Why surprise travel works

This blog evolves around the concept of omakase (お任せ) – when you’re ordering at a restaurant pretty much means, “I’ll leave it up to you”, inviting the chef to be innovative and surprising in the selection of dishes. It evolves around surprise, around traveling freed of expectations. Companies like srprs.me but also other experience travel agencies are based on this. But why surprise travel works so well? Here’s my 2 cents.

If you’re unprepared, you’re not planning.

If you’re not planning, you don’t have expectations.

If you’re not having expectations, you will not be disappointed

If you’re not disappointed, it can only be positive.

If it can only be positive, it might actually maybe, possibly, potentially as well be the most amazing and memorable thing you have ever experienced.

You never know. But it could very well be.

If you apply this, you experience more. You are more likely to stumble upon an amazing part of the city that wasn’t mentioned in the Lonely Planet. You are more likely to meet new people, to have the staff in your restaurant pick your food or to have a hipster local point you to the best possible bars and restaurants.

Or ot be more specific: You are more likely to end up drinking tea with Bedouins in the desert, to do the haka with Maori in New Zealand, end up bar crawling with people you never met in Tokyo, sharing life stories with drunk Russian millionaires in London and my other amazing travel memories.

Why surprise travel works so well is actually super simple – when you’re free of expectations, there’s a world to win.