's most-welcoming-towns list. St Helens at ten. Two east-coast Tassie towns in the top ten, and I drove down to find out why.
Four hours to the lagoon: direct to Cocos, finally
On 1 May, QantasLink cut the Port Hedland stopover from its Friday flight to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The journey is now four hours, the lagoon is waiting, and the arithmetic of a long weekend has shifted. Cleo Tasman does the maths from a bar stool at the Cocos Club.
Snow at Mt Baw Baw, a month before the lifts spin
Seven centimetres at Mt Baw Baw and a low-pressure front to 400 metres in Victoria. A soft early-May snowfall isn't a forecast for the season ahead, but it is permission to start thinking like a snow person again.
Six weeks after Narelle, a fare cheap enough to argue with
Western Australia is dropping Perth-Broome fares to $179, Perth-Exmouth to $199 and Perth-Kununurra to $259, all part of a $1.45m post-cyclone tourism support package. A Hobart-based slow-road columnist tries to work out whether the cheap ticket is the right call.
I almost didn't go: Milton Park's $10m makeover and the case for imperfection
A $10 million renovation, a 115-year-old country estate, and the question of whether chipped paint matters when the gardens look like that.
Tiny, Off-Grid, Two Nights Max: How Aussies Are Travelling in 2026
The two-week beach holiday is being quietly retired. Airbnb data and Tourism Australia figures both show short, regional, off-grid stays surging — and South Australian tiny cabins now leading the country's most-wishlisted list.
The Lifestyle Desires brief
Style, food, travel and wellbeing — weekly in your inbox.
Subscribe