Travelling around the globe is a wonderful, and enriching experience. You can visit incredible places, discover other cultures, and most importantly, practice other languages.
Do you love travelling, but your English travel vocabulary is limited? Well, maybe it’s time to learn the most common English words, and phrases before embarking on your next trip!
Following, it’s a very handy guide with essential English travel vocabulary.
English vocabulary: Trip, travel or journey?
Before going on an adventure, it’s important to know the difference between the words “trip”, “travel” and “journey”.
These concepts are often confused, but they have different meanings.
Trip
It’s a noun that refers to more than one single journey or a return journey.
For example:
- My parents went on a day trip to Paris.
- She is on a business trip.
Travel
The word can be used as a verb or a noun.
Verb: It refers to the action to go from one place to another, especially over a long distance.
For example:
- I love travelling by car.
- Two years ago we travelled to Japan.
Noun: It makes reference to the activity of travelling in general. It can also be used as a plural noun.
For example:
- Her travels abroad provided her with meaningful experiences.
- My sister met many wonderful people on her travels.
Journey
The word is a countable noun that means one single piece of travel. Therefore, travelling can involve several journeys.
For example:
- It’s a day’s journey by train.
- How long did your journey take?
Travel vocabulary: Planning your journey
Here are some travel-related words used by English-speakers when planning a trip.
- Book your flight tickets online: Action of buying your plane tickets on the internet.
- A travel agent: A company or person whose job is to guide potential travellers by offering a comparision of the best holiday packages, and also makes the corresponding journey arrangements to suit clients’ needs.
- Make a hotel reservation: Action of reserving a hotel room.
- Travel insurance: Insurance that covers the risks that may appear during your journey like, for example, delays, injuries, death or loss of luggage.
- Plan an itinerary: It refers to the idea of scheduling the daily activities of your journey; from tourist attractions to visit on every single day to specific routes.
- Peak season: It makes reference to the busiest period of the year for travelling.
- Off-season: It’s the less popular, and the quietest time of the year for travelling.
Airport vocabulary
Flying can be a very stressful experience, but you can save yourself a lot of time, and headaches if you know how to use the right travel idiomatic expressions, and words when the opportunity arises.
What follows is a list of useful English words for the airport.
- Check-in: Procedure when you arrive to the airport and go to your airline check-in desk to hand over your luggage, and get your boarding pass.
- Passport control: Procedure where passengers go through security, and their passports are checked before boarding.
- Take off: Action that refers to the moment when the plane leaves the ground, and starts flying.
- Landing: Action of bringing a plane down to the ground.
- Delayed arrival: When you airplane is not arriving at the expected time.
- Arrivals are on schedule: When airplanes are landing at the expected time.
- Baggage allowance: The weight, and the amount of hand luggage that the airline allows per passenger.
- Carry-on luggage: It is the luggage that you can take inside an aircraft. It’s also known as hand luggage.
- Bumpy flight: When your plane journey is rough and uncomfortable.
- Connecting flight: It refers to the process of changing aircrafts during a journey to reach the final destination. The passenger leaves a plane at a connecting point, and boards to a different aircraft before arriving at the destination.
Hotel vocabulary
The place where you stay to get a good night’s sleep when travelling can really make a big difference.
Your hotel room is booked, but perhaps you want to ask about the extra services offered?
Here’s a list of most common English words to be used when arriving at a hotel, and during your stay.
- All-inclusive: It means that all meals, and drinks are included on the price you pay for the hotel room. It doesn’t include extras like massages or other activities inside the hotel facilities.
- Check out: When you leave the hotel after paying, and returning the key / key card.
- Damage charge: Amount of money guests must pay if they break hotel property.
- Deposit: Small amount of money you may be asked to pay when booking a hotel room. It’s an advance payment that usually equals a one night stay’s fee that guarantees a reservation. It’s a way for hotels to cover last-minute cancellations.
- Have / Offer room service: It refers to the service provided by some hotels where guests can enjoy meals in their room outside of regular restaurant hours.
- Wake-up call: It’s a service where guests can receive a phone call from a hotel employee to wake them up at a prearranged time.
