Although I had already shown a little preview of our first photo shoot in Coyoacán, here is another teaser. One of the reasons I’ve delayed the posting of the final photos is because we were very fortunate to gain access to a museum in the area that will give this guide a very distinct visual identity. Our crew was back in this neighbourhood just a few days ago and soon you’ll be able to enjoy a very unique journey through one of the most serene areas of Mexico City.

I can’t believe we’re already halfway through October. It’s been a while since my last photo post on a Saturday. Hope you enjoy it.

My family and I have been in Mexico for the last four weeks, an unusually long vacation for us. Aside from some important family time in key moments of our lives, we’ve had the opportunity to visit this great country at what has clearly been its lowest point as a tourist destination in a very long time. The result has been a magnificent journey that has taken us from the essential beach destination to the magnificent and desolated landscapes of its mountain ranges, to remote and forgotten ghost towns in the process of being re-conquered by entrepreneurial ‘gringos’, to the most glamorous wilderness experiences.

But I also devoted time to put in motion a small idea that in less than four weeks has taken a live of its own and now has a chance to become a worthy enterprise, something I’ve started calling the Global Culture Tour. Here is the account of that little project.

The Global Culture Tour is a collective creative experiment to document special [...]]]> About five months ago I wrote the post “startup and the simple life” committing myself to bring some ideas, concepts, business plans and even a moderate budget on my next vacation.

My family and I have been in Mexico for the last four weeks, an unusually long vacation for us. Aside from some important family time in key moments of our lives, we’ve had the opportunity to visit this great country at what has clearly been its lowest point as a tourist destination in a very long time. The result has been a magnificent journey that has taken us from the essential beach destination to the magnificent and desolated landscapes of its mountain ranges, to remote and forgotten ghost towns in the process of being re-conquered by entrepreneurial ‘gringos’, to the most glamorous wilderness experiences.

But I also devoted time to put in motion a small idea that in less than four weeks has taken a live of its own and now has a chance to become a worthy enterprise, something I’ve started calling the Global Culture Tour. Here is the account of that little project.

The Global Culture Tour is a collective creative experiment to document special neighbourhoods around the world. Places that have found a way to balance the many attributes that I often write about in the blog. Our tag line is “Sustainable, Memorable, Livable travel experiences for global citizens”, so that should start giving you an idea of what destinations may qualify. It’s objective is to create an online guide that helps discerning travellers find ways to immerse themselves into these areas. Hyper-local by nature, these guides feature a destination using a strong editorial approach with a solid and coherent narrative, while showcasing beautiful, original photography that could be the envy of any other travel guide.

In the months preceding my trip, I started shaping the idea through a number of posts such as “reinventing tourism in mexico“, “I could live here” , “give up your urban devil“, “meaningful experiences“, “the quest for liveability” and “the greatest destination“. Feedback on these posts helped tremendously to orient the project and understand which areas generated the most interest. Clearly there was something appealing. One of the first things I did once the journey started was to organize the various ideas throughout these posts into a single Creative Brief that could be used to present to any person I would talk to. This was important as it helped me focus the project and helped me persuade people that I was serious about it.

Sustainable, Memorable, Livable travel experiences for global citizens:
Global Culture enables memorable travel experiences through the continuous exploration of regions that provide a culturally rich environment for the urbanite on a livability quest.

Such was the tag line of the Creative Brief and immediately became the tag line of this blog as well. A friend of mine had taken some of the key ideas and created a mood-board, sort of a visual guide for what we were trying to convey:

Mood Board

There were other discussions about the technical aspects of the project, but to be honest those were the simple ones. The very next day I arrived in Mexico City started listening to the Twitter conversation about Coyoacán (the place I had decided to feature) and photographers. It didn’t take long before I ran into a photographer featured in Flickr with several “interesting” photos of the area. Needless to say he jumped at the opportunity to meet to discuss the project. And with the amount of preparation I had done there was an immediate alignment of the minds. He even coined the term “Coyoacán Chronicles”. A week into my trip, I knew this was going to happen.

During those first days I also did a few walk-around photo-shoots to scout the area for interesting places to feature in our guide. I knew very little about pre-production, release forms, permits, etc. But asking people was enough to get up to speed. One of the first important shifts in the project happened after these scouting sessions. It was obvious the amount of preparation to do the photo-shoot in a single weekend was too much, almost impossible to arrange. I bet that’s why you see the large film crews parking on location for several days. We knew the effort would have to be spread over several weeks, managing to produce a few “scenes” each time. This was by no means a problem, because the plan was to publish this in some sort of a blog format. All we needed was to serialize the photo-shoots at the same pace that we would publish them. I was feeling a TV producer at this point.

Soon it became obvious that finding the right photographer was likely the most important accomplishment. Not only was he ready to shoot, but he used his own local contacts to recruit the other person in the team: a writer. Around this time we had a good idea of which locations we wanted to shoot, a time frame, the general structure of the posts, etc. I was puzzled by only one small problem: we couldn’t find any kind of accommodation in the area. Any serious travel guide would have to offer at least one good option and we didn’t have any.

Although many travel sites list several hotels in this area of the city, many of them are wrongly geolocated due to some duplicate street names. From a long list of possible hotels, we ended up finding only two that really were within the boundaries of our photo-shoot. Luckily one of them (La Cuija) was exactly the type of small hotel that we were looking for. Once we had debunked this mistery, we had almost everything under control. Almost.

I had decided to hire a professional model to aid during the photo-shoot to create lively scenes that would stand out when compared to the typical shot you find in travel guides. I had plenty of leads and referrals but couldn’t get any one of them to commit in the short time frame we had. One day, walking around the city, I ran into an old friend of mine and quickly gave him an account of the project. He was quick to offer some help as he had some connections in the show business. Two days later the casting call was answered and we found not a model, but an actress. That happened yesterday.

Tomorrow is my last day in the city and we are doing our first full photo-shoot. Just in time. In the next few days, I’ll post some of the first results from this project and will explain where this is going.

Global Culture enables memorable experiences through the continuous exploration of regions that provide a culturally rich environment for the urbanite on a livability quest.

What started as a blog about Global Culture and its actors has evolved into a source of great travel experiences.

Sustainable

There is a new generation of discerning travelers that have already seen the world and are aware of the myriad of frivolous options that plague the industry. They are looking for meaning in every opportunity they have to interact with the world and want to make sure they leave the best of themselves at each destination.

Memorable

An experience will have a lasting impact if it proves to be unique and authentic. But its discovery starts way ahead of the trip and requires the traveler to get acquainted with the story of a destination, using for that purpose any means of interaction available.

Livable

In opposition to mass-tourism and [...]]]> Thanks to all the conversations that have made this possible. A revamped Global Culture site gets closer to reality as we get a first draft of our new Creative Brief and start to move content around to give it a purpose.

Here is are some relevant fragments from the document:

Global Culture enables memorable experiences through the continuous exploration of regions that provide a culturally rich environment for the urbanite on a livability quest.

What started as a blog about Global Culture and its actors has evolved into a source of great travel experiences.

Sustainable

There is a new generation of discerning travelers that have already seen the world and are aware of the myriad of frivolous options that plague the industry. They are looking for meaning in every opportunity they have to interact with the world and want to make sure they leave the best of themselves at each destination.

Memorable

An experience will have a lasting impact if it proves to be unique and authentic. But its discovery starts way ahead of the trip and requires the traveler to get acquainted with the story of a destination, using for that purpose any means of interaction available.

Livable

In opposition to mass-tourism and its obsession with packaging chosen moments, a Global Culture experience should not feel like a temporary adventure but a continuation of your quest to find a better way to live, immersing yourself into foreign cultures with the sole ideal of figuring out which aspects of life their people have mastered.

But before I repost an abstract of their model it is worth revisiting where this quest comes from: in give up your urban “devil” I suggest that some sort of experimentation is needed for the global citizen to learn of other life-styles… experimentation as in trying various ‘experiences’.

Here is a list of the elements of meaningful experiences and how I see them applied to the notion of exploring global cultures:

It is perhaps a sign that Monocle’s #24 romanticizes the idea of agro as a fundamental human activity that would restore the soul or our society by getting closer to the people that make a living from farming. While the same formula is often cited by advocates of organic produce, Monocle’s article seems to be more focused on the art of living a simple life and be productive at the same time. I say it must be a sign because just a few days ago I was using the concept of agro-tourism (as developed in Italy) as a prime example of how people seek to immerse themselves into a lifestyle that seems to be disappearing as urban centres advance.

I too, while trying to refine [...]]]> When I wrote startup and the simple life a couple of months ago I set in motion a plan that would take me to a rural setting with the idea to create productive business relationships with locals hoping to capitalize on some of the ideas of this blog. Mostly on the idea that we urbanites treasure the calmness that can only be acquired through detachment from our ever accelerating way of live.

It is perhaps a sign that Monocle’s #24 romanticizes the idea of agro as a fundamental human activity that would restore the soul or our society by getting closer to the people that make a living from farming. While the same formula is often cited by advocates of organic produce, Monocle’s article seems to be more focused on the art of living a simple life and be productive at the same time. I say it must be a sign because just a few days ago I was using the concept of agro-tourism (as developed in Italy) as a prime example of how people seek to immerse themselves into a lifestyle that seems to be disappearing as urban centres advance.

I too, while trying to refine this idea, assumed that if we could send a few people over to the rural landscape, the environment would work its magic, their soul would be cleansed and they would have the experience of their life. But something seems to be missing from this assumption.

If you’ve spent a week at a villa/farm in Europe, sipping a cup of coffee while watching the men and women of the town work the fields and bring fresh produce to the table, only to spend three hours on a slow-food feast, proud of how in touch with humanity you are, you’ve got to realize you’re still an spectator and the whole experience is a bit foreign. Yes, maybe they invited you pick your own fruit from the tree, but would you consider trading your current lifestyle for this? Would you work the fields from dawn to dusk to have a quiet evening and a light dinner?

This tension between our urban self and our “gaia” consciousness is a complex one and has developed already many traumas on simple people trying to do the right thing. It may be tempting to give up our urban “devil” and enlist in some new form of commune. But for most of us that experience will not last.

As with many other problems, the key may be in experimentation: what if you could try alternate lifestyles for a short while? Maybe farming is not going to cut it, but helping a community in need develop advanced social programs tapping into your urban skills may be your call. If you could try not one but a few life-changing experiences, chances are not only you’ll change your life, but you’ll end up enhancing the life of many people around you.

You can only become a global citizen by living like other citizens around the globe.

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For best results, use the zoom controls (+/-) to get closer on the map and click on the markers to preview the images within that area. This is a very cool widget that will continue to be updated as I keep adding photos to the collection.

Mexico has a privileged geography and has exploited it through the continuous development of its traditional hubs, usually beach destinations flocked by charters full of travellers that prepaid the entire experience back home. I believe those days are over, not because those people will no longer consider Mexico as an alternative and will gradually rediscover its benefits, but because there are far too many options outside of Mexico where the exact same experience is available: blue waters, white sand, palm trees, cheap drinks and lots of sun. The quintessential beach vacation. As people are forced to try other options, they will find them [...]]]> If you’ve been to Cancun, Vallarta, Los Cabos, Ixtapa, Acapulco, Mazatlan or Huatulco chances are you don’t know Mexico. Yes, you’ve enjoyed the privileged beaches, the top-notch hotels, a first-class experience and you fell in love with these places and the people that live in them. But you are probably missing the best part. As Manuel was saying a few days ago: “I dare you to find Holbox”. In reinventing tourism in mexico, I implied that all these beach destinations are going to have a really difficult time getting back on track:

Mexico has a privileged geography and has exploited it through the continuous development of its traditional hubs, usually beach destinations flocked by charters full of travellers that prepaid the entire experience back home. I believe those days are over, not because those people will no longer consider Mexico as an alternative and will gradually rediscover its benefits, but because there are far too many options outside of Mexico where the exact same experience is available: blue waters, white sand, palm trees, cheap drinks and lots of sun. The quintessential beach vacation. As people are forced to try other options, they will find them and will have no problem in evaluating their loyalties.

But because of the “celebrity” status of these destinations, people tend to stop looking further or deeper into Mexico. And there is a lot of Mexico that you should know about.

A few days ago I did a short road-trip to a little town called Papalotla, not to far from Mexico City, but distant enough that you can enjoy the traditional country life style so characteristic of the region: horses, “charros”, “toreros”, “haciendas”. While I’m a frequent visitor to the area, I was pleasantly surprised that for the first time the road was paved, literally, all the way to the town. I was told that many of the little towns in the Central Valley were getting the same treatment. Now, that is some important signal. Certainly, infrastructure spending is in vogue these days, but maybe this effort is also the response of a visionary government agency that understands that road infrastructure was one of the bottlenecks to further develop regional tourism in Mexico (as reported by The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2009, page 273).

While “cultural tourism” may not be for everyone, I’m convinced the abundance of heritage destinations throughout the country could, one day, represent an important percentage of tourism receipts. Not only by targeting a different kind of tourist, but also by getting them closer to the people that enable the experiences. Without travel agents, global hotel franchises, charter operators and so on, the money spent on these types of trips is likely to help the people that live there.

So where is this unknown Mexico I’m talking about? Well, if you’re going to find it, I better put together a really good map. Luckily I know a couple of people that are very good at this. A few places that should be in the list: Taxco, Dolores Hidalgo, Janitzio, Tapalpa, Teotitlan del Valle, Bernal.

The tourist that never leaves the beaten path is likely only exposed to an esterile experience that has been washed out of all its original power.

One could argue that the splendour of any famous landmark is constantly diluted by the ongoing attack of mass tourism, misguided by a market saturated of travel guides that most of the times reference the same top 10 or 20 landmarks not to be missed, while telling us every snippet of knowledge that travellers must know about these places, cancelling every attempt to make that experience unique.

The age of discovery is over. Every corner of our planet has been documented ad nauseam… [...]]]> In The Art of Travel, De Botton suggested there are no more places left to discover. With the overwhelming amount of information available on each and every major destination around the world it is likely that I could discover the major landmarks just as well from my computer than walking through them. Of course travellers will argue that first-hand experience is what matters, even if millions of people have had the same opportunity. While exploring the best reasons to travel I had emphasized the quest for the “experience”:

The tourist that never leaves the beaten path is likely only exposed to an esterile experience that has been washed out of all its original power.

One could argue that the splendour of any famous landmark is constantly diluted by the ongoing attack of mass tourism, misguided by a market saturated of travel guides that most of the times reference the same top 10 or 20 landmarks not to be missed, while telling us every snippet of knowledge that travellers must know about these places, cancelling every attempt to make that experience unique.

The age of discovery is over. Every corner of our planet has been documented ad nauseam… or has it? The availability of super detailed guides and maps for every city in the world would certainly give us this illusion. But I bet that for every map which highlights 10 “points of interest”, there are another 10 not so interesting. And yet, I believe these are the places that will increasingly attract the independent traveller. The key to their rise will be their ability to offer new and unique experiences that may not include master art or landmark architecture, but showcase the modus vivendi of little known micro-regions and their people.

You probably remember that little neighbourhood in a foreign city that after an easy stroll made you comment “I could live here”. Some people will qualify them as charming and others will think of them as hip. I’ll venture a generalization and suggest that they’ve moved away from the pragmatism that governs every aspect of modern life and have found a way to decorate themselves with elements that seem superfluous or even luxurious. What sells us is the fact that their inhabitants have been able to transcend the mundane. Where are they? Well, that is where the discovery starts.

Just a few days ago I published a photo of Coyoacán in Mexico City, a wealthy neighbourhood in the south of the city that is often cited in travel guides. Most people will settle for visiting the main square, which is where all the action takes place. What few people have discovered is that just a couple hundred meters away there is a little public garden surrounded by cobblestone streets where the pace of life seems to slow down. I used to walk through these streets almost every day without giving credit to their splendour. The arrhythmic sound of shoes walking on stone was clearly heard in a city that is otherwise obnoxiously loud. I’m sure a few people have said they could live there. And yet the reviews found on the web about this corner of the city are sparse and uninviting.

Recognizing that the charm of these streets on their own is not sufficient to create a full experience and elaborating on the need to reinvent tourism, I suggest a well orchestrated effort is required to bundle all the various elements that will attract the visitor. In the same way that top hotels create an entire experience around their brand, these micro-regions need to be organized so visitors can immerse themselves into the perfect life-style balance achieved after centuries of fine tuning.

Whether failures in policy-making, mass-hysteria, international press or just some random genetic mutation are to blame for the stampede the fact is that loosing its tourism edge, Mexico is posed for very dark times ahead. Suffice to know that its tourism industry is second only to oil.

In the midst of such a downturn the entire sector will have to rethink how it positions itself to re-engage with travellers. Yes, Mexico has a privileged geography and has exploited it through the continuous development of its traditional hubs, usually beach destinations flocked by charters full of travellers that prepaid the entire experience [...]]]> Travelling to Mexico in the wake of one of the worst tourism declines in recent memory, has been an eery experience: the occasional masked traveller, the non-existent line ups to check-in and a 319 with perhaps 20 passengers. But it isn’t the feeling of crossing some imaginary boundary to a forbidden land or the fear of catching some untamed virus awaiting at the arrival lounge. What makes this trip so uneasy is the realization that the millions of people that are not flying today may not be coming back to Mexico for a really long time.

Whether failures in policy-making, mass-hysteria, international press or just some random genetic mutation are to blame for the stampede the fact is that loosing its tourism edge, Mexico is posed for very dark times ahead. Suffice to know that its tourism industry is second only to oil.

In the midst of such a downturn the entire sector will have to rethink how it positions itself to re-engage with travellers. Yes, Mexico has a privileged geography and has exploited it through the continuous development of its traditional hubs, usually beach destinations flocked by charters full of travellers that prepaid the entire experience back home. I believe those days are over, not because those people will no longer consider Mexico as an alternative and will gradually rediscover its benefits, but because there are far too many options outside of Mexico where the exact same experience is available: blue waters, white sand, palm trees, cheap drinks and lots of sun. The quintessential beach vacation. As people are forced to try other options, they will find them and will have no problem in evaluating their loyalties.

Hopefully the prospects of such a decline will reenergize the sector and open the doors for a new generation of travel ventures that will restore the reputation of Mexico as a prime destination, not only a beach destination but a complex one that spans world-class historic sites, charming colonial towns as well as a very diverse range of cultures that cover its varied geography.

I’m sure the government is already planning how to spend millions of dollars on marketing its way to normal levels and all the major hotel chains are calculating how low they can go to compensate. But what is really needed is a grass-root movement that looks at each corner of the country as a potential magnet for a new kind of tourist: the kind that won’t run after the cheapest room, the kind that puts its heart into researching a trip for months because she knows it will be a life-changing experience. The eco-traveller that understands what kind of impact she can effect on a place, both physically and morally. The equivalent to the agro-tourism that has shifted attention to the Italian country. Reinventing tourism in Mexico will require the participation of people beyond the industry. I’m certain everyone will have something to say as we’ve all been to Mexico at least once. Haven’t we?

In an effort to understand some of the key factors in the current hotel industry, I created a data set with the top 5% most expensive hotels and mapped their locations to determine which regions had the highest density of “exclusive” hotels. As it was to be expected the usual suspects are at the top of the list: London, Tokyo, New York City, Paris, Rome. The rest of the list has a good mix of modern, beach and historic cities: Venice, Miami, Los Angeles, Milan, Moscow, Florence, Cape Town, Osaka, Morocco, Maui, Cancun, Washington, Bali, Madrid. London has over 120 exclusive hotels while Madrid counted 20. Beyond that these exclusive hotels are scattered around the world. These images provide a general view of where in the world they are: ……

While calculating these “exclusivity hubs” I came across some other interesting facts: [...]]]> Given the current economic trends in the travel industry, it is expected prices will drop in many fronts. From the analysis of the recent Competitiveness 2009 report we can even derive that some regions will have to try much harder to compensate for factors such as dependency from long-haul passengers.

In an effort to understand some of the key factors in the current hotel industry, I created a data set with the top 5% most expensive hotels and mapped their locations to determine which regions had the highest density of “exclusive” hotels. As it was to be expected the usual suspects are at the top of the list: London, Tokyo, New York City, Paris, Rome. The rest of the list has a good mix of modern, beach and historic cities: Venice, Miami, Los Angeles, Milan, Moscow, Florence, Cape Town, Osaka, Morocco, Maui, Cancun, Washington, Bali, Madrid. London has over 120 exclusive hotels while Madrid counted 20. Beyond that these exclusive hotels are scattered around the world. These images provide a general view of where in the world they are:
……

While calculating these “exclusivity hubs” I came across some other interesting facts:

• The five regions where the top 5% is far more expensive than in the rest of the world are: United Arab Emirates, Morocco, South Africa, New Zealand and Switzerland
• The currencies that will buy you more exclusivity for less are the Japanese Yen, Polish Zloty, Mexican Peso, Canadian Dollar, Indian Rupees, Chinese Yuan and Brazil Reais
• US$264/night will get you into one of these properties

It’ll be interesting to see how this group changes as the year advances and hotels fail to meet their quotas. I’m planning to release a lot more of this analysis as part of a new set of travel guides we’re producing at PlanetEye, but if you’re interested in the numbers behind please drop me a line.