How horoscopes help you align with the perfect travel destinations

Whether it's a group trip or a family getaway, sometimes we fall into the trap of holidays or weekends away that don't leave us fully refreshed or happy. This is where finding the perfect location that aligns with your needs comes in handy.

While many fans of horoscopes look to the stars to better understand themselves and everyone around them, it seems the stars can also help travellers find the places best suited to them.

This is known as astrocartography, which uses the interacting lines from astrological birth charts to determine where on Earth you would find the best energies. For astrologist Clarisse Monohan, it's more like cosmic Tinder.

“It’s matching you up with places you're compatible with and also showing you where you're maybe not so compatible with.”

Much like a birth chart that goes deep on how each planet and the moon affects you, astrocartography for travel looks for how each planet and its alignment in a particular area can benefit you when you visit.

“Depending on your planetary placements and the energy of the city, sometimes you go somewhere and you're like, 'Wow, I could move here'. Other times you go, 'I'm never coming back here'. A lot of astrologers believe astrocartography, which is overlaying the birth chart over a map of the world, helps pinpoint the cities,” astrologer Lauren Ash told Thrillist.

She said she has been consulted by people about the destinations they should visit next.

“You've got people who are moving and trying to transition to a new part of their career, or college graduates who want to know where they should head to start their lives. I get a lot of 'I’m starting my life over. I want to try something totally new. I want an adventure'. And you also get vacation people.”

After trying travel based on her chart, writer Maliah West found many of her top spots were places where her Venus line (which affects her confidence and enjoyment) and her Saturn line (which influences her structure and discipline) met, and where experts believed she was subconsciously trying to find balance between fun and stability.

While it's great to work out where you will have negative experiences, an InStyle story on the topic notes it is best to treat astrocartography like a “weather forecast”. It gives you a direction into what you can do when you take a trip to a certain location.

Astrologer April Elliot said it's not always practical to relocate to where your astrocartography locations are the best, but “sometimes you can benefit from those places anyway”.