It’s time to fully embrace the destination birthday. I regularly schedule travel around my birthday as I can better justify the expense as a birthday present to me. But only once so far have I embarked on a milestone birthday celebration with a friend — we went to Miami and loved basking in the sun and drinking mojitos.

Yet “more people are choosing to celebrate their big birthdays and anniversaries far from home—inviting everyone along for a blowout trip,” according to The Wall Street Journal. 

It’s a great idea that I am happy to get on board with.

Milestone birthdays cause anxiety in some (or worse) while others take greater risks and embrace adventure. Clearly, the ones who decide to travel ambitiously are in the latter camp.

A full 75% of adults 45 and over have taken, or plan to take, one of these “celebration vacations,” according to AARP research released this year, cited by the WSJ.

Part of the appeal is that spending quality time with one another somewhere different is more about valuing each other’s company than it is about buying gifts. Of course, the WSJ reporter (who went to Napa to celebrate a birthday) does concede this can be costly.

Still, there are some great ideas shared in the article:

• A woman invited 15 of her friends (who didn’t all know one another yet) to stay in six-bedroom villa she rented in Jamaica to mark her 50th.
• A Canadian man joined five buddies from high school on a motorcycling Italian tour for his 50th.
• Another group of duffers played famous golf courses in Scotland to celebrate 50.
• A tour operator invited 80 people to join her 50th fete in the Peruvian Andes, complete with an optional cruise up the Amazon.
• 15 coffee lovers traveled the Colombian countryside for coffee tastings, salsa dancing and a bamboo river-raft float.

The thorough article rounds out with advice for the etiquette of this kind of birthday event — e.g. no gifts needed. But, fair warning if you do invite me along to your destination birthday, I was too busy already imagining where I might travel on my next milestone birthday to read the rules too carefully.

Where would you go? Would you travel with family or friends or both?

P.S. Apologies to anyone who read this already when I inadvertently published it and then made a big mess of it’s url history. Now, for it to appear on the actual blog (not just in people’s email) I am reposting.