On Travel
by Pauline Frommer
’m a nearsighted Nostradamus, I’ll admit it. In looking at the future of travel, I find myself obsessing about the recent past—the chilling effect 9/11 had on travel to New York City and air travel in general; the destruction of the tourism industry on the island of Bali by repeated terrorist attacks there; the paralyzing fear caused by Asian Bird Flu and SARS, which literally eliminated travel to such places as Toronto and Hong Kong for nearly a year; the environmental reshaping that’s taking place thanks to global warming, which has been robbing Alpine ski resorts of their snow, and scuba destinations of their reefs and fish. These clouds and others hang over the travel industry. Because I’m a travel writer and not a psychic, I can’t predict what new global disasters will affect how we travel, and even if we travel, in the upcoming decades.
That said, if I eliminate these unknowable factors from the mix (a convenient ploy, I’ll admit), there are some trends today that I believe will blossom in the years to come. First up: super-sizing. Just as sodas at convenient stores have become Midas-sized goblets, so cruise ships and airplanes are on the verge of becoming floating and flying cities. As I write this, Royal Caribbean cruises is pouring $1 billion into the creation of a new monolith with an appropriately biblical name: Genesis. Set to debut in 2009, it has the capacity to carry 6,400 passengers and will weigh nearly twice as much as the second largest ship afloat now, the Queen Mary II, a whopping 220,000 gross tons. Who knows how large these mammoth ships will grow—will they be able to stay afloat with 10,000 or 20,000 passengers aboard? My guess is that some engineer will try it. The world’s largest aircraft now is nearly the length of a football field, but I’ve heard tell of even larger ones in the planning stages, in which passengers fly not only in the body of the plane but within massive, hollow wings as well. Visit Vegas, Malaysia, or Dubai to see the resort hotel on steroids. In these destinations, and coming in other locales (such as Macau, China) are multi-billion dollar pleasure palaces, each one with ten or more on-site restaurants, casinos the size of China’s Tiananmen Square, and rooms for upwards of 4,000, 5,000, or 6,000 merrymakers.
Conversely, there’s a strong movement today towards the “personalization” of vacations, the downsizing yin to the industry’s supersizing yang. Thanks to the masterful search and booking capabilities of the Web, travelers are no longer accepting “one size fits all” vacations. Instead, they’re tailoring their holidays much more specifically, planning a cooking class for one day, a yoga retreat on another, truffle hunts or sweat lodges on a third. So-called “specialty travel” is booming, with more travelers than ever choosing say, all-women tour groups, pioneer-style vacations in covered wagons, or vacations spent in classes studying the great books. I don’t see any end in sight for the growth of off-the-beaten-path travel (perhaps making that alternative path pretty well beaten itself).
As for destinations: the list of acceptable choices is expanding and will continue to grow in the future. As elbow room becomes an ever scarcer commodity at the Louvre in Paris, the rim of the Grand Canyon, and the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., travelers are choosing to explore the Eastern European capitals, the less well-known National Parks, and such emerging cultural hotspots as Austin, Texas and Asheville, North Carolina. Because of its immense size, its importance on the world scene, and its rich cultural history, China is a mighty presence on the touristic landscape and will only continue to grow in stature, as will many other Asian destinations.
What else does the future hold for travelers? Your guess is as good as mine.
Pauline Frommer
daughter of famed travel expert Arthur Frommer, is the creator of the new Pauline Frommer guides, published by Wiley. Her New York City book was named Best Guidebook of 2006 by the North American Travel Journalists Association. Pauline co-hosts The Travel Show heard every Sunday on over 100 radio stations nationwide, appears weekly on CNN Pipeline, and writes a weekly column for msnbc.com.