Love to travel, or looking for that perfect gift for a travel lover in your life? Here’s my Christmas Gift Guide 2019 for female travel lovers, full of fun ideas and travel essentials for anyone who loves to travel. As a full time backpacker and professional travel blogger, this is what I would be asking Santa for, from new camera equipment to travel-themed jewellery and unique travel experiences – here’s my curated list of 9 perfect travel gifts for her. Looking for gifts for him? Well maybe he’ll like some father suggestions too. 😉
NOTE: There are NO affiliate links in this post. I genuinely believe all these gift ideas are fabulous and that you will love them, plus I want to support some of my friends and their hard work.
Travel Gifts For Her: Top Experiences
1. A Tinggly Experience Box
Want to give the gift of a a unique travel experience instead of a physical gift this Christmas? Then Tinggly is the place to look!
Tinggly is a company that offers amazing virtual (and physical) experience boxes where the receiver can choose from hundreds of Bucket List Experiences around the world, from doing a food tour in Thailand, white water rafting in Bali to touring Dingle Bay in Ireland by boat in search of Fungi the Dolphin!
Depending on where your friend or loved one is travelling to, they can book a unique bucket list experience of their choice with their Tinggly gift voucher – totally eliminating the chance of buying someone a gift they might not like / enjoy.
Tinggy are offering up to 33% off their boxes this Black Friday!
2. A DNA Testing Kit
This is a unique gift idea that I’m kind of in love with. Why not gift someone a 23andMe DNA Test kit, so they can see where their ancestors came from and potentially book a fun trip to trace their footsteps.
23andMe are currently offering 50% off their Health and Ancestry service this Black Friday, reduced from $199 to $99. They also have great discounts on their other DNA Test services, withs one reduced to as little as $79.
I know I would absolutely LOVE to try this service sometime and then plan trips to all the countries where my ancestors came from in search of a little piece of my history.
3. The gift of learning
Someone suggested this idea to me last week as an ideal Christmas gift and I loved it. Why not give the gift of LEARNING this Christmas – a gift your loved one will surely never forget.
Some ideas thrown my way included the gift of TEFL certificate, perfect for a recent University graduate looking to travel the world. A TEFL certificate will allow you to work and travel on multiple continents from teaching English in South Korea to Japan, China, Thailand and even in countries across Europe.
The Tefl Academy have up to 60% off this Black Friday for anyone looking to get qualified or gift a TEFL course to a loved one.
Travel Gifts For Her: Thoughtful gifts
4. Travel-Themed Jewellery
Jewellery is almost always a good idea when looking for a gift idea for a female friend or loved one, but an idea that’s even better is travel-themed jewellery like the beautiful pieces from El Camino.
Don’t just gift a bracelet or necklace bought at a shop and within true meaning! Instead check out the El Camino range of custom, handmade bracelets and necklaces for people who love to travel.
Their beautiful collection includes interchangeable beads that represent regions, counties, islands, cities, places, landmarks, seas and oceans – so you can custom create a bracelet with the city or country name of your choice, making their jewellery a great gift for travel lovers.
5. Professional lenses for her smartphone
This is absolutely on my Christmas wish list from Santa, especially since I recently upgraded my phone and fully believe the cameras on smartphones are NEXT LEVEL these days.
Pixter sells professional lenses that can be clipped on and used with your smartphone. Imagine being able to take beautiful portraits or shoot wide angle shots, without having to haul around your lathe DSLR camera?!
Pixter’s aim is to help people great professional photos with their smartphones, whatever the brand of the phone, saving you space in you backpack (which we ALL need) and saving you thousands of dollars too.
6. The gift of connection
Know someone going travelling soon who is slightly worried about how they will stay connected with home? I don’t think anyone wishes to travel without an internet connection these days, as it’s kind of needed for everything from ordering food or a taxi to quickly checking a map to work out where on earth you are!
Travelwifi sells amazing WiFi Hot Spot devices (that work in over 100 destinations) that I know a lot of fellow travel bloggers I know use too, because we would go crazy without internet connections and buying a new SIM card or finding a cafe with WiFi isn’t always an option.
Give the gift of a travel internet connection this Christmas by snapping up one of these wireless hot spot devices.
Gifts For Travel Lovers: Travel Inspired Books
What better gift to buy a travel lover than a book about travel written by a talented FEMALE author?!
Some of the world’s best known travel bloggers (and my friends!) have actually recently become published authors, so here are 4 great travel books written by my fellow female blogger friends that you should consider investing in.
Think about these gifts as “the gift of inspiration”!
7. Anseo by Una Minh Kavanagh
This isn’t a travel book, but more of a memoir. However, it’s written by fellow Irish travel blogger and journalist USA Minh Kavanagh and it’s receiving great reviews both on and off line.
Anseo is a book about Una’s life thus far, being born in Vietnam, adopted by a single Irish woman from Kerry and her upbringing in Ireland and the struggles faced by a Vietnamese born Irishwoman who just happens to speak fluent Irish!
8. Solo Trip by Annika Ziehen
Solo Trip is a book about the joys of solo female travel, written by my friend and fellow travel blogger Annika Ziehan. This book dispels myths about solo travel always being dangerous, boring or lonely and shows readers the joy solo travel brought the author one rthe past 20 years of travelling the world.
9. Where is She? From Travel To Trauma
A book every solo female travel lover should read because while solo travel is inspiring and wonderful and empowering, it’s not always perfect and YES there are many downsides, some of which we might be scared to talk about.
“Where is she?” is written by one of my close friends Aly, who also happens to be a kickass YouTuber and all round Girl Boss (although she would never call her self that because she’s wayyy too modest) and is the perfect gift for any solo female travellers in your life not afraid of the truth, harsh realities but also looking to read a book by one of our generations funniest and most lovable travel YouTubers.
