Buying for someone who loves travelling sounds easy until you remember they already own a neck pillow, three plug adaptors and a suitcase that's seen more of the world than you have. These gift ideas for travel lovers are sorted by budget, with UK prices, and then by the kind of traveller you're buying for, from the frequent flyer to the best friend who's been on every trip with you. Birthday, retirement or simply a thank-you, there's something here they'll actually use or keep.
Shopping for Christmas? Our Christmas gifts for travellers guide has seasonal ideas and stocking fillers.
How to choose a gift for a travel lover
Good gifts for someone who loves travelling tend to fall into two camps, useful and sentimental, and they do different jobs.
- Useful gifts make the next trip easier: smarter packing, fewer lost bags, less faff at the airport. They work best when you know exactly how someone travels. A hand-luggage-only city-breaker doesn't want anything bulky, and a festival-goer needs different kit from a cruise fan.
- Sentimental gifts celebrate the trips they've already taken. They're hard to duplicate, which makes them a safe bet for people who already own all the kit.
A few quick checks help. Will it fit in hand luggage? Will it survive being stuffed in a bag? Is it something they'd never think to buy themselves, but will use or treasure for years? That last one is what you're aiming for. Most of the ideas below can be mixed and matched, too: pair a small useful thing with a sentimental one and you've covered both bases.
Gift ideas for travel lovers under £15
Small doesn't have to mean throwaway. These work for a colleague or a friend, or as add-ons to something bigger.
- A personalised luggage tag. Our Personalised Leather Luggage Tag (£9.95) is soft leather, foiled in gold with their initials or name (up to 10 characters), so their case is easier to spot on the carousel.
- Flag stickers. Our Flag Sticker Set (£9.95) has 192 country flags in waterproof vinyl, for marking off places on a suitcase, journal or laptop. Ideal for the friend who keeps count.
- A travel keyring. The Globe & Plane Keyring (£10.95) is a metal keyring with a spinning globe and an aeroplane charm: a small, everyday nudge to plan the next trip.
- A sturdy plug adaptor for the countries they visit most, rather than the flimsy one bought in a rush at the airport.
- Refillable travel bottles for decanting shampoo and sun cream into hand-luggage sizes.
- A pocket notebook for jotting down restaurant names, phrases and train times.
You'll find the sticker set and keyring in our travel accessories collection.
Gifts from £15 to £40
A good range for a birthday or thank-you present that feels properly considered.
- A memory box for their tickets. The Wandersake Memory Box has a slot in the top for posting boarding passes, gig tickets, photos and postcards, which collect behind a clear front with a black wire world map. The back opens when they want to rearrange. The Medium (20cm) is £34.95 and the Large (30cm) £39.95. It's the one for anyone with a drawer full of old tickets.
- An AirTag passport cover. Our leather AirTag Passport Cover (£31.95) fits UK passports and has a pocket for an AirTag (not included), plus slots for cards and a boarding pass.
- Packing cubes for the friend whose suitcase looks like a jumble sale.
- A guidebook for the trip they keep talking about, with a few handwritten recommendations tucked inside.
- A print or map of a place they love, framed if your budget stretches.
- A good eye mask and earplugs for overnight flights and noisy hostels.
Gifts over £40
For milestone birthdays, retirements, or when a few of you are clubbing together.
- A travel gift set. The Traveller Gift Set (£66.99) brings together a Medium Memory Box in the finish of your choice, the AirTag Passport Cover and a Personalised Leather Luggage Tag, so it covers useful and sentimental in one go.
- Quality cabin luggage. A well-made carry-on case or backpack improves every trip.
- Noise-cancelling headphones for the long-haul regular.
- An experience, such as a night away somewhere new in the UK, a cookery class in a cuisine they fell for abroad, or language lessons before a big trip.
- Airport lounge access to start a special holiday in style.
For the frequent flyer
Frequent flyers have the basics nailed, so look for small upgrades to routines they repeat every few weeks.
- The AirTag Passport Cover. If they use an iPhone, an AirTag tucked into the pocket (sold separately) means they can find their passport in the Find My app if it goes walkabout.
- A personalised luggage tag, because so many suitcases on the carousel look alike.
- A Large Memory Box. A standard boarding pass is about 20cm long, so it sits at an angle in the Medium but can lie flat in the 30cm Large, and frequent flyers collect plenty of them.
- A tech organiser that keeps chargers and cables in one place instead of tangled at the bottom of a bag.
For the travel lover who has everything
When someone has all the kit, stop buying kit. Unique gifts for travel lovers who have everything tend to be about memories rather than equipment.
- A home for the tickets they've already collected. Plenty of keen travellers have a stash of boarding passes and stubs in a drawer somewhere. A Memory Box gets them out of the drawer and onto the wall. For a lovely surprise, post in a ticket from a trip you shared before you wrap it.
- A framed map with the places they've been marked on it.
- A photo book of one trip, printed from the photos they shared at the time.
- An experience closer to home, like a guided walk in a UK city they've never explored. Plenty of seasoned travellers know Lisbon better than Liverpool.
For your best friend (and travel buddy)
Gifts for a best friend who loves to travel can lean into the trips you've taken together. In-jokes encouraged.
- A memory box of your trips. Dig out the boarding passes, gig tickets and blurry photos from your adventures, post them in, and hand over a box that's already full of stories. The Medium suits one big trip; the Large has room for years of them.
- Matching luggage tags with each other's initials, or a nickname only the two of you understand (you get up to 10 characters).
- The next trip, planned: a printed itinerary, a guidebook and a date in the diary. You both get the present.
- A framed photo from your travels. Pick the one from the trip where everything went wrong; it's always the best story.
- A playlist and a printed photo from your first trip together, tucked into a card. It costs almost nothing and means a lot.
Birthday and retirement gift ideas
Birthdays
A good birthday gift for someone who loves travelling often pairs one useful thing with one personal thing: a luggage tag with a postcard from somewhere you went together, or a guidebook with a handmade voucher for a day trip. For a milestone birthday, try a Memory Box filled with tickets from the last decade, or an empty one to start the next.
Retirement
For many people, retirement finally brings time for the trips they've talked about for years. A retirement gift for someone who loves to travel can look ahead: a guidebook for the big trip, good luggage, or a Large Memory Box ready for the adventures to come. If the office is having a collection, a few pounds each puts the over-£40 ideas within reach, and a gift set covers several bases at once.
Little touches that make it personal
- Post the first ticket in yourself. A memory box with one stub from a trip you took together feels far more personal than an empty one.
- Write a list of every place you've travelled together, by hand, on a card.
- Add initials. Personalisation turns a useful item into their item.
- Include a photo. A 6x4 print posts straight through a Memory Box slot, short end first.
- Get the timing right. Our tracked UK delivery takes 5-7 working days, so order a couple of weeks before the big day to be safe. Personalised items can't be returned if they simply change their mind, so double-check the spelling.
FAQs
What do you buy someone who loves to travel?
Decide between something useful for their next trip and something sentimental about the last one. Useful ideas include luggage tags, packing cubes and a passport cover. Sentimental ideas include a memory box for their tickets, a framed map or a photo book. If you're unsure how they travel, sentimental is usually the safer bet.
What's a unique gift for a travel lover?
Something built around their own trips. A memory box with a ticket from a shared holiday already inside, a print of a place that matters to them, or letters to open on their next journey are all one of a kind, because nobody else has the same memories to put in them.
What is a good gift for someone who travels a lot?
Look for upgrades to the things they do constantly: a personalised luggage tag so their case is easy to spot, a passport cover with an AirTag pocket, a tech organiser for cables, or a Large memory box for all those boarding passes. Anything that saves time, space or hassle on the road tends to go down well.
Browse travel gifts
Still not sure what to get someone who loves to travel? The best presents say "I know where you've been, and I can't wait to hear where you're going next." Have a look at our gift set collection to find theirs.