The ancestry travel trend is calling more and more of us to experience an ancestral homeland, or retrace a great-great-grandparent’s journey to the United States. But planning the trip itself isn’t simple, unless you’re already friends with your Irish great-uncle on Instagram.

Before planning your genealogy trip, it’s worth figuring out what type of experience you’d truly like to have. Cultural immersion? A guided tour? We’ll look at six ways to experience ancestry travel, wherever your family tree’s roots may lie.

Remember that travel insurance is a must. Ancestry travel can be expensive, especially if you’re doing a cruise or a tour, and trip cancellation benefits can protect the money you invest. If you’re going overseas, you need emergency medical benefits in case you fall suddenly ill or suffer an injury. Discover all the benefits of travel insurance and get a quote today!

1. Seek an authentic ancestral experience.

When writer Mark Johanson decided to visit Sweden, he wanted to meet some distant relatives and learn more about his great-grandfather’s journey to America. But first, he traveled to Sweden’s wildlands to spend time with the indigenous Sami people — his best opportunity to live life as his distant ancestors would have.

He hiked through the mountains, ate cured moose sausage and cloudberry jam, and left electricity and his cell phone signal behind. “Outside the conical dwelling (called a goathie in the indigenous Sami language), the air threatened to dip below freezing. Yet, with my toes curled into a reindeer pelt and the central fire invoking another round of storytelling, none of the modern sacrifices seemed to matter,” he wrote.¹ It was a spiritual experience, Johanson said, that made him feel connected to the past. Find your own connection to your ancestors by planning a homestay or cultural immersion experience as part of your ancestry travel.

2. Use a DNA travel agency.

Ancestry, one of the leading consumer DNA-testing companies, has partnered with EF Go Ahead Tours to offer DNA-led heritage tours. The package includes an Ancestry DNA test to take a month before you depart, as well as a pre-trip review of your family history with AncestryProGenealogists.

DNA heritage tours are available for Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Italy. A genealogist who specializes in your specific country’s history accompanies the tour group. For an additional cost (around $2,000), Ancestry can arrange a customized tour of your ancestral village. A genealogist will travel there with you and take you to key sites, like cemeteries or the church where your great-great-grandparents got married. There are drawbacks to DNA travel, of course: the test alone can’t pinpoint specific counties or towns, and it’s wise to read the privacy policy closely before signing up.

3. Arrange a personal family history tour.

While a personalized tour is pricier than group ancestry travel, it’s an experience you’ll never forget. European Focus organizes ancestry tours built around your specific family history. They scout out your ancestral town, contact local historians and religious leaders, and ask you what sights you’d like to see.

If you go this route, we recommend making it a multigenerational trip. When else will your children and grandchildren have the chance to see firsthand where they came from? Your tour guide can plan activities that appeal to a range of age groups and abilities. (Get tips on successfully planning family travel.)

4. Dive into researching your family history.

If you’re an amateur genealogist yourself, you may want to build your trip around doing research. Let’s say your mother’s side of the family were German immigrants who lived in Philadelphia, and you want to know more about them: where they lived, what they did and what they experienced. Plan a trip to the Free Library of Philadelphia, which has an abundance of genealogy resources: old city maps and directories, lists of passengers on arriving steamships, census records, military records, etc. The city and state archives have even more resources: birth and death records, marriage records and wills. You could spend a whole week sifting through archives, photographing old neighborhoods and visiting museums (don’t forget to stop by the Frankford Hall biergarten for a beer and a brat!)

5. Take a genealogy cruise.

The beauty of combining ancestry travel with a cruise is that the experts come to you. Take, for example, the “Journey of Genealogy” cruise on the Queen Mary 2, in honor of the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage. The seven-night cruise voyages from Southampton, England to New York City, and features Ancestry experts who provide history lectures and help passengers trace their family trees. Regent Seven Seas Cruises offers a “Hometowns, Heritage and History” cruise that travels all around the Italian coast, visiting Venice, Calabria, Sicily, Corsica and finally Monte Carlo. Onboard genealogists offer private consultations.²

6. Just go.

Maybe it’s too difficult, too time-consuming or too expensive to embark on extensive genealogy research. Or maybe you’ve tried and found it impossible; a common experience for African-Americans, whose family history and identity was often erased by the slave trade, and who may not find any census records predating 1870.³ Ancestry travel is still possible and worthwhile — all you have to do is go.

“You may discover something unexpected about your family's history – or you may not,” as TripSavvy says. “It may take months or years before you find out whether the information you uncover on your family history vacation is useful. It's all part of the genealogy experience.”⁴

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