Confusing words: travel, journey, trip, voyage and tour

The word travel is used to talk about going from one place to another.
It can be a verb, a noun or an adjective:

Verb:
Noun:

Paul travels a lot in his job.

Travel nowadays is faster than before.

Adjective: There is a travel agency beside the bank.

We can say: air travel, food and travel, space travel, business travel, a travel agency.
Air travel is getting more expensive.
The magazine is a food and travel guide.
We can also say travels, which is a plural noun:

Where did you go on your travels?

Jack Kerouac wrote many books about his travels.

Travel is also a verb:

I travel 20 km to work every day.

A journey is the distance covered when travelling from one place to another.
'Journey' can refer to a long distance or a short regular one.
The journey was long and tiring. It took us 5 hours to get there.
Did you have a good journey? Yes, it was quite pleasant.

How long is your journey to work? Just about 20 minutes.

We can say: a bus journey, a train journey, the journey to school, my journey to work.
Be careful with the plural: journeys NOT journies.

How long does your journey to work take?

Did you have a good journey?

Did you have a good travel?
The word trip is used to talk about a short journey somewhere for a purpose, business or
pleasure.
For our wedding anniversary, we went on a trip to Venice.
My boss is often away on business trips.

During our holiday we took a boat trip to the islands.

A trip describes the whole process of going somewhere and coming back. (It is more than
one journey.)

Once again, lets go from London to Leeds then back again. As I said above, that
is two journeys, but it is one trip.

Some examples: a day trip, a round trip, a round-the-world trip, a boat trip and a business
trip. We say go on a trip.

We went on a three-week trip to Scotland.

Hes gone on a business trip to Germany.
Lets go on a trip to the mountains this summer.
The trip there took three hours. . The journey there took three hours.
A tour is a journey during which several places are visited, especially on a holiday.
'Tour' can be a noun or a verb.
Noun: We went on a tour of Italy.
Verb: We toured the north of India.
A voyage is a long journey by sea or in space. Voyages are less common nowadays.
Before the 20th century, long sea voyages were common.
A spacecraft will take you on a voyage through space.
The French Bon voyage! is translated into English as Have a good trip! or Have a good journey!

Check your understanding of the words journey, trip, travel and voyage.
1. News fast round here, Jane is already aware!
2. We went on a cruise last year, the took 6 weeks to South Africa.
3. How will you to London? By train, I think, it's cheaper.
4. Sorry, I won't be there next week: I'll be off on another business !
5. London is only a very short from Wimbledon.
6. My to Kelly's school takes about 30 minutes by car.
7. He's a great sailor: we followed his alone in a boat across the Pacific on the Internet.
8. This year, Kate will go to the British Museum for her class .
9. It won't be very long: the only takes two hours and we'll be back before dark.
10. It was quite a long to the Shetlands Islands: It took us two days to go there!