Last Updated on December 6, 2018

The Holiday Season is upon us, and if you are like me, you are currently spending your evenings in front of your laptop ordering gifts online. Well, in my case it would be more fittingly to say: my commutes on the subway on my phone, making one purchase after the other. I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t stand the crowds that are strolling up and down Fifth Avenue these days, to shop for gifts and to marvel at the Christmas lights and window displays, which is why 95% of my gift shopping is being done online this year, and if you are enjoying shopping from the peace and quiet of your home as much as I do, you’ll appreciate that my gift recommendations for travel lovers are all just one click away – leaving the house is not required!

Without further ado – here’s my 2018 gift guide, and as usual, you won’t find any ridiculously priced item on my list, and only products that are on my own wish list or things that I’ve gotten myself and loved. Nobody pays me anything to add any particular item to this list, and I am happy to support the small businesses / independent authors / entrepreneurs whose products I’ve included.

Table of Contents

Travel Journal

I personally love travel journals and think they make a fantastic gift for anyone who is about to set off on an epic journey. There are so many beautiful travel-themed journals to choose from these days, but here are some of my favorites (and all under $15):

Travel Journal | Leather Journal Notebook | Moleskin Travel Journal

Starting at: $12.99

Portable Charger

If the person you’re looking to find a gift for is, like me, a practical person, they will very much appreciate a practical gift such as a portable charger. I recommended various external batteries / chargers in my previous gift guides, but this year, when I bought yet another charger (I keep losing them, it’s not that they stop working), and chose Anker, I realized that this is by far my favorite brand when it comes to portable chargers (and other travel electronics). The chargers are small, light, inexpensive, have lots of charging power and most importantly: they don’t lose it – unlike many others.

This is a gift that will get a lot of use, and the person who receives it will appreciate it on a daily basis.

Price: $31.99

Globe Journal

This customizable globe is the perfect gift for someone who has just returned from a round-the-world-trip! You can doodle on the globe, add pins, basically add all your personal memories of your trip, and mark all the places you went to. I would’ve loved this globe when I first traveled around the globe back in 2010.

Price: $42

Travel Books

As a bookworm, I include travel books every year in my Holiday Gift Guide – and luckily, every year I find new ones I enjoy. Among the best ones I’ve read this year were:

Rediscovering Travel: A Guide for the Globally Curious (Seth Kugel)
The former New York Times’ Frugal Traveler talks about rediscovering travel in a time where we are all way too connected, travel has become (too?) easy thanks to apps, Googlemaps and the internet, and how we can reconnect with our curiosity about the world despite an over-presentation of instagrammable places in our social media feeds.
The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World: Love, Loss, and Other Catastrophes–through Italy, India, and Beyond (Torre De Roche)
This book was actually published last year, but only after hearing my friend Katie raving about it and meeting the author at a conference this year I decided to buy it for my beach vacation. And I should’ve known that I’d enjoy it – I loved Torre’s first book, Love With A Chance Of Drowning. in this book, another memoir, Torre takes us on a pilgrimage across Italy and later India – yes, on foot. Of course, this is a journey that can’t happen without plenty of adventures and introspection.
Neuland (Eshkol Nevo)
This 600-page tome was my favorite travel novel I read this year – a story of an Israeli who travels to South America to find his father who’d traveled to Ecuador and gone missing there. I don’t want to spoil too much of the story, but no matter if you’ve been to the places that the books takes you to or not, the author makes you feel as if you were right there with him.

Books start at $11.99

Here’s a more comprehensive list of travel books that make excellent gifts for globetrotters – most under $20!

Travel-themed T-Shirts

I bought two T-shirts this year that reveal a lot more about myself than you can see at first sight 😉 My fellow bloggers Caitlin and Kate launched Adventurous Merch, a range of T-shirts with travel slogans that describe your travel personality or favorite places, and Girls Love Travel, a global community of female travelers, has a bunch of T-shirts and hoodies that make it easy for GLTers to identify each otheron the road.

T-Shirts start at $19.99

Destination Cutting Board

These beautiful bamboo cutting boards are a great gift for those who love travel and cooking (me!) – you’ll find yourself reminded of your favorite places every day while you’re chopping away in the kitchen.

Price: $30

Homesick Scented Candles

These scented candles are perfect for travelers who fall in love with a place and are desperate to return there at some point. Fellow New York City lovers will appreciate the NYC candle, but there are also candles for each of the 50 states, and country candles range from India to Mexico. There are even region-specific candles like Southern California!

Floppy Sun Hats

Every girl who travels needs a big floppy hat! I got the Callanan round crown hat by Tenth Street a few months ago and I’ve taken it with me to the beach every single time ever since. Check out the Tenth Street website for a wide selection of stylish women’s and men’s hats.

Price: $48

A country-themed literary gift box

I discovered these literary boxes by chance when I was looking for country-specific novels and ordered a couple of them for friends right away – they are the perfect gift for travelers who read! In addition to a book set in the country of your choice (for example India, Lebanon, China), the box contains some snacks and tea (or coffee) from the respective country to go with the book. You can also get an annual subscription (see below).

Travel Subscription Box

I included a the Try The World travel subscription box in last year’s gift guide, but there are some new travel-themed subscription boxes out there and I think they make fantastic gifts because you get something out of it for an entire year (and I personally adore my monthly Birchbox).

My favorites are:

BookVoyage – Explore the world through literature!
Universal Yums – Explore the world through candy and snacks
Wanderlust – a discovery box with over $250 worth of beauty, style, travel and fitness essentials that you receive once every three months