Is it just me, or has the joy and spontaneity gone out of travel?
Not only can you book every aspect of your trip online, you can see 360° picture of it, watch a couple of YouTube videos about it and read what thousands other traveller’s thought of it.
Guidebooks like Lonely Planet and Rough Guide have become mouthpieces for tourist boards and travel companies.
Rough Guides publisher Martin Dunford canned a line by one of his authors about the the Côte d’Azur being full of ‘dollar-dripping dickheads.’
‘In the old days we used to cherish such lines,’ he said. ‘Nowadays people get offended by stuff like that.’
I would suggest that the only people who’d get offended by that line would be the dollar-dripping dickheads themselves. Perhaps they are Rough Guide’s new target market.
And don’t get me started about people who insist that every journey has to be invested with ‘meaning’. Or Rolf Potts claiming he is a Post Modern travel writer.
Travelling is about seeing places, meeting new people and having fun. Sure, you’ll learn stuff. Sublimely, mainly, and more useful for being so.
I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m ranting here. But it worries me that so much stress is being attached to what is essentially a leisure activity.
It doesn’t have to be glossy or perfect. There’s no right or wrong way of doing it. And if it all goes wrong, so much the better.
More chance of it really being a ‘trip of a lifetime’ that way.
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I agree with the essence of your post; my first long trip abroad (8 months in Africa) was before people carried mobile phones eveywhere & had email at their disposal. It really did feel like I was thousands of miles from home. I get the impression today that some people continue their normal existence whilst travelling – talking to the same friends, reading about news back home etc
All that said, I think being able to research places and book places has enabled me over recent years to see so much more of the world – not everyone is able to take off for long stints, and in a 2 or 3 week break I can see a lot more because I have planned it more than I would have been able to without the internet/guidebooks etc. That’s not to say that I stick to a rigid plan that can’t be changed at the last minute, but it does give me some direction so that I know I can make it to all the places I want to see within my allotted time.
Oh, and I agree that sticking rigidly to what a guidebook says is not always great, or you just end up in the same places as everyone else, surrounded by other people who had the same idea that they would be in the midst of local culture & people….
Hi Jonny,
Good point about the difference between a long journey and a couple of weeks annual leave. If it’s your only break for the year you want to get it right and the various ‘tools’ on the internet can help you do that.
I wonder though whether having so much information at hand makes things more difficult in a funny way. I’m heading off on a family holiday in a couple of weeks. It’s probably going to be my wife’s only holiday for the year and she has been looking up reviews of hotels, places etc, getting conflicting opinions and stressing that she’s booked the right place.
If the place she chooses is crap I know she’ll beat herself up about it. Especially since she’s had all these ‘tools’ to help her.
Hi,
This is just the times we’re living in, I guess. We’ll have to accept that there’s no chance of discovering a new continent anymore, if we’re lucky we might find some kind of small paradise which happens to be undiscovered by the authors of guidebooks.
Living in the internet age, lso creates new opportunities, for example “couchsurfing” or “hospitality club”, where you can easily get connected to people, and which gives you more opportunities than when you just appear somewhere.
Also, like Johny says, you shouldn’t stick to your guidebook (or the internet), but you should use it as a guideline. Even more, if you’re traveling with a Lonely Planet, you should probably avoid the hostels they describe, as they will probably have become too commercial.
When I travel, I also hope for these unique places that nobody has ever heard about, but instead they have been replaced by unique people and situations.
Great topic; great thoughts. I use the web as a tool for research etc as, like others, my holiday time is precious annual leave. I use the web to learn about a place and the sorts of things I might be interested in doing then take each day as it comes. I have options of things I might feel like doing on the day but also flexibility vis meeting people and hanging with them and having new experiencs.
Acommodation location is quite important to me if I’m staying in one place and exploring. I’m not a fan of commerical ponciness but like some character. Eg when I went to Vanuatu last year using the web found the best places to stay to suit my fun needs. Using tripavisor meant I emailed a woman who’d stayed there recently and I knew I could trust her opinion. I think you get a feeling about the type of people on those sites. You can tell the demanding whiners who expect five star on an isolated island.
T
to much choice is now definately making travelling a real headache 20 years ago I trecked through Malaysia arriving at places in the middle of the night, sleeping on floors, eating at wierd and shambolig places all adding up to a brilliant experience. This year I hope to replicate a small bit of the journey with my teenage boys. Having ‘read up’ on places to go and stay such negativity and too many personal opinions it looks like a long stay in KL is planned if I take every guide book, internet report seriously. So the books have been chucked Malaysia banned on the computer and travel ‘a la 80′s’ is back we leave on the 1st August come back on the 13th from Singapore with only the flights booked and absolutely nothing else booked. I appriciate everyone is different and some prefer a glimse into where they are going but the beauty of travel is you can do as much or little as you want and go as far as you want it is your choice.
Peter, you hit a nerve regarding your lady checking on hotel recommendations before making a hyped up decision… i have wasted far too much time on the net, checking this and that, who said what, before finally, hopefully making a booking based on negative feedback… thats not how travel is supposed to be in my world; spontaneous, fun, a no-brainer maybe, but not based on trolling the net for the most popular advice! Maybe crappy travel shows are too blame, maybe my confusing reliance on negative feedback, prehaps travel is so predictable and over-documented that we expect the full experience with no surprises before even arriving.. re: David off to Malaysia- i recently returned from a fantastic trip to Argentina, no guidebook, no knowledge of Spanish, no clue other than glaciers and hiking= brilliant old-style trip!
I think there is alo an element of extending the holiday into the planning. I offer up two examples:
– My in-laws are retired, and lie for their travel. Sadly it is their prime source of meaning in their life. When they are not travelling they keep themselves sane by planning the next trip.
– The average office worker get by with the carrot of their next holiday that they dangle in front of themselves. Part of the pointof the trip is the escape it provides in anticipating and planning it when the rest of life is getting one down a bit.
For myself – well I like to use the tools available, but I’m not prone to stressing too much. I tend to have a high-level plan of what I want to do; and since my daughter was born have made it practiceto book my first nights accomodation in advance. I find there is always enough time to do the rest while on holiday – indeed for me at any rate that is part of the trip.