Travel with a twist
YouTubers are exploring new avenues with challenges and tasks, to excite audiences
For most, the idea of traveling or going on a trip involves a) a long plane journey and b) a far-off, exotic land. However, travels don’t have to involve cross-continental flights, and most fun trips are planned for destinations that are a few hours away from your home. For those looking to enjoy a shorter trip, it is possible to have fun weekend getaways filled with unique challenges or fun games to help make the city more accessible and easier to explore.
Travel game shows are an exciting way to review a new space, get to know YouTubers, and discover different ways to enjoy age-old comforts or completely new spaces. From famous shows like the Great Race to smaller challenge-related shows, travel game shows have become popular in an age where games are introduced to make trips more interesting and viewer-friendly. Woody Jay, YouTuber and travel vlogger, hosts his own travel game show titled ‘Where Next’, which involves a series of landmark hunts, along with fun challenges to keep the game interesting along the way. Currently working for his production studio Snaperture, he’s created a YouTube channel to document his journey and share his travels with audiences around the world. Woody Jay and his co-host, Amber Hutton, have gone around the UK, visiting different cities and towns to play various rounds of the game. The game involves a round of ‘landmark-hunting’, where the goal is to click selfies with as many landmarks on the list as possible. Once a team ‘claims’ a landmark via selfie, that landmark cannot be used by the other team. Bonus points are gotten with fun challenges at certain landmark points (including finding remote spots, rolling down hills, or other quirky three-minute ventures), and the entire game must be completed in an hour, making it a race through to the end.
The game show began as a vlog, with Woody and his (then) roommate traveling around cities in England, documenting their journeys. The first series had longer episodes, with more detailed experiences, with the series finale ending in London. The finale followed a Monopoly-style finish, with teams clicking selfies at landmarks mentioned in the boardgame. The series finale helped launch the current version of Where Next, complete with landmark races and fun challenges.
Hosting a travel game show does have its ups and downs, and this particular project continues thanks to the passion of those involved in its making. For example, series three of ‘Where Next’ takes place in Wales, and the entire series was shot over four days. “I’m not going to lie, it was pretty intense,” Woody said. “We did six different places in four days, along with the drive there and the drive back,” he added, detailing the work required to film the series. When asked if he would continue with more road trips, he was very positive. “We did decide to do more road trips, but to try and space them out a little bit more,” he added.
Despite having smaller beginnings, the show has naturally progressed into a popular travel game show that explores many cities and tourist destinations within England, Scotland, and Wales. Woody and Amber do have tentative plans to host future episodes in Europe, and explore neighbouring spaces via ‘Where Next’. Currently, the show is releasing episodes of series four, the latest series in the show. For holiday specials, more contestants are introduced and collaborations are encouraged – for example, the series three summer special promoted a maze that was local to the ‘Where Next’ teams, and a collaboration was held with the local radio presenters. Contestants of the show can also have collaborations; one of the contestants, Sammy Oliver, featured the show on her YouTube channel as well, helping spread the show to a wider audience.
Woody Jay also ensures that weekly content is released, so there is a steady stream of content featuring a number of different cities and spaces across the UK. The current series, series four, is currently released on a weekly basis, along with a special edition that was filmed in Florida. This Florida vlog was done by Woody Jay, with 14 episodes, each one marking a day in his trip. The pair of hosts have also recently released a spinoff of the main show, titled ‘What Next’. “What Next is made up of little random challenges, and the goal is to make these challenges more interesting, collaborate with venues, and do some really cool stuff,” Woody said, pointing out that ‘What Next’ will not be restricted by travel, and will involve more exciting, random aspects of the show. The goal is to have fun, outdoorsy challenges, from taste tests to reviews and everything in between. “‘What Next’ is a part of the ‘Where Next’ YouTube channel, as we are looking to make ‘Where Next’ the main focus point of the brand”, he added.
The team also plans to expand the show in other ways. “People have mentioned that they want to see more of the place, along with the challenge; so, for future series, we are thinking of having a potential vlogging day, a day for the challenge, and another day where we vlog and look around. This’ll help us branch out and reach more audiences,” he said. Based on reviews of the latest series, the team will then continue with more series in the future. The aim of the show has grown from being a group of friends recording their travels to something a bit bigger, which is to educate and entertain new audiences about places in the UK while still appealing to a base of those who enjoy travel and game/challenge shows.
Traveling continues to evolve to include new forms of leisure, entertainment, and exploring. Be it smaller, more remote areas or popular tourist hotspots, YouTubers are introducing new ways of discovering spaces around the world. Hopefully, these shows can help spread knowledge of new spaces and inspire trips to various locations. At the end of the day, travel game shows help provide a sense of wholesome entertainment, while featuring new spaces that we might not have a chance to currently visit, helping make the world a more connected place.
Why Format Reinvention Matters
The Where Next Show represents a small but interesting evolution in how travel content reaches audiences. The classic travel show format, with a single charismatic host and a clear destination, has been refined to near-perfection over decades. The challenge format, where the destination is decided by a game and the rules force unusual decisions, opens up a new layer of unpredictability that traditional formats can't easily replicate.
The format has roots that pre-date contemporary YouTube. Early reality travel television, including some of the British and American competition shows of the 2000s, experimented with similar structures. What's different now is the lighter production footprint, the more direct relationship between creator and audience, and the way the format scales down to short trips on weekends rather than month-long expeditions.
What This Tells Us About Travel Itself
A travel show built around constraints reveals something important about how trips actually work. Most of us fall into patterns when we plan, choosing the same kinds of destinations and the same kinds of activities each time. A constraint, whether it's an arbitrary game rule or a budget cap or a no-flight rule, breaks the pattern and forces a different kind of attention. The result is often a more memorable trip than a more polished one would have been.
This is a transferable lesson. The next time you plan a weekend, consider giving yourself an arbitrary rule. No restaurants you've heard of. No transportation that uses a private engine. Only food made within fifty kilometres of where you're staying. The rule itself rarely matters. What matters is that it forces you to discover things you wouldn't have searched for.
Travel Without Crossing a Border
The Where Next Show's emphasis on local exploration, with destinations a few hours from home rather than across continents, reflects a broader shift in travel sentiment over the past decade. Climate concerns, time constraints, and the rediscovery of nearby treasures during pandemic-era restrictions have all pushed audiences toward content about travel that doesn't require a passport.
The reward of close-to-home travel is often greater than visitors expect. The towns and small cities a few hours from where you live carry their own histories, food cultures, and walking tours that you may have driven past for years without stopping. The combination of low logistical friction and high cultural reward makes them ideal subjects for short-form travel content.
Lessons For Aspiring Creators
If the show inspires you toward your own version of the format, a few practical notes apply. Keep the production simple. The strength of the format is the spontaneity, and overproduced footage often kills the energy. Pick a constraint that genuinely changes your decisions rather than one that's purely cosmetic. Bring a friend whose perspective is different from yours. The contrast between two reactions to the same situation is usually more interesting than a single host's solo commentary.
The simplest publishing schedule beats the most ambitious one. A new short episode each week is far more sustainable than an elaborate monthly production, and audiences engage more reliably with consistent cadence than with sporadic high-effort releases.
Building an Audience Around an Approach
The shows that succeed in this genre tend to be built around an approach rather than a destination. The Where Next Show's approach is the challenge format. Other successful travel creators have built their audience around budget travel, vegan eating on the road, slow travel by train, photography-first sightseeing, and a hundred other angles. The pattern is the same. Pick the lens, refine it, and let the destinations rotate beneath the consistent perspective.
Audiences forgive a lot of imperfection in the storytelling if the underlying approach is clear and consistent. Drift, where the lens shifts from week to week, tends to lose viewers faster than any single weak episode would.
Final Thoughts
Travel content is in a quiet golden age, with creators like the Where Next team experimenting with formats that traditional television never explored. The result is a richer, more accessible travel media landscape for audiences and a wider set of templates for creators considering their own work. Watch a few of the show's episodes, take notes on what works, and consider whether your own travel patterns could benefit from a deliberate constraint or two. The bonus, beyond a more memorable trip, is often a story worth telling.
