After 41 years in a laboratory in the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, Jane Vetter wanted more than a retirement party. She wanted to go big; she was looking for a celebration, but also a pivot. “It was marking the end of that chapter in my life, and starting a new one,” Vetter said of the journey she took to Turks and Caicos after retiring in March 2023. She invited her kids and their partners for a vacation that would be her “retirementmoon.”
It’s not just retirees, like Vetter. In recent years, travelers have begun branching out from traditional honeymoons to plan “moons” of all kinds, from babymoons to minimoons, career-changing jobmoons, friendmoons, and solo memoons. What the trips have in common is a focus on transformative travel, according to Joanna Pascual, the island experience manager at Koʻa Kea Resort in Koloa, Hawai‘i, where she is one of several in-house “masters of moons” who assist travelers with those landmark trips. Moon travelers may experience things like traditional Hapai prenatal massages (babymoon) or tiki torch–lit proposal scenes (engagementmoon). Echoing Vetter, Pascual said moon travelers are often “starting a new chapter of their life.” But all those toasts and massages and bucket-list entries beg the question: What’s with all the moons right now?
The original moon, the honeymoon, didn’t begin as a vacation at all. Among the word’s earliest appearances is a 1552 dictionary entry for “hony mone,” those honey-sweet, fast-waning days when newlyweds “loveth the other at the beginnynge excedyngly.” The idea of a postwedding trip took off in Britain and North America during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as newlyweds planned “tours” to see relatives who missed the big event, sometimes taking friends or family along for company, writes historian Stephanie Coontz in her book Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. Over time, couples began seeking private idylls that foreshadowed today’s romantic escapes. By the 1870s, Coontz writes, some wedding planning books advised new couples to skip the family engagements for a “honeymoon of repose, exempted from the claims of society.”
Babymoons, too, are about a space free from quotidian demands, to savor the transition into a new phase, said Cindy Scott-Fuchs, author of The Babymoon Book and a reiki master who hosts Sonoma County moon retreats from babymoons to friendmoons and solomoons: “It’s about facilitating a meaningful pause.”
Scott-Fuchs has seen babymoons go from obscure to mainstream in the years since she launched her website, Mellow Mommy, in 2003. Though the word “babymoon,” coined in the 1970s by childbirth activist and author Sheila Kitzinger, is now old enough to have grown kids of its own, it took until the mid-2000s to mainstream its current incarnation: a relaxing getaway on the verge of parenthood, a moment of calm before the diaper storm.
Now, suddenly, they’re everywhere; the query “what is a babymoon weekend” has soared 250 percent in the past five years, according to Google search data. They range from simple, DIY vacations to upscale packages with fetus-friendly perks like mocktail toasts, pregnancy massages, and prenatal yoga. All-inclusive resort brand Sandals just launched a special “babymoon cravings” menu designed around expectant mothers’ most yearned-for foods. (Plate-size chocolate-chip cookies, anyone?)
Travel destinations have jumped on the trend with upscale packages, like a $1,499 a night “unforgettable babymoon” package among red rocks and pines at Sedona resort Ambiente, which includes a private gemstone session matched to the baby’s birth month. But Scott-Fuchs emphasized that the trips don’t need to be elaborate or pricey to be impactful. “The most important component is taking time away from your home. It’s about getting away from your everyday, with your partner where you can really focus on each other,” she said.
Expectant parents know, at least in theory, what’s coming; same with newlyweds. Other transitions are more improvisational. In a 2024 study in collaboration with Talker Research, IHG Hotels & Resorts found that 60 percent of Americans retiring between 2020 and 2029 saw the moment as a chance for reinvention and planned to step into a new version of themselves as one phase ended. Nearly half planned a celebration trip to mark the occasion, and the company coined the word “retirementmoon” to capture the spirit. Then, it watched travelers run with it.
For travelers at hinge moments, IHG suggests retirementmoon ideas spanning glassblowing lessons in the French Riviera and guided astronomy sessions on the Florida coast (with discounted rates for travelers 62 and older), activities suited to exploring fresh passions for the next phase. “It’s a new dimension to their lives,” said Connor Smith, a vice president for IHG Hotels & Resorts. Exploring unfamiliar pursuits can “create a little space for something to happen,” he said.
Such free-floating opportunities for reinvention are perhaps a defining experience of modernity. In traditional societies, life’s big milestones often brought defined rituals. Today we generally wing it, wrote Casper ter Kuile in his book The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices: “We mostly make those up with our friends as we go along, if we have enough time and energy for it.”
For those with the time, energy, and funds, travel seems particularly well-suited to the role of modern-day ritual or rite of passage. (That may be one reason gap years have remained a staple of postgraduation life in countries from the United Kingdom and Europe to Australia.) Perpetually vacation-starved Americans may take fewer months-long trips than their counterparts in other wealthy countries, but even, or perhaps especially, here, travel remains a powerful way to define the moments that matter.
By removing our usual routines, a trip can catalyze shifts in perspective, said Smith. “It eliminates a lot of the unnecessary choice and the unnecessary chatter, and so you can just exist—think about what the big choices are.” And increasingly, travelers are choosing which moments are worth celebrating.
In 2022, then 36-year-old content creator Brittany Allyn decided that instead of waiting for marriage or pregnancy to take a dream trip, she’d freeze her eggs and book a “solo honeymoon” to romantic places, like the South of France, Venice, and Verona, that she’d hoped to visit after getting married. “While I was there, I bought a ring and was like ‘oh, it’s kind of like my own wedding ring!’” she said. She began to call the trips “memoons,” sparking a powerful reaction among her followers on social media.
“I’ve heard from thousands of women who said it inspired trips they’re going to remember for the rest of their lives,” Allyn said. Other solo travelers ran with the term, hash-tagging their solo adventures #memoon on X and TikTok. Tour company Sisterhood Travels is launching a Memoon adventure cruise (from $8,499 for solo travelers) in 2027, its chartered yacht sailing out of St. Thomas for eight days of discos at sea, beach time, and port-town shopping.
“I think it’s celebratory. The first word that comes to mind is ‘empowerment,’” Allyn said of the trending term.
Solo travel, of course, predates the memoon. You don’t need a hashtag to take a trip or mark a transition. But the words we use to describe our journeys—whether on social media or in travel stories recounted to loved ones—have the power to shape the way we see them and perhaps ourselves. The honeymoon, that moon-trip OG, is a concept that needs no explanation. Allyn reimagined the tradition to fit the life she’d chosen. To write your own story, sometimes you invent the words.
