Are the layers unpeeling yet?
Those of you who thought yourself sorted and settled, have you started to realise that very little is important. And that as weeks turn to months, the simplicity of life, is to have health, and to have led a good life. Not good as dictated by religions or government or healers, but good as in kind. It’s a word that is used a lot, especially at the moment by those who are unkind (on TV mostly). With such huge philosophical conversations going on in the head, I find myself bemused how travel professionals are talking about the future of travel journalism and travel per se.
The fact no one is travelling (well, they are just they are not getting caught), makes one realise travel for holidays and for anything really is a practical need, and for leisure (holidays and high days) an emotional imperative. The idea behind travel was for it to make us feel better physically and emotionally but over the decades it has tended to make a lot of us stressed, depressed poor, lonely, anxious, angry and jealous. So much for wellbeing holidays.
Like everything else in life, travel trends have been cyclical. Travel has become an aspirational experience, which was initially for good health (spas and to the seaside), to overseas and packaged (guaranteed sun, for families, for singles, for 18 - 30), then aspirational (ski, safari, luxury and four, then five star, then boutique), and achievement (learn to sail, etc) and then back to wellbeing again (spas,…).
But travel is not necessary as people over the forthcoming months will find out. Travel is an emotional imperative that lost its way in commercialisation, bringing homogeneity to places which were of interest because they were different. The soft invasion by the British, meant that restaurants and hotels offered increasingly service and food which catered to mass market appetite, thereby photo shopping out the elements that made the destination worth visiting in the first place.
The longer the travel ban and isolation continues, the more harm will be done to the industry and although I feel for those who work within it (myself included), it needs to be a fraction, a tiny fraction of the size. Tourism in its present system is not sustainable, it never has been, until climate change is dealt with. Sustainable tourism was an illusion in which the punter was complicit in. Airlines continue to fly wasteful routes and dump fuel, many destinations have been swarmed with tourists who have done more damage than red ants at a tea party. And the cruise industry is particularly damaging to the environment. Corruption and cruelty in continents such as India, South Africa, and the Far East are photo shopped out of shot, as the smiling faces, golden beaches and authentic dream destinations (an oxymoron if ever there was one, are sold to you as though if you don't go there, do that, you will die. The irony now is if you did, you probably would. It was ironic that in the Year of the Rat (which 2020 is), that none of the passengers on the cruise liners could leave the metaphorically sinking ships. And it is travel and tourism which has facilitated the spread of the virus. Travel journalism may not be the ultimate weapon of mass destruction but it's certainly one of them.
But forget the fact lives are being lost, those in the industry are worried about their jobs. As ever money rules over lives.
Some in the industry believe the tourism will bounce back after a cure has been found, although I believe humans are the real virus and the earth is trying to get rid of us, as we have been trying to destroy it. Ironic that the Amazonian rain forest, the lungs of the earth, have been decimated and it is the lungs which is first impacted with this virus.
Others believe it will be slower to revive as people, or most people will have less money, and travel will become more expensive – so the wealthy who are never touched by recession anyway, will be able to continue to travel although there may not be as many luxury hotels and experiences to enjoy.
That other misnome, staycations, has also been touted. And yes, there is so much beauty in our own country, and it won’t just be the British who will be visiting Britain more and Italians Italy, but I remember why people wanted to travel overseas in the first place, and it was to do with the fact we weren't good value for money and weren’t particularly good at service. As the late Sir Peter Ustinov told me when I interviewed him decades ago, ‘the British think of service as servile. Other cultures, service is innate to their way of life.’
Perhaps absence will make the heart grow fonder, but the raison d’etre behind travel was always to explore the new.
As a travel journalist and writer, I have always been aware, this was the best way to travel. To visit places, get paid for it, and meet interesting people, do interesting things, in the shortest possible time, and then share that information on a postcard of TV, radio or print.
And I quickly realised when producing and presenting the Jazz Fm Travel Guide, the best travel journalists were never travel journalists. They were the likes of political correspondent, the late, Alan Wicker, who travelled to interview politicians and dictators, (are they the same thing?), and Sir David Attenborough who went for the animals and got increasingly huffy about human beings screwing up the planet. Their programmes were never about them, always about the angle. But now ego gets in the way of every travel report on screen and in print, and I learn more about the writer than I do about the place. Travelling to a new destination does not make you more interesting. It makes you more curious.
Travel was never necessary, it was always something we were made to want. As I have said, it can make you ill as well as make you well. We increasingly take more emotional baggage with us than actual baggage, and bring more back with us, especially if we are travelling with families who may have differing and heightened expectations (what no internet connection?).
Travel jouralism was always the ultimate fake news, the perfume counter of journalism where everything was made to look sweet even when it wasn't. Travel pages fed on FOMO, and the grass is greener idea that what you have isn't good enough. It's better in five star, turning left than right on the plane, with the elite bespoke tour operators. Travel pages hid the dark sides of the destinations. The Maldives didn’t mention the piles of plastic pollution (don’t for one minute think its not still going on) and the brutality of Indian life, far away from the colour and smiles of the brochures selling a spiritual experience. Spiritual my butt. You may go on yoga retreats to India, but we probably do it now more in the UK than they do in India. Their needs are more basic. Like survival. But now, for a brief time, or however long it is, so is ours. How does it feel huh?
The tourism and travel industry has created a Westworld of the globe, where everyone fawns to our needs and it is sanitised for our viewing. The virus is a wake up call, like the Yul Bryner gun totting robot who refuses to die.
Tourism was always about the journey, until it wasn’t. It was always about the experience, until it became more about the price and then the cost and then the competition, and then it wasn’t about the journey or even the destination. It was just all about you. Being seen. Being in the picture. Being the star of your own show. The destination was just the backdrop to the ego. Travel and tourism lost its way. So did travel journalism. Now is the time to reboot and stay put until we learn again what it is travel.
Sarah Tucker’s next novella The Redundant Travel Journalist is published in June, just in time for the holidays.
