Most Popular 2024 Bucket List Activities: Adventure Travel Personality Quiz Results
There’s been an amazing response to our Adventure Travel Personality Quiz. So, we thought we’d share some of the results, including your most popular 2024 bucket list activities and the most common adventure travel personalities.
First off, the most prominent Adventure Travel Personality type is the Lone Wolf (44% of respondents) 🐺 ((hello solo travellers)). Next is the Inquisitive Owl (33%) 🦉 followed by the Eager Otter (10%) 🦦. Meanwhile, the Bucket List Bee 🐝 and Adrenaline Monkey 🐒 are the least common personalities, trailing with 7% and 6% of the results to date.
When it comes to activities, you voted your top three bucket list adventures as follows:
Seeing the Northern Lights is the most popular bucket list activity in the world
Second place is trekking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu
Visiting the Galapagos Islands comes in third
Quiz Background
To date, over 4,000 people from all over the world have answered Skyhook’s quiz survey. We asked about your adventure travel preferences as part of a broader look into people’s adventure personality traits.
As part of the survey, you selected three activities that would be on the top of your bucket list. There were 15 activities to choose from, including climbing Kilimanjaro, trekking with gorillas, hot air ballooning in Cappadocia, and cruising in the Antarctic.
Not surprisingly, preferences differed based on generation, gender, and country.
Most Popular 2024 Bucket List Activities
Here is the complete list of activities in order of most to least popular as voted by you:
See the Northern Lights
Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
Visit the Galapagos Islands
Climb Kilimanjaro
Antarctic cruise
Explore the ancient city of Petra
Everest Base Camp Trek
Go on an African safari
Dive the Great Barrier Reef
Space travel
Gorilla trekking
See the Grand Canyon
Cappadocia hot air balloon
Visit Angkor Wat
Surf in Indonesia
Further Insights on the Top Ten Bucket List Activities
Here, we dive a little deeper, giving insights into your top ten most popular bucket list activities.
We’ve included information based on responses from:
People in different countries
The various generations: Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964, aka Boomers; Gen X: Born 1965 to 1980; Millennials: Born 1981 to 2000; Gen Z: Born 2001 to 2020
Different genders: When asked about gender, 99% of respondents selected either female or male. So, we used these two answers to perform the analysis.
1. See the Northern Lights
In 2024, seeing the Northern Lights was at the top of most bucket lists; 38% of people worldwide chose it as the ultimate experience. This interest could be linked to recent sightings over the UK and Europe, which caught everyone's attention and got a tonne of media coverage.
South Africans were particularly enthusiastic, with 39% putting the Northern Lights in their top three choices. This was closely followed by Belgians and UAE residents.
Among different age groups, Gen Z showed a strong preference, with 62% voting interest—maybe all those stunning social media posts earlier this year played a role?
Interestingly, women were especially keen on this experience, with 43% marking it as their top bucket list item.
2. Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
Heading to Machu Picchu via the Inca Trail grabs the second spot on people's must-do adventure lists, according to 34% of global respondents. The UK stands out with the highest enthusiasm, as 39% of its residents are eager to explore this ancient route.
Gen X and millennials show a strong interest in this trek, with 38% of Gen X and 37% of millennials voting it as a top adventure.
When it comes to gender preferences, women show a slightly stronger inclination, with 36% eager to experience it compared to 31% of men.
3. Visit the Galapagos Islands
Exploring the Galapagos Islands ranks as the third most sought-after bucket list experience, with 29% of people worldwide rating it as one of their top activities. Germans are especially keen, with 37% listing it as their top must-do adventure.
Interestingly, Gen X shows strong enthusiasm for the Galapagos Islands, with 34% including it in their top three activities. Meanwhile, it ranks at the bottom of the top 10 for Gen Z, highlighting the varying travel preferences across generations.
4. Climb Kilimanjaro
Although Germans were the most enthusiastic of all the countries (36% voted it in their top three) to conquer Kilimanjaro, it wasn't their highest-voted adventure. Germany’s top experience was seeing the Northern Lights.
Climbing Kilimanjaro captured most Canadians' hearts, with about a third of them eager to conquer its summit.
When it comes to generations, Gen Xers showed the greatest enthusiasm for Kilimanjaro, with 29% voting it as their top choice. In contrast, Boomers seemed less interested, with only 8% selecting it.
A notable gender difference also emerged: men were doubly interested in hiking the iconic mountain compared to women. 37% of men versus 18% of women considered it their ultimate bucket list adventure.
5. Antarctic cruise
Of all the countries, Irish respondents showed the most enthusiasm for an Antarctic cruise, with 35% expressing a desire for this icy adventure.
Antarctic cruising was particularly popular among Boomers, with 46% ranking it in their top three choices. Given that it is one of the less physically demanding activities on the list, this preference isn't unexpected.
Also read: Bucket list ideas for 50 year olds.
It's worth noting that Antarctic cruising received nearly equal interest from both women (24%) and men (23%), highlighting its broad appeal across genders.
Get the genuine experience
6. Explore the ancient city of Petra
Based on the survey results, country-wise, exploring the ancient city of Petra received the most interest from Belgians. Despite capturing 28% of their votes, it only ranks fourth on their overall bucket list, though.
Petra is especially appealing to Boomers, with 31% placing it among their top three destinations.
Check out the Dana to Petra Trek in Jordan.
7. Everest Base Camp Trek
When looking at the enthusiasm for the Everest Base Camp (EBC) trek by country, the Irish lead the way with 33% of the vote, followed closely by 31% from the UAE.
Generationally, Millennials (24%) are the most interested in tackling this iconic trek. However, they’d still prefer to do the other two bucket list hikes (Kilimanjaro and Inca Trail) over EBC.
8. Go on an African safari
UAE respondents came out ahead of all other countries in favour of going on safari, with 36% expressing interest.
Interestingly, this activity had the closest vote among generations, with only a 6% difference: Millennials led with 21%, Gen X at 19%, Gen Z at 17%, and Boomers at 15%.
There was also a notable gender preference, with women being 1.6 times more interested in an African safari than men (23% vs.14%).
9. Dive the Great Barrier Reef
Compared to other countries, Belgians are the most enthusiastic about diving the Great Barrier Reef, with 31% giving it a thumbs-up.
Among generations, Gen Z is particularly interested. With 26% voting for this experience, it was their second favourite after the Northern Lights.
On the other hand, the United States showed the lowest overall interest in this as a bucket list activity, with only 11% of respondents keen on diving the Great Barrier Reef.
10. Space travel
Even though commercial space travel isn't accessible yet, it has definitely sparked our imaginations! Germany leads the pack with 32% of votes for space travel, followed by Canada at 25% and the United States at 18%.
Gen Z is the most excited about this futuristic adventure within the various age groups - 23% showed interest. Gen X shows the least enthusiasm at just 7%.
Interestingly, men are three times more open to space travel than women (24% vs. 8%).
Space travel didn’t feature highly in Switzerland’s books, though. The country gave it their lowest bucket list vote overall, with only 5% of people wanting to participate.
Check Out the Results Tables
Table 1
Table 1 presents the bucket list activities ranked by their global popularity from highest to lowest. This was based on the percentage of the top three votes each activity received.
Table 2
Table 2 shows the percentage of the top three votes each bucket list activity received from people in various countries.
Table 3
Table 3 shows the distribution of the top three votes made by each generation.
Table 4
Table 4 shows how women and men placed their votes for their top three bucket list activities.
Quiz Survey Methodology
The quiz went out to Skyhook’s customer database of 30,000 travellers. We’re also promoting it on the Skyhook website, which receives 50,000 monthly visitors.
At the time of analysis, over 4,000 people had completed the survey (4,042 people).
Insight for this 2024 bucket list study was gathered from a survey question asking you to choose your top three bucket list activities from a list of 15 options. Skyhook selected these activity options after doing internet research on the top bucket list adventures across the world.
During the study, we also asked participants to provide the following information:
Age
Country location
Gender (we include the option for Other and Prefer not to say, but the number of people who selected these was negligible)
Age Analysis
To date, people from four generations have answered the study questions. Where mentioned, the following applies:
Baby Boomers: Born 1946 to 1964 (also known as Boomers)
Gen X: Born 1965 to 1980
Millennials: Born 1981 to 2000
Gen Z: Born 2001 to 2020
The study had an uneven number of respondents representing the different generational groups. So, we calculated multipliers for three generations to get a proportional representation against the biggest response group.
We divided the most-represented generation against the three other groups to do this. This gave us a multiplier for the number of votes from the three generations with the lowest representation.
Country Location Analysis
When we analysed the survey information, we found that people from nearly 50 countries had taken the quiz. For this case study, we narrowed the focus to the ten countries with the most respondents.
Because the number of respondents in each country varied, we calculated multipliers to scale the answers from each location proportionally.
We took the country with the highest number of respondents and divided the number of respondents with each of the other nine countries. This gave us a multiplier for those with lower votes.
We then took that country multiplier and applied it against the number of votes each activity received from each country.
Gender Analysis
The quiz received responses from various gender groups. Since 99% of participants identified as female or male, we focused our gender analysis on these two groups.
The study gathered responses from different gender groups. To ensure that both genders were proportionally represented in the voting, we calculated a multiplier for the smaller group by dividing the number of respondents in the larger group by those in the smaller group. This multiplier was then used to adjust the number of votes from the smaller group, providing a balanced and proportional outcome.
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