Fast Travel VS Slow Travel: Which Is Better?

In the travel world, there’s a lot of talk about the pace of travel. It’s all about fast travel VS slow travel. How long is your trip and how many nights are you spending there?

And everyone seems to have an opinion!

“You don’t need more than one day in Bratislava.”
“How can you only spend 2 days in Paris?!?!”
“When I spent a month in Tokyo…”

The truth is, some of us prioritize fast travel while others prefer slow travel. But what exactly is the difference between fast and slow travel? Which one is better? And why are we all so obsessed with talking about the pace of travel?

What is fast travel? What is slow travel?

As the names imply, fast travel is fast and slow travel is slow. Fast travel usually involves fitting in a large number of places or itinerary items in a small number of days. You race around to see and do as much as you can in a short amount of time. Slow travel takes the opposite approach. You travel longer, stretching out how long you spend in one place, and keep the itinerary more relaxed.

An example of fast travel would be the three and a half days we spent in New York City in May 2022. We jam packed our days with lots of sightseeing, going to bed late and waking up early to see it all in the short amount of time we had.

An example of slow travel would be the six days we spent in Halifax, Nova Scotia in October 2021. With six full days in one city, we were able to take our time checking out sights and going on a couple of day trips. Another example would be the month I spent in Tokyo, living with a Japanese family and taking Japanese language lessons.

The benefits of fast travel

The most obvious benefit of fast travel is that you can see and do more things. When you’re moving quickly, you’re able to cover more ground. If you really want to get to the top 10 sights in a city, visit every museum or see three countries in a week, fast travel is the way to do it.

Fast travel helps you make the most of the time you have. The reality is that not everyone has the time for slow travel. If you only have two weeks of vacation a year, it’s tough to spend the entire two weeks at one destination. You may feel you’ve wasted your holiday if you spend it in one spot.

I find that fast travel works well in busy cities with lots to see and do. In a place like New York, where your bucket list of activities and restaurants to try is never ending, going fast from one thing to the next is the only way to experience as much of this cool city as possible before you have to leave.

Fast travel can also be cheaper (but not always!). If you’re able to visit London in three days instead of seven, that’s four less days of accommodation and meals that you have to pay for.

The benefits of slow travel

One of the big benefits of slow travel is that it’s a lot more relaxing! When we travelled to Tuscany, we set up a restful schedule of having lazy mornings at our Tuscan villa, driving to a nearby town to explore for the afternoon, and then returning to our villa for homemade dinner. It was so nice to not be rushed and to actually feel relaxed after a vacation.

Slow travel allows you to go deeper. Instead of moving from place to place, you get to stay put, learning more about the local culture, people, history and food. When we lived in Prague for a year, we were able to visit museums we never would have on a short trip, make friends who also lived in Prague, and create routines with regular visits to the same parks, restaurants and cafes.

I find that slow travel is less stressful. You don’t have to worry about planning a jam-packed itinerary, keeping to a schedule, and rushing from place to place. Slow travel trips for me just have one or two things planned for each day, leaving lots of time to relax or spontaneously agree to new plans in the moment. And if you don’t get to something, no worries! You can just do it the next day.

Slow travel can also be cheaper (but not always!). If you’re staying in one place for a long time, you may be able to find cheaper long term rates for accommodation. You may also be able to save money by booking things in advance, travelling at off-peak times or foregoing some of the more expensive tourist highlights.

Leave the judgment at home!

Just by reading the title of this post, you may already be on Team Fast Travel or Team Slow Travel. But no matter what pace of travel you prefer, I think it’s important we leave the judgment at home.

On the fast travel side, it can be easy to judge people for not having gone to as many places:

“They calls themselves a travel influencer and they’ve never even left the US?”
“How can she be a travel blogger if she’s never been to Bali or Greece?” 

(I have never been to Bali or Greece and I’m a travel blogger!)

And on the slow travel side, it often looks like judging people for moving too quickly and insisting they spend more time in a place. Hands up if you’ve ever said something like this:

“You’re trying to visit 3 countries in 10 days? You need to slow down. You won’t enjoy it.”

(My hands are way up!)

Or deciding someone shouldn’t share their opinion if they haven’t spent enough time in a region:

“They only spent 5 days in Kauai and they’re trying to tell people the best places to eat there? How the heck would they know?” 

(I did it anyway – check out the best places to eat in Kauai!)

But I think we can all agree that we need to leave this travel judgment at home. Who cares how someone else is travelling? Just because I feel you need five days to experience Budapest doesn’t mean someone is travelling “wrong” if they only want to spend one day there… or 15 days! It doesn’t take away from my experience. Everyone is entitled to travel however they see fit.

As long as you’re not hurting yourself, others or the environment, travel however you want!

The privilege to prioritize how you travel

It is a privilege to be able to prioritize how you travel. In fact, it’s a privilege to travel in the first place!

In the travel blogging world, it seems like most people are Team Slow Travel. But I think we forget that not everyone has the luxury to travel as slow as they would want. To spend a month in Tuscany means you need a month off of work and a budget to support yourself. Not everyone has that!

If you’re someone who works remotely or has a generous vacation policy at work, an income that supports you travelling around the world, a passport that lets you into almost every country, and no other obligations keeping you at home, your travels are going to look a whole lot different than someone with two weeks of annual vacation from a “weak” passport country making minimum wage with two kids at home.

Please don’t tell the forty-five year old single mom going to Europe for the first time that she’s doing it “wrong” because she can’t spend more than two days in Paris.

It’s also a privilege to prioritize why you want to travel. Many travel bloggers talk about travelling for the culture and how the best part of any trip is getting to chat with locals and experience their way of life.

And while I have some thoughts about that (what if the local people don’t want to interact with a foreigner in town for two days? What if their hospitality has more to do with how much you’re paying them? What if they just want to go about their life and do their job without becoming content for your blog and social media accounts? What if it’s condescending and elitist to think you know the local way of life having lived in a place for a couple of weeks?), I don’t think that needs to be everyone’s priority.

Yes, having local experiences is an awesome part of travel. Yes, I’ve met some incredible people on my trips. And yes, respecting the local people and local culture is paramount. But I think it’s okay if someone wants to travel and not try to befriend every local they run into. Heck, it’s even okay if you want to prioritize museums, architecture, food, fashion, sports or something else over meeting locals.

We all travel for our own reasons. I think it’s important to remember that the “how” and the “why” of our travels are shaped not only by our preferences but also our privileges. 

My favourite pace of travel

I’ve gone back and forth on fast travel VS slow travel throughout my travel life. As I get older and gain more experience as a traveller, I’m learning what works for me and what pace of travel I enjoy best.

My favourite pace of travel is a combination of fast and slow, but definitely leans more to the slow side. I enjoy a trip more if there’s some downtime baked in. I like the idea of starting slow and leaving myself some breathing room so I don’t come back home exhausted. Travel burnout is real; the worst feeling is needing a vacation from your vacation!

But I believe that some destinations are better suited to fast travel. I think big cities, like London or Tokyo, are perfect for fast itineraries with lots to do. If we had spent our recent 3 day trip to New York not leaving one neighbourhood, I would’ve felt like we missed out on so much.

There are also some places that, based on my priorities, don’t need as much time. So yes, I thought one day in Bratislava was plenty.

There’s that feeling of FOMO that encourages me to travel fast. How can I go all the way from Vancouver, Canada to Europe and only visit one city? It’s hard to slow travel when I only have a short trip and don’t know when I’ll be back in that part of the world. I want to see it all!

The truth is that if I had an unlimited budget and unlimited time off, I would choose slow travel nine times out of ten. I love the idea of having a chill itinerary and lots of time to work through it. I dream of finding a local coffee shop I can become a regular at and spending enough time in a city to actually understand the public transportation system.

Slow travel also works well for my career as a freelancer: I could set up an office space in my long term accommodation and dedicate mornings to work, leaving afternoons to explore.

But the reality is I don’t always have the time or the money to prioritize slow travel. While I work from home, my husband (and favourite travel companion) does not. We usually take our international trips together (though I’m a big believe in travelling solo even if you have a partner), meaning we’re restricted by his vacation days. We also have a dog at home we can’t be away from for too long. And it hurts to pay our expensive Vancouver rent on our Yaletown apartment if we’re not in it!

How to slow travel when you don’t have a lot of time

So while I love slow travel, I don’t always have the time for it. Here are some ways to slow travel even when you’re short on time:

• Create slow moments. Sure, you might not have a week to spend exploring one specific neighbourhood of a city, but what about a morning? When we were in New York in May 2022, we spent a couple of hours just sitting on a bench in Central Park. It was the perfect rest stop and gave us a great view of local life. (Plus, the dog watching was 10/10!)
• Schedule relaxation. One of the best parts of slow travel is how relaxing and unhurried it feels. If you crave that feeling but don’t have the time to relax for days on end, schedule in some relaxation, like a spa appointment or breakfast in bed. If it’s on the itinerary, it’s more likely to happen.
• Make a local connection. Another great part of slow travel is the ability to go deep and connect to the local culture. And while you may not have time for that to happen organically on a fast trip, you can still dive deep with the time that you do have. I’ve found a cooking class, particularly one hosted by locals, is a great (and tasty!) way to do this. We took a cooking class in Naples and it was the highlight of our few days there.
• Remember that you will travel again. One of the biggest things that speed up the pace of my trips is FOMO – there are so many things to see and do but only so much time. I have to stop and remind myself that this isn’t my last trip. I will travel again! Whatever I miss out on this time, I can add to next trip’s itinerary.

Which is better: fast travel or slow travel?

Surprising no one, there’s no right answer to this question! It’s all about finding the pace of travel that works best for you. There is no one ideal way for every single person on every single trip to travel. If you want to or have to fast travel, go for it. If you prefer to and can afford to slow travel, awesome.

Travel slow or travel fast… either way, travel in the way that works best for you and the rest of us will try our best not to judge!

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Are you usually a fan of fast travel or slow travel?