Trip Types

Home stay

Homestay is a popular form of hospitality and lodging whereby visitors stay in a house or apartment of a local of the city to which they are traveling. The length of stay can vary from one night to even a year and can be free, in exchange for monetary compensation, in exchange for a stay at the guest’s property either simultaneously or at another time (home exchange), or in exchange for help on the host’s property. Longer term homestays are popular with students that are participating in study abroad programs. Homestays are examples of collaborative consumption and sharing. In cases where money is not exchanged in return for accommodation, they are examples of a barter economy or gift economy.

Students that are studying abroad and wish to participate in a homestay typically arrange them via the same local educational consultant who also organizes the academic aspect of their program. Independent students who assume all of their own travel arrangements can contact a local homestay placement agency to tailor their accommodation details, or alternatively may inquire via their respective school of study.

Travelers that wish to participate in a home stay typically arrange them via a hospitality service.The terms of the homestay are generally worked out in advance and will include items such as the type of accommodation, length of stay, chores required to be performed (e.g., cleaning, laundering, help on a farm), curfews, use of utilities and internet, television or telephone, and rules related to smoking, drinking, and drugs.

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Nature Walk

An educational trail (or sometimes educational path), nature trail or nature walk is a specially developed hiking trail or footpath that runs through the countryside, along which there are marked stations or stops next to points of natural, technological or cultural interest. These may convey information about, for example, flora and fauna, soil science, geology, mining, ecology or cultural history. Longer trails, that link more widely spaced natural phenomena or structures together, may be referred to as themed trails or paths.

In order to give a clearer explanation of the objects located at each station, display boards or other exhibits are usually erected, in keeping with the purpose of the trail. These may include: information boards, photographs and pictures, maps or plans, display cases and models, slides, sound or multimedia devices, facilities to enable experimentation and so on. The routes are regularly maintained.

Educational trails with a strong thematic content may also be called “theme paths”, “theme trails” or “theme routes”, or may be specially named after their subject matter, for example the Welsh Mountain Zoo Trail, Anglezarke Woodland Trail, Cheshire Lines Railway Path, Great Harwood Nature Trail, Irwell Sculpture Trail, Salthill Quarry Geology Trail and Wildlife Conservation Trail.

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Weekend Trips

The workweek and weekend are those complementary parts of the week devoted to labour and rest, respectively. The legal working week (British English), or workweek (American English), is the part of the seven-day week devoted to labour. In most of the Western world, it is Monday to Friday; the weekend is Saturday and Sunday. A weekday or workday is any day of the working week. Other institutions often follow the pattern, such as places of education.

In some Christian traditions, Sunday is the “day of rest and worship”. Jewish Shabbat or Biblical Sabbath lasts from sunset on Friday to the fall of full darkness on Saturday; as a result, the weekend in Israel is observed on Friday–Saturday. Some Muslim-majority countries historically had a Thursday–Friday or Friday–Saturday weekend; however, recently many such countries have shifted from Thursday–Friday to Friday–Saturday, or to Saturday–Sunday.

The Christian Sabbath was just one day each week, but the preceding day (the Jewish Sabbath) came to be taken as a holiday as well in the twentieth century. This shift has been accompanied by a reduction in the total number of hours worked per week, following changes in employer expectations. The present-day concept of the ‘week-end’ first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early part of nineteenth century and was originally a voluntary arrangement between factory owners and workers allowing Saturday afternoon off from 2pm in agreement that staff would be available for work sober and refreshed on Monday morning. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Union was the first to successfully demand a five-day work week in 1929.

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