A Different Way to Travel. A Better Way to Remember It.
At FoodFamilyTravel.com®, we believe the best travel experiences aren’t necessarily the ones that go exactly according to plan. They’re the ones that become part of your family story- the restaurant everyone still talks about years later, the unexpected detour that turned into an adventure, the conversation with a stranger, the museum your child didn’t want to leave, or the sunset that made everyone stop and look.
That belief is the foundation of Memory-First Travel™, the guiding philosophy behind FoodFamilyTravel.com®. Instead of planning a trip around the idea of a perfect vacation packed with sightseeing and stop after stop, we ask a more meaningful question: What will we remember five years from now?
That question changes the way we travel. It encourages us to look beyond the checklist of attractions and think about how a destination, a meal, a hotel, a cultural experience or a simple afternoon together might actually feel. And yes, we still LOVE- and go to- all the major tourist attractions in the cities we visit around the world. Those iconic places are iconic for a reason. But we also make sure to leave room for the unexpected.
That philosophy has brought us an unexpected day at the Australian Open, a private tour at the Singapore Night Safari, an early sunrise at the Pantheon in Rome, and nights in Venice singing Bailando with strangers from around the world while eating cicchetti. Every one of our trips seems to include moments like these- experiences we couldn’t have predicted when we woke up that morning, but that somehow become the moments we talk about long after we’ve returned home. They are the experiences that change us, connect us to other people and become part of our family’s story.
Because sometimes the most meaningful parts of a trip aren’t the things we planned. They’re the moments we could never have put on an itinerary.
What Is Memory-First Travel™?
Memory-First Travel™ is our approach to family travel, luxury travel and everyday exploration that puts meaningful experiences and lasting memories ahead of a perfectly executed itinerary. It is about being intentional about the moments we want to create while leaving enough room for the unexpected moments we could never have planned.
We love beautiful hotels, exceptional restaurants, thoughtful service and experiences that are worth traveling for. But luxury, to us, isn’t simply about where you stay or what you spend. It can be having the time to linger over a meal, discovering a place together, giving your children the freedom to ask questions, or being able to say, “Let’s see where this road goes.”
The best family vacations often happen when everyone is genuinely engaged in the experience- not simply moving from one scheduled activity to the next.
One of the most meaningful parts of seeing this philosophy take shape has been sharing it with audiences far beyond FoodFamilyTravel.com®. I was honored to first share the idea of Memory-First Travel™ with my former colleagues at ABC News, and I have since had the opportunity to bring the concept to millions of viewers through television networks and stations across the country. What began as a simple question for our own family-“What will we remember five years from now?”-has grown into a philosophy I am grateful to share with families everywhere.
Travel for the Story You’ll Tell Later
Some of our favorite travel memories began with something that wasn’t on the itinerary.
Maybe you take a wrong turn and discover a neighborhood you never would have seen otherwise. You order something unfamiliar at dinner and discover a new favorite food. Your child becomes fascinated by an ancient ruin, a piece of architecture or the story behind a local tradition. A rainy afternoon changes your plans and leads to an afternoon you never expected. You meet someone who gives you a recommendation that becomes the highlight of the trip.
These moments matter because they give travel texture. They turn a destination from somewhere you visited into somewhere you experienced.
Memory-First Travel™ doesn’t mean abandoning an itinerary. It means leaving room inside it for life to happen.
Family Travel Is About More Than the Destination
Traveling with children gives us an especially good reason to think this way. A family trip isn’t simply an opportunity to see more of the world; it is an opportunity to learn and experience the world together.
A meal can become a conversation about ingredients, geography, and culinary traditions. A historic site can open the door to questions about the people who lived there. A theme park can lead to conversations about engineering, storytelling, architecture, music and technology (our HEART Method™). A walk through a new city can become a lesson in culture and observation without ever feeling like school.
That’s one of the reasons we believe travel with kids can be one of the richest forms of learning. Children don’t have to sit at a desk to be curious, ask questions, investigate how something works or discover a new perspective. Sometimes the best classroom is a new place.
Our goal is to find family travel experiences that make everyone want to look a little closer, ask a few more questions, and stay a little longer.
Luxury Travel, Reimagined
Memory-First Travel™ also shapes the way we think about luxury travel.
For us, luxury isn’t about excess. It’s about choosing the experiences that make a trip feel meaningful, memorable and worth the journey- and understanding that luxury can look very different from one moment to the next. We may stay in a gorgeous hotel suite at night and eat incredible street food for lunch. We might have the best seats in the house for a concert or live theater, then spend the afternoon exploring a park, wandering through a museum or discovering a neighborhood on foot. We can appreciate exceptional restaurants, beautiful hotels, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences while still getting excited about the little local café, the food market or the hole-in-the-wall place someone tells us we simply have to try.
That’s Balanced Luxury™. It’s not about choosing between luxury and authenticity, or between the polished experience and the wonderfully imperfect one. It’s about having both- and knowing that the contrast can make each experience even more memorable. To us, true luxury is having the freedom to experience a destination fully, in all of its different layers, and to decide what feels special to us rather than what we’re supposed to consider luxurious. We look for ways to save and where to splurge for an incredible luxury experience. We love sharing all of those with you.
From Memory-First Travel™ to Memory-First Living™
Eventually, we realized that this philosophy didn’t belong only to travel.
Why wait for vacation to create the memories you want to keep?
That realization led us to Memory-First Living™, the everyday extension of Memory-First Travel™. It is the idea that our lives are being made up of memories right now- not someday when we have more time, when the kids are older, when work slows down or when circumstances are perfect.
Memory-First Living™ can be as simple as making an extraordinary meal on an ordinary Tuesday, taking the long way home, exploring your own city, saying yes to an experience that wasn’t planned, lingering around the dinner table, celebrating a small milestone or turning an ordinary afternoon into something worth learning and remembering.
It doesn’t require a passport or a five-star hotel. It requires attention.
Some of the memories that stay with us longest are remarkably ordinary: the smell of dinner cooking in the kitchen, a song playing in the car, a late-night conversation, a child’s laugh, a family tradition that began almost by accident (like our live-mic home karaoke multiple times a week). We don’t always recognize those moments as important while they’re happening. That’s precisely why we want to be more intentional about noticing them.
The Question We Keep Coming Back To
Memory-First Travel™ isn’t about squeezing more experiences into a vacation. In fact, sometimes it means doing less.
It means asking what matters. It means leaving room to wander. It means putting the phone down long enough to actually see the place you’re visiting. It means letting children participate in the experience instead of simply being taken through it. It means trying the food, talking to the locals, learning the history and allowing a little imperfection into the plan.
Most of all, it means remembering that the goal isn’t to have a perfect trip. The goal is to have a meaningful one.
Because five years from now, you probably won’t remember every reservation or every perfectly timed transfer. You may not even remember the name of the hotel.
But you’ll remember the meal where everyone tried something new. You’ll remember the unexpected adventure. You’ll remember the person you met. You’ll remember the afternoon your child discovered something they loved. You’ll remember laughing so hard that everyone around you started laughing, too.
Those are the moments that become family stories.
How We Travel. How We Live.
Memory-First Travel™ is the lens through which we explore family travel, luxury travel, food, culture, learning, wellness, theme parks, hotels, cruises and destinations around the world at FoodFamilyTravel.com®. It is why we’re interested not only in where you should go, but in what you might experience when you get there- and what might still matter long after you come home.
It is also why FoodFamilyTravel.com® is ultimately about more than travel.
It’s about making the most of the time we have.
We travel to see the world. We eat to experience culture. We explore to stay curious. We spend time together because those ordinary days are becoming our memories, too.
And when we ask, “What will we remember five years from now?”, we’re not just deciding where to go next.
We’re deciding how we want to live.
That is Memory-First Travel™.
And that is the heart of FoodFamilyTravel.com®.