The 17 Best Experience-Based Gifts for the Person Who Has …

The 17 Best Experience-Based GiftsBailey Made

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Birthdays, holidays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries, housewarmings, retirements, just because. Gifts to mark all those milestones and events don’t always have to equal more stuff.

You can also give an experience-based gift your loved ones will never forget. Consider what people might want or need, what they like but wouldn’t necessarily buy for themselves, and what you could do together.
Experience gifts can take many forms.

Subscriptions for everything from art and books to flowers, cheese, and wine. Kits with the supplies to make a meal or a craft. Gift cards for spas, cosmetic treatments, plants, and golf courses.

Tickets to a concert or a sporting event. VIP tours of museums and film and television studios. Classes and workshops to foster a new skill or hobby.

Memberships to gyms and salons. A night in a luxury hotel, weekend getaways, cruises, or train journeys. A jaunt on a private jet, a road trip in a vintage car, or a moonlight hike.

Here are 17 of the best experience gifts to treat your family and friends–or maybe yourself–to this year.

Best Experience Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything

A Private Cooking Class

If you hire a personal chef for someone, you feed them for a day. But if you gift them a cooking class, you help them become a chef. The Chef & The Dish offers more than 100 private classes via Skype with chefs around the world. Pick a specific class you know the foodie in your life will love, or opt for a gift certificate so they can find their culinary passion.

A Wine Subscription

Make the celebration last with a Dry Farm Wines classic membership.

Every month or two your favorite wine connoisseur receives a curated selection of rare natural wines not available in stores. Each box can be personalized and features unique grapes, regions, and profiles in their purest form, without the sugar or additives of commercial wines.

A Cocktail Kit

Provide an aspiring mixologist with almost everything needed to craft a fancy cocktail at home. Each monthly kit from Shaker & Spoon contains three recipes and all the ingredients (minus the alcohol) to make 12 drinks.

An Adventure of Their Choosing

Save yourself the stress of hunting the perfect present, and let the recipient choose their adventure (rugged or luxurious) with a Virgin Experience Gifts egift card that never expires.

They could soar above downtown Chicago as they learn to fly a Cessna or float over the Arizona desert at sunrise in a hot-air balloon. Perhaps they would prefer sipping and sailing around Newport, Rhode Island, or one of the other thousands of options across the country.

Skydiving over the Grand Canyon

In search of a gift tailor-made for adrenaline junkies? How about skydiving over the Grand Canyon?

Purchase a gift voucher from Paragon Skydive so they can enjoy unparalleled views of this natural wonder from 16,000 feet. Give those who want to keep their feet on the ground an annual pass that will allow them to explore all the national parks and federal recreational lands.

Heli-skiing in Antarctica

Assist the friend looking to cross visiting the seventh continent off their bucket list with a life-changing 10-day ski trip with Pelorus. Two helicopters will drop them off at one summit and carry them to the next, taking them farther inland than man has skied before.

Instead of one glorious trip, grant a ski junkie’s wish for a season on the slopes with Epic Pass, which entitles them to access to world-class resorts in North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan.

Stand-Up Paddleboarding

Introduce lake life lovers to a new way to spend time on the water: stand-up paddleboarding. Sign them up for a half-day class from the outdoor experts at REI, and they’ll be balancing, paddling, and remounting in no time. Paddleboards, paddles, and safety equipment are provided.

Keep in mind participants must be at least 13 years old.

Off-Road Driving

Venture off the beaten path with a gift certificate for car enthusiasts to develop their driving skills behind the wheel of a Land Rover of their choice. They can navigate steep inclines, descents, side slopes, and streams for four hours with an expert instructor at an experience center in California, North Carolina, or Vermont.

Glamping Gift Certificates

Your outdoorsy friends don’t have to rough it (or disconnect completely) to spend the night under the stars. In extraordinary places across the United States, Under Canvas’s safari-inspired tents come with luxe linens, organic bath products, a private deck, and a wood-burning stove.

USB battery packs are even available for charging electronics. Or trade up to a fully outfitted Airstream with Autocamp’s take on glamping in a growing list of locations.

Vacationing like Royalty

Gather the royal fanatics among you, and book a castle on Airbnb for a fairy-tale European vacation. Find a small country chateau with an unbelievable library in the Czech Republic, a Medieval tower house in Ireland, and a pink castle with a private forest full of animals in Poland.

Look for a property run by a Superhost, who has a rating of 4.8 or above, a less than 1 percent cancellation rate, and at least a 90 percent response rate.

Building an Art Collection

Support budding art collectors with a Saatchi Art gift card. They can fill that nagging blank space on their wall with a new original painting, photograph, drawing, sculpture, or NFT.

Video Lessons from the Masters

Encourage lifelong learners with an annual membership to MasterClass. With new online classes taught by the world’s best added each month, they get a taste of a variety of topics such as interior design and architecture with Corey Damen Jenkins, tennis with Serena Williams, and building and owning your personal style with Karla Welch.

A Language Learning Program

Everyone–young or old–could benefit from picking up a new language. A Rosetta Stone subscription makes it easy.

Both the 12-month single language plan and the lifetime unlimited plan, which includes 25 languages, comprise bite-size lessons online and offline, a fully immersive environment for long-lasting learning, speech recognition technology to perfect their accent, and an award-winning app.

Floral Design Workshop and Classes

Gabriela Salazar’s path to becoming a floral designer began when she gifted herself an arranging class for her birthday. If you’ve got a green thumb, then register for an intensive two-day workshop in Salazar’s one-of-a-kind garden in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. You’ll connect with flowers and discuss everything from how to grow them to how to produce floral designs for an event.

Or enroll in her online floral design school, where you can go at your own pace and receive lifetime access to videos with instruction and participation in a group Zoom series of your choice.

Date Night Ideas

Forgo the traditional gifts for newlyweds. Give them no excuse to skip date night with The Adventure Challenge Couples Camera Set. A book of 50 ideas to spark spontaneity, romance, and excitement and an instant camera to document the memories compose the set.

A Show-Stopping Broadway Experience

Present a couple of musical theater die-hards with this exclusive experience: a two-night stay in a Rosewood suite, dinner for two at Dowling’s at The Carlyle in NYC, a pair of VIP tickets to a top Broadway musical, a backstage tour with the opportunity to meet a cast member, and a signed copy of the playbill.

Throw in a one-month or yearlong subscription to BroadwayHD streaming service so they can watch shows anytime anywhere.

Discovering the World of 007

The assignment: Score one of only 60 limited-edition trips so the movie buff you love can go behind the scenes of James Bond’s Europe. To mark the 60th anniversary of the film series, luxury travel company Black Tomato curated a 12-night journey that opens in London and continues through Paris, Monaco, and Lake Como before a spectacular finale in Venice. A bespoke trip can be designed around someone’s particular interests–be they places, experiences, or films.

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