Teen Travel Gift Guide (What They Really Want)

Best travel gifts for teens: our teen gift guide with ideas they'll actually use! From experience gifts to luggage and tech essentials.

Struggling with holiday shopping for your teen traveler? In this quick episode, I share my teen gift guide featuring the best travel gifts for teens and tweens – vetted by my own 14 and 11-year-old! From experience-based gifts that create lasting memories to practical gear they'll use on every trip, these are the gifts traveling teens actually want.

In This Episode:

• Experience gifts that connect teens to destinations (street art tours, zip lining, cooking classes)
• Real luggage recommendations that will last through college
• Portable comfort items like travel blankets and sunglasses
• Low-tech entertainment: puzzle books and travel journals
• Tech essentials: headphones, gaming consoles, and action cameras

Whether you're shopping for birthdays or the holidays, these travel gift ideas will delight the teen or tween traveler in your life!

Best travel gifts for teens

Hosted by Melissa Conn, founder of The Family Voyage, certified Child Passenger Safety Technician, and mom of two who proves family travel is achievable for everyone.

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Transcript

Melissa: 0:02

Hey there, and welcome back to Family Travel Unpacked. I'm Melissa and you're listening to another Quick Tip Tuesday. In case you're new here, you can always find tons of detailed destination guides, travel tips, hacks, and more on my website, thefamilyvoyage.com. So let me start off by saying happy almost Thanksgiving to those of you who are listening to this when it first airs. I hope you're getting excited for some quality time with your family this week, I know we are. If you're like me, you might also be thinking about getting started on that holiday shopping while you're digesting all your turkey. today I am sharing some gift ideas that my own kids helped me put together and honestly, a few of their picks surprised me. as you know, our family travels a ton and I'm always looking for gifts that my kids can actually use year after year, trip after trip. If you wanna shop all the suggestions that I'm making here in this episode, you can find them at thefamilyvoyage.com/teengifts. So here's what I did. I asked my son, who's 14, and my daughter who's 11, what they'd actually want as travel gifts. I tried to steer them away from tech. I wasn't totally successful, but we came up with a solid list that covers experiences, practical gear, and a couple of gadgets. Let's start with what I think is the best type of gift you can give your kids: experiences that are meant specifically for them. I'll be honest, usually I'm the one planning our trips, so I tend to focus on what I wanna do, whether it's a historical walking tour, museum, you know the drill. But my kids don't always wanna do that stuff. They want experiences that connect to their interests. My daughter loves crafts, food and performances. My son likes active adventures and he also likes the movies. Some of their favorite tours that are highly giftable have been things like a golf cart tour of the Wynwood Street Art in Miami, zip lining in Costa Rica, a gelato making workshop in Bologna. My son loved the Coliseum Underground tour that I booked for him in Rome, and my daughter had a great time at our mask making workshop in Venice. Coming up, we've got a tile painting workshop in Lisbon that's for my daughter and a Harry Potter locations tour in London for my son. Booking those experiences makes the kids more invested in our trips, and that's worth way more than any physical item I could get them. Now for actual gear... first, let's talk about real luggage. Now that we're into the tween in teen years, it's time to ditch the monogram, pottery Barn suitcases. I was talking with a friend recently about getting her 15-year-old a new suitcase, and I reminded her: whatever you buy for her now's gonna be the same thing that she's bringing home from college, taking on study abroad, and whatever other adventures she chooses. It's gotta be durable and it also has to be a little more mature than unicorns and dinosaurs. We've been using the Travelers Choice Pagosa series for three years and I'll be honest and say that our family fights over who gets to use that carry on on each of our trips. The organization inside is great. My friend, bought the two piece set for her daughter and they love it. But just a heads up, if you think you're gonna want the full set, buy it together because it's a lot cheaper than buying them separately. One suggestion from my son that really surprised me is he requested a travel blanket. He wants something super portable for our long flights that'll keep him cozy. The Rumple travel puffy blanket packs down to about the size of a water bottle, so it can clip to his backpack or it can fit into a stretchy water bottle compartment. It is only 52 inches long, which works for my smaller size kids, but they make a full size original one that's 75 inches. That'll be better for your taller teens. As a bonus, those will work great for drafty Airbnbs, the bus ride home from ski club or camping trips that are always colder than we expect. I love that my kid might be able to use that all year round. My kids had a different opinion on whether or not toiletry cases count as a present. My son claimed it was just an excuse to avoid buying him a real gift. But my daughter, she was all in. Honestly, the teen and tween years are when I expect my kids to start managing their own personal stuff, toothbrushes, deodorant, all that. For my son, I got a really simple toiletry bag off of Amazon that's got a bunch of compartments. My daughter, who's getting into makeup, she got a simple waterproof pouch, and that's been perfect. As she gets older, I'll probably upgrade her into a more serious organizer that can hold everything in one place, and I've linked that in my gift guide. Here's a fun one: Sunglasses. We live in Ohio, so we don't have sun half the year, but my kids do love wearing them when we go on tropical trips like cruises or Costa Rica or Hawaii. So before your next sunny getaway, check out goodr sunglasses. We went into one of their stores last time we were in LA, and my son immediately added a bunch of these to his wishlist. He loves the national parks ones and also the college collection. Here's another low tech item that my teen put on the list: a good old fashioned Sudoku or puzzle book. He and I actually like doing these together on flights. It keeps both of us off our screens and sometimes we work together on the harder ones or we'll compete on the easy ones with the timer. My son insisted that I include a few of his favorite tech items in this gift guide. First up, headphones. Both of my kids bring these on every trip, whether it's a long haul flight or a three hour road trip. Personally, I'm skipping the tiny AirPods even though they do have Apple devices. The AirPods just fall out too easily, especially if my kids fall asleep. We went for budget friendly earbuds that have a hook over the ear a couple of years ago, and those are still going strong. At the price we paid. I'm not gonna cry if they get lost or damaged. And again, I've linked those in the gift guide. If you're okay with something bulkier, the Anker SoundCore Life Q20 is a great choice. I'm actually thinking about getting a pair for our family because they have active noise cancellation, 40 hours of battery life, and the price is a major bargain right now. The noise cancellation helps to drown out aircraft noise without the kids having to crank up the volume. And that's great because they can hear whatever entertainment they're enjoying without damaging their hearing. Last but not least, my son definitely wanted me to put a portable gaming console on here. There's zero chance that he would travel without his Nintendo Switch 2. It makes the long haul economy flights pass by in a flash for him. For more casual gamers like my daughter, we opted for the switch light. It's cheaper, it's lighter, and it's super simple. So there you have it. Gift ideas straight from teens and tweens themselves. If you wanna see all the specific product recommendations and links, head over to thefamilyvoyage.com/teengifts. Have a great Thanksgiving everybody and if you found this helpful be sure to subscribe and leave a five star review below so that you don't miss any episodes. Safe travels.