#JOM: Beyond the bucket list

NOT so long ago, a holiday could be measured quite simply: the number of places visited, famous landmarks photographed and boxes ticked off a travel list.

You joined the tour, followed the itinerary and saw the sights everyone else had come to see.

Increasingly, however, travellers are asking a different question. Not "Where should I go?" but "What do I want to experience?"

It might be standing beneath Japan's cherry blossoms at the height of the season, watching the Northern Lights dance across the Finnish sky or witnessing the Great Migration in Kenya.

It could even be sailing through the Norwegian fjords, travelling to Antarctica or, on a much simpler scale, discovering a little-known town, eating where the locals eat or finding a place that brings the family together.

The destination still matters. But increasingly, it's the reason for going that shapes the journey.

That shift is particularly relevant in a region where international travel remains a strong part of people's holiday plans.

A 2024 Tourism Malaysia survey found that 69 per cent of Malaysians planned to take a holiday abroad that year, with activities and experiences among the factors influencing destination choices.

In Singapore, outbound departures by residents reached more than 10.67 million in 2025, according to official data from the Singapore Department of Statistics.

Thailand, too, saw strong appetite for international travel in the first half of 2025, with YouTrip reporting a 45 per cent increase among Thai travellers compared with the same period a year earlier.

The numbers point to a region where people are travelling – and travelling often enough to become more selective about what they want those journeys to mean.

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Experience Comes First

One example is an incentive trip to Japan organised around something that could easily have been treated as a backdrop: cherry blossom season.

Rather than beginning with a conventional list of attractions and fitting the blossoms around it, the trip was planned around the flowering period itself.

The timing, itinerary and experiences were shaped by the group's desire to see Japan at a particular moment in the country's calendar.

It's a small but telling distinction. The trip was not simply to Japan. It was a trip to experience Japan in bloom.

For Sarah Yap, sales manager and experience tour leader at YES Travel and Holidays, this is increasingly how travellers are approaching their holidays.

The planning starts with what matters to them – an interest, a passion, a milestone or a once-in-a-lifetime ambition – and the destination is then built around that desire.

That could mean arranging a journey around a sporting event, seeking out a particular food culture, spending more time in lesser-known towns or creating an itinerary that allows a family to experience something together.

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Bucket List Gets Personal

Bucket-list travel has long been part of the holiday landscape, but even the idea of a bucket list is becoming more individual.

For one traveller, it might be the Aurora Borealis; for another, it could be seeing elephants on safari, travelling through the Norwegian fjords or finally making the long journey to Antarctica.

What makes these trips memorable isn't necessarily their exclusivity, but the personal meaning attached to them.

According to Yap, a destination that one traveller has dreamed about for years may mean little to another.

And that's precisely why the old one-size-fits-all approach to travel is becoming less relevant.

Travellers today can research almost everything before they leave home. They can compare hotels, read reviews, watch videos, map restaurants and find places that may never appear on a conventional sightseeing itinerary.

But information alone doesn't necessarily make a good holiday.

With work, family and other commitments competing for time, a precious few days of leave can make people more conscious of how they spend them, says Yap, adding that a thoughtfully planned trip can therefore be about more than getting from one attraction to another.

It can be about making the most of the limited time available, without losing the sense of discovery that makes travel exciting in the first place.

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Designing The Journey

This is where the role of a travel professional can become more interesting.

The job is no longer simply to arrange flights, hotels and transfers. It's also about listening carefully enough to understand what a traveller is actually looking for, then connecting those interests with the right places, timing and experiences.

For Yap, that means looking beyond the destination itself and considering the experience a traveller hopes to take away from it.

The difference can be subtle. Two people may visit the same city, stay in the same hotel and even see the same landmark.

Yet one may remember the trip for a meal shared with family, another for a chance encounter in a neighbourhood café, and another for finally seeing something they'd dreamed about since childhood.

The itinerary may be similar, but the journey isn't. And perhaps that's where modern travel is heading: away from the idea that a successful holiday is one in which you've seen everything, and towards one in which you've experienced something that matters to you.

After all, travellers may not remember every attraction they visited or every photograph they took.

What tends to stay are the moments that felt personal – the unexpected discovery, the shared laughter, the sense of wonder, the connection with a place or person, and the story they find themselves telling long after they've put away their suitcase.