Traditionally the beginning of November is the time of World Travel Market which greets in tens of thousands in the tourism industry and media meeting their like at the cavenous echoing space that is Excel. I would always lose my voice by the end of the week, having shouted my way through interviews outside stands which always banged on with musical or cookery events next door. Losing voice not good for a radio journalist, sounding like across between Minnie Mouse and Eva Gabor, with brief interludes of silence.
It is here I would discover the travel trends as researched by various companies who have an interest in travel - promoting, navigating and researching it - so I was always left with a little scepticism as to the veracity of the guesstimations, some of which ranged from the bizarre - the 'kidnap' experience in 2008 - tourists wanting to be kidnapped by terrorists to the obvious - overseas travel in 2004 (yes really - although perhaps the latter will become a trend again in the next ten years or so).
Its the invention of new words I always await with abated anticipation. And this year is no different. Celestial escapes are not a one way trip to heaven, or trips in the exclusive company of Brad Pitt/Scarlett Johansen or space, but wilderness tourism, although the world has lost a third of its wilderness in the past thirty years according to Saint David Attenborough - so sort of get it while you can. The issue is, we destroy what we 'discover' - travel journalists being the weapon of mass destruction. So my view is to leave wilderness alone - and that includes the cultures which slice it up for paddy fields (Madagascar et al), and farm land and property development (Brazil et al). Also tourist understanding of what constitutes 'wilderness' is usually a goldfish bowl of a safe perspective where the nasty huge spiders, snakes, or anything that challenges your place in the human food chain, doesn't enter the equation.
The same goes for the next anticipated 'growing trend' which is nomadic tourism - or glampervan journeys. Hmm. Campervan holiday is like buying a property in the countryside, which a lot of my friends or acquaintances have been doing over the past few years. Although their perception of what constitutes countryside varies from deep rural in France, to village five miles out of major city of architectural importance. Even more so now everyone who lives in the City is like an incubus of plague, and they are all heading to the potting shed of England that is Bath and the environs. They have bought into the press release of life is better/cleaner/more authentic in the countryside, because John Craven every Sunday afternoon says so, when the reality is more Withnail & I than Babington House parties.
For a start with a camper van, there is the cost of buying one or hiring one, and then the diesel and petrol (if you are driving everywhere, not eco friendly) unless you have an electric one (which for different reasons is also not eco friendly). Then there is the navigation of these tank like creations and vying for road space with four wheel drives which actually for once do have a right to be there (they don't in Richmond Upon Thames where I live). And then there's the living in the space of a one bedroom flat in Isleworth for a duration. I once took a campervan or RV as they call them in North America, with teenage son around the top of the world trip in Canada. Fabulous views, but aforementioned son was stuck to iPhone, head down, and I was wondering where next petrol station was imminent as I didn't want to be stranded in wilderness (there is some genuine wilderness in the Yukon) as we would undoubtedly then see a lot of grizzly bears. Admittedly there are not many grizzlies in the wilds of England, but there are some not very friendly locals who have made it known to all and sundry including their own tourists boards, that they don't want you there - especially if you've been one of those incubus-of-plague city dwellers.
Then there was 'cultivacation or eco tourism trend, which is an oxymoron which the travel industry and audience have yet to catch on to, although its been a trend allegedly for the past five years or so as Sir David's voice and documentaries have become less like worse case scenarios than historical timeframes. The best way to be an eco friendly traveller is, erm, not to travel. To stay put, not as in staycation, but to be in isolation. So affectively Covid has done more for eco friendly tourism than any political mandate - unless you conspiracy theorists out there count Covid as a political mandate.
Authentic, wellness and mindful tourism have been rebranded as trends to community immersion, longevity retreats and co working camps.
Well, community immersion, which genuinely did make me smile, as I remember the banner which the Cornish locals pinned over a bridge on route to their fabulous county telling visitors from anywhere else in no uncertain terms where they wanted them to go - and it wasn't Cornwall. Covid has not brought out the best or worst in people - it has brought out the 'truth'. So erm, community immersion ideally in a community where they want you to immerse yourself in their culture. Not one where they don't. Remember, if these places could find a better way of making money than having you visit them, they would!
And longevity retreats. Fell off my chair at that stage. As a yoga instructor in schools and clubs, and someone who has written about retreats, spas, variations on that theme, longevity comes from peace of mind, regardless of geography. It comes from lineage, diet, attitude, perspective. Taking your emotional baggage from place A to place B still means you have that emotional baggage on the way back, it just feels lighter and effects disappear quicker than the tan. Research has been done on it, back in 2010.
And co working camps. This sounds more like concentration camps than mindfulness holidays but perhaps that's just my take on it. Giving back to the community is not a holiday it is an experience. It is something you invest in, and come back feeling, often, that you need a holiday because you realise how much work and time it takes to make the places you visit look so good.
No one really knows what the trends will be in 2021. My guess is as good as yours. I would like to believe people will be more appreciative of travel, having forgone the pleasure of being able to travel. The wealthy will have foregone nothing, so they will be just as unappreciative, self serving, sociopathic and sanctimonious in their self imposed bubbles as they ever were. They know how to look after themselves and they don't care if the locals don't like them in the places they frequent. They pay for them to like them, as they do everyone else.
I would like to believe, David A and Greta T et al will have won their battles not only with the super powers of the world, but the masses who have, if they did but know it, the real power, and realised if they continue to travel the way they do or did, that they would have nothing to experience and appreciate.
For the rest, I believe, depending on how long the stop-start-stop-start Hokey Cokey of Covid/Brexit (and Brexit will have an impact on travel too), people will want the guaranteed sun of overseas. When bombs went off in London Underground and we had to be more vigilant about packages we saw on the seat next to us, and there were polite and ominous sounding announcements about delays because an unsuspected package had been seen, I remember listening to other commuters complaining they would be late for work. As the summer exodus showed this year, even a pandemic, and prospect of agonising death, won't stop the British from wanting their summer holiday. Many will have far less money to spend so will stay put not because of environmental reasons or to help the local economy but because they have no choice. And although there will be travel companies who will have disappeared, there will be others that will take their place, with a more flexible and robust business model - because it will need to be.
Those who have holiday homes overseas will appreciate them more, unless of course they have rented them out to couples who wanted to try before they buy into a rural idyll which is nothing like the programmes on daytime TV. Social distancing which has never been an issue, with the reticent British, will suit those in search of small group walking, cycling, trekking holidays where you collectively tick all of the boxes of eco, mindful, wellness, authentic, nomadic, wilderness, authentic trends in one bang.
In my novel The Redundant Travel Journalist (a parody on the Reluctant Fundamentalist) I suggest airports be turned into schools, where those children who work really hard are rewarded with holidays overseas as opposed to A***. You literally see where your hard work - and trying hard takes you in life. And that is how it should be.
When we identify a travel trend that shows we have learnt our lesson from this pandemic, and why we want to travel in the first place, and if it is actually good for us as a global collective to travel, perhaps then we have learnt the greatest lesson of all and realise the meaning of that oft quoted platitude 'life is a journey, not a destination.'
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