On the cliffsides of Galway, one thing cuts through the sound of the Atlantic crashing against the jagged coastline: American accents.
Of course, it’s a perfect example of the running joke that travelers from the States somehow become louder and more recognisably American the further they travel from home, but in Ireland, there is another explanation for the number of visitors crossing the ocean.
For many of these tourists, a visit to the Emerald Isle is not just a vacation but a personal pilgrimage to retrace a family story that began generations ago. Ancestry or heritage travel is when, instead of picking a destination for a standard vacation, travelers use family history research or DNA results to walk in the footsteps of their relatives. The freshly pulled pints of Guinness and the magnificence of the Wild Atlantic Way are pleasant bonuses, but the real destinations on the stop-off list might be the church where a great-grandmother was baptised, the village she left behind, or the patch of land a family once owned and lived.
At-home DNA testing has made it possible to begin tracing a family history from the kitchen table, while digitized archives and historical records have brought information that once required years of painstaking research within reach of anyone with an internet connection. Yet the more we can discover online, the more compelling it seems to become to go and see it for ourselves.
A 2025 Marriott survey of more than 20,000 travelers across EMEA found that 36 percent had already taken a heritage holiday, while a further 32 percent planned to do so in the near future. The enthusiasm is particularly pronounced among younger travelers: 43 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 45 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds had taken a heritage trip, citing that “it was important to know where their family came from and understand what their lives were like.”
Marriott isn’t alone in identifying the trend, though. As Jacqueline Grossman, VP of marketing partnerships at the luxury tour operator Kensington, explains: “When we launched Personal Heritage Journeys with Ancestry in 2021, we knew there was an appetite for travelers to better understand their family roots. [But] what we’ve seen over the past five years is just how powerful that motivation can be.”
Kensington’s answer has been to turn that research into fully private journeys, developed with AncestryProGenealogists. Rather than adding an ancestral village to a conventional Italian or Irish itinerary, the company starts with the family story and lets the research dictate where the trip goes. One traveler might trace an ancestor from Palermo into the Sicilian countryside; another could spend a day following an Irish great-grandmother through parish records, former homes, and places of emigration.
“Every Personal Heritage Journey begins with the individual family’s history and objectives,” Grossman says. “Two travelers could both tell us that their families came from Sicily and ultimately have completely different journeys.”
Luxury travellers are increasingly looking beyond the traditional markers of a bespoke trip for experiences that feel genuinely personal, and heritage travel takes that idea to its logical conclusion where the itinerary is built around a story that belongs to one family alone. “Travelers still want extraordinary hotels, private guides, and incredible food,” she explains, “but increasingly they also want to come home feeling that a journey meant something.”
Luxury cruise line Regent Seven Seas Cruises has seen a similar appetite through its Spotlight on Heritage with Ancestry sailings, which combine its all-inclusive sailing experience with access to AncestryPro Genealogist’s experts. Guests can investigate their family histories through private consultations, lectures, and Q&As during the voyage, before taking bespoke excursions to ancestral homes, churches, or hometowns. There are even oral-history sessions, allowing guests to record their own stories to pass down to the next generation.
“Luxury travelers increasingly seek journeys offering more than exceptional destinations and service,” says Janice Davidson, chief brand officer at Regent. “They are looking for experiences that reflect their individual passions, interests, and identities.”
But heritage is not always a sentimental return to an ancestral village. Kensington’s expanded program now stretches from Sicily and Ireland to Ghana, Poland, and Japan, reflecting the diverse stories that sit within a family tree. In Ghana, DNA research can help members of the African diaspora investigate connections fractured by the transatlantic slave trade; in Poland, journeys can involve the history of Jewish families affected by the Holocaust and World War II.
“We don’t want to assume that discovering your family history is always fully celebratory,” notes Grossman. “Sometimes what travelers uncover is incredibly joyful, but these journeys can also involve stories of persecution, forced displacement, slavery, war, and loss.”
Grossman recalls one journey Kensington arranged to Poland for a family whose grandmother had survived a concentration camp during the Holocaust but had never returned to the country afterwards. “We were able to bring her back with her family, allowing multiple generations to experience that history together. It was obviously a very different kind of heritage journey; one centered not simply on discovering where a family came from, but on bearing witness to what one generation had endured.”
Some of the most memorable journeys of clients are, unsurprisingly, often the ones where the research takes an unexpected turn. One Kensington client set out believing he understood his family history, only for genealogical research to reveal that two branches had been merged in the story passed down through generations. The discovery allowed him to trace his ancestry several generations further back, to what is now Croatia.
“The research ultimately revealed that the last known member of his family still living in the area had died only a year earlier,” Grossman reflects. “You might imagine that would have been disappointing, but instead he was incredibly grateful for everything he had discovered and for the opportunity to travel there and experience the place for himself.”
Grossman also tells me about a mother and her daughter who traveled to Puglia with the original goal of finding the church where her grandmother had married. Instead, local research uncovered living relatives in the local area, who invited them to dinner. More than 30 people eventually gathered around a summer table in an olive orchard, sharing food, wine, and family stories.
It is difficult to provide a better example of what heritage travel offers that a DNA test cannot. A database can tell you where your ancestors came from; a family tree can give you their names and dates. But standing in the place they once called home – and, occasionally, finding the people who still do – turns the past into something considerably harder to leave behind.
