Purpose and motivation

TRAVELLING
Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip.[1] Travel can also include relatively short stays between successive movements, as in the case of tourism.

The origin of the word "travel" is most likely lost to history. The term "travel" may originate from the Old French word travail, which means 'work'.[2] According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the first known use of the word travel was in the 14th century. It also states that the word comes from Middle English travailen, travelen (which means to torment, labor, strive, journey) and earlier from Old French travailler (which means to work strenuously, toil). In English we still occasionally use the words "travail", which means struggle. According to Simon Winchester in his book The Best Travelers' Tales (2004), the words "travel" and "travail" both share an even more ancient root: a Roman instrument of torture called the tripalium (in Latin it means "three stakes", as in to impale). This link may reflect the extreme difficulty of travel in ancient times. Travel in modern times may or may not be much easier depending upon the destination. Travel to Mount Everest, the Amazon rainforest, extreme tourism, and adventure travel are more difficult forms of travel. Travel can also be more difficult depending on the method of travel, such as by bus, cruise ship, or even by bullock cart.[3]

Purpose and motivation
Reasons for traveling include recreation,[4] holidays,[5] tourism[4] or vacationing,[4] research travel,[4] the gathering of information, visiting people, volunteer travel for charity, migration to begin life somewhere else, religious pilgrimages[4] and mission trips, business travel,[4] trade,[4] commuting, and other reasons, such as to obtain health care[4] or waging or fleeing war or for the enjoyment of traveling. Traveller's may use human-powered transport such as walking or bicycling; or vehicles, such as public transport, automobiles, trains, ferries, boats, cruise ships and airplanes.

Motives for travel include:

Pleasure[6]
Relaxation
Discovery and exploration[4]
Intercultural communications[4]
Taking personal time for building interpersonal relationships.
Avoiding stress[7]
Forming memories [8]
History of travel
Travel dates back to antiquity where wealthy Greeks and Romans would travel for leisure to their summer homes and villas in cities such as Pompeii and Baiae.[9] While early travel tended to be slower, more dangerous, and more dominated by trade and migration, cultural and technological advances over many years have tended to mean that travel has become easier and more accessible.[10] Mankind has come a long way in transportation since Christopher Columbus sailed to the new world from Spain in 1492, an expedition which took over 10 weeks to arrive at the final destination; to the 21st century where aircraft allow travel from Spain to the United States overnight.

Travel in the Middle Ages offered hardships and challenges, however, it was important to the economy and to society. The wholesale sector depended (for example) on merchants dealing with/through caravans or sea-voyagers, end-user retailing often demanded the services of many itinerant peddlers wandering from village to hamlet, gyrovagues (Wandering Monks) and wandering friars brought theology and pastoral support to neglected areas, traveling minstrels practiced the never-ending tour, and armies ranged far and wide in various crusades and in sundry other wars.[9] Pilgrimages were common in both the European and Islamic world and involved streams of travelers both locally (Canterbury Tales-style) and internationally.[11]

In the late 16th century it became fashionable for young European aristocrats and wealthy upper-class men to travel to significant European cities as part of their education in the arts and literature. This was known as the Grand Tour, it included cities such as London, Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome. However, The French Revolution brought with it the end of the Grand Tour.[9]

Travel by water often provided more comfort and speed than land-travel, at least until the advent of a network of railways in the 19th century. Travel for the purpose of tourism is reported to have started around this time when people began to travel for fun as travel was no longer a hard and challenging task. This was capitalized on by people like Thomas Cook selling tourism packages where trains and hotels were booked together.[12] Airships and airplanes took over much of the role of long-distance surface travel in the 20th century, notably after the Second World War where there was a surplus of both aircraft and pilots.[9] Indeed, air travel has become so ubiquitous in the 21st century that one woman, Alexis Alford, visited all 196 countries before the age of 21.[13]

Geographic types
Travel may be local, regional, national (domestic) or international. In some countries, non-local internal travel may require an internal passport, while international travel typically requires a passport and visa. Tours are a common type of travel. Examples of travel tours are expedition cruises,[14] small group tours,[15] and river cruises.[16]

Travel safety

See also: Air safety and Automobile safety

Travelers in a British Airways 747 airplane. Air travel is a common means of transport.

MS Skania ferry in the port of Szczecin
Authorities emphasize the importance of taking precautions to ensure travel safety.[17] When traveling abroad, the odds favor a safe and incident-free trip, however, travelers can be subject to difficulties, crime and violence.[18] Some safety considerations include being aware of one's surroundings,[17] avoiding being the target of a crime,[17] leaving copies of one's passport and itinerary information with trusted people,[17] obtaining medical insurance valid in the country being visited[17] and registering with one's national embassy when arriving in a foreign country.[17] Many countries do not recognize drivers' licenses from other countries; however most countries accept international driving permits.[19] Automobile insurance policies issued in one's own country are often invalid in foreign countries, and it is often a requirement to obtain temporary auto insurance valid in the country being visited.[19] It is also advisable to become oriented with the driving rules and -regulations of destination countries.[19] Wearing a seat belt is highly advisable for safety reasons; many countries have penalties for violating seatbelt laws.[19]

There are three main statistics which may be used to compare the safety of various forms of travel (based on a DETR survey in October 2000):[20]

A travel plan is a package of actions designed by a workplace, school or other organisation to encourage safe, healthy and sustainable travel options. By reducing car travel, travel plans can improve health and wellbeing, free up car parking space, and make a positive contribution to the community and the environment. Every travel plan is different, but most successful plans have followed a structured process^[1] in their development:
The term has now largely replaced green transport plan as the accepted UK term for a concept, which first emerged in the US in the 1970s (as site-based transportation demand management) and subsequently transferred to the Netherlands in 1989, where the terms company or commuter mobility management were applied.

Features

From the above and other definitions, these common features underpin the concept:^[2]

• 
  Travel plans are not really an instrument themselves but a delivery mechanism or strategy for other mostly transport-focused measures.
  
• 
  Travel plans are delivered by an additional 'agent' that is not a part of the 'traditional' transport policy institutional structure.
  
• 
  Travel plans are initiated in two ways by the organisation or by the government.
  
• 
  Travel plans seek to deliver transport and related benefits to the community as well as some more direct organisational benefits to the participating 'delivery agents'.
  
• 
  Travel plans are, to some extent, site-specific and so tailored to the specific contextual circumstances.
  
• 
  Travel plans deliver, to some extent, a package or a strategy of a wide variety of transport instruments.
  

They can work well the 'package approach' allows complementary tools to be implemented in one go, which means effective but unpopular tools (such as parking restrictions) can be introduced alongside popular but expensive tools (like bus subsidies) to deliver the required benefits whilst cancelling out the negative impacts. Next, the use of the additional 'agent' such as a workplace, school or even a football club which means that travel plans replace the largely negative relationship between local authorities and citizens^{[citation needed]} with a more positive relationship (such as between employer and employee or between school and parent/pupil). Finally, the site l-specific nature of travel plans means they are developed at the neighbourhood level and so focus directly on the transport needs of the users in that local area.
The concept works by developing balanced packages of user-focused transport tools in a partnership that seeks to provide meaningful benefits to each of the stakeholders involved: improved travel choices to the individuals; cost savings, happier and healthier staff and better company image to the implementing organisations; additional business opportunities to service providers and congestion reduction and improved air quality to the government.

Workplace

The UK Department for Transport defines workplace travel plans as a package of measures produced by employers to encourage staff to use alternatives to single-occupancy car use. The first travel Ppans in the UK were adopted in Nottingham by Nottinghamshire County Council in 1995. Travel plans are now common in the UK, and are starting to become more common in many places throughout Europe as well as in Australia and New Zealand.
A workplace can choose to develop a travel plan at any time be required to develop a travel plan as a condition of planning consent for an expansion or new development. Typical actions in a workplace travel plan include improving facilities for pedestrians and cyclists (showers, lockers and cycle parking), promotion and subsidy of public transport, and encouraging carpooling, working from home and teleconferencing.

School

Making it safer and easier for children to walk, cycle or catch public transport to school has long-term health benefits, reduces air pollution and traffic congestion, and helps children arrive at school awake, refreshed and ready to learn.
Because of the many benefits, local councils in the UK, Australia and New Zealand are actively involved in helping schools to develop and implement travel plans. In Canada, a national pilot project running from 2010 to 2012 is designed to bring stakeholders together to build school travel plans collaboratively. Typical actions in a school travel plan include promoting the health benefits of walking, providing more or better pedestrian crossings, tighter enforcement of parking and traffic rules around the school, providing cycle training, and setting up a walking school bus.^[3] School travel planning groups like Green Communities Canada also work on a policy level to encourage multi-tiered governmental policies that support active travel.