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.
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?
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.
The World Economic Forum announced the release of its 2009 edition of The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report. With the general theme of “Managing in a Time of Turbulence” the report provides insight on the difficulties that the sector is experiencing during the current economic downturn. Issues such as the impact of oil prices and how they affect different types of tourism-based economies when they are largely dependant on long-haul arrivals.
At a time when competition for fewer travellers will heat up, the report provides a framework to understand areas where each country performs better and those where it must improve. Specially in the current economic climate, Tourism as an industry will receive plenty of attention from governments for a couple of reasons:
- Tourism is one of the largest employers in most countries and an industry that provides a quick ramp-up for a young workforce, making it a likely target for economic stimulation packages.
- Tourism is a trigger for improving consumer and business confidence, as well as increasing commercial ties
The report provides rankings for 133 countries, out of which the top 10 are:
- Switzerland
- Austria
- Germany
- France
- Canada
- Spain
- Sweden
- United States
- Australia
- Singapore
Another way of looking at the rank is selecting those countries that have improved significantly from the 2008 report, suggesting there is an orchestrated effort to improve their Tourism industry and additional infrastructure will soon translate into better destinations:
| 2009 Rank |
Country |
Score gain from last year |
| #4. |
France |
2.1% |
| #5. |
Canada |
1.1% |
| #10. |
Singapore |
3.6% |
| #13. |
Netherlands |
1.6% |
| #22. |
Belgium |
1.7% |
| #26. |
Czech Republic |
2.3% |
| #33. |
United Arab Emirates |
4.1% |
| #41. |
Bahrain |
3.0% |
| #43. |
Taiwan |
4.0% |
| #45. |
Brazil |
1.4% |
| #47. |
China |
6.7% |
| #51. |
Mexico |
2.6% |
| #52. |
Montenegro |
3.4% |
| #59. |
Russian Federation |
2.5% |
Perhaps these countries deserve a closer look to find out what they are doing right.
The World Economic Forum announced its Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2009 will be released on March 4. A couple of weeks ago I was asking people where to find better data that could be used to identify emerging destinations and based on the 2008 version of the report, this may be the best source.
The report provides details on a number of factors that combined make it attractive to develop the Travel & Tourism sector. These factors are:
- Policy rules and regulations
- Environemental sustainability
- Safety and security
- Health and hygiene
- Prioritization of Travel & Tourism
- Air transport infrastructure
- Ground transport infrastructure
- Tourism infrastructure
- ICT infrastructure
- Price competitiveness in the Travel & Tourism industry
- Human resources
- Affinity for Travel & Tourism
- Natural resources
- Cultural resources
In 2008, through the methodic evaluation of these factors, countries like Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Australia & Spain were at the top of the rank. However, with the abundance of details provided by this report the one thing that comes to mind as an important deficiency is the fact that only country level data is provided. Well, for a report of this scope is absolutely necessary to maintain this general approach. But I’m certain that the more granular this information is provided, the more valuable it will become. Within countries, specific regions may be investing far more resources to get ahead of the game. Identifying the qualities that these regions have to compete and using such information to publish a regional version of the report may be the first step in creating new tourism trends.
After my post on the emerging destinations index, I got some really good feedback about how misleading calling them “emerging destinations” was. As I replied in the original comment thread it was mostly a derivative from the original “emerging markets” index which is where I got the data from. It just happens that some emerging markets have been top tourist destinations for a long time. So it’s likely a good idea to amend the unfortunate name as I plan to continue tweaking the index until it ranks real emerging destinations.
The idea is to come up with a certain way to organize information about destinations in such a way that those that have good infrastructure but have not yet developed as top tier tourist destinations can be identified. As it is, the index has yet to factor a number of things:
- It must account for current inbound tourism. This must be an inverse correlation as we would want those regions with fewer tourists to bubble up in the rank. I found an old table with the World’s Top Tourism Destinations, which will do for now, but it will work much better the more granular data I can get. Most of these stats are only available per country.
- As I’m planning to use this index to drive a different type of travel, tourism infrastructure is not a must, but there are some key elements that must be satisfied such as availability of quality lodging and a healthy network of suppliers to cater to those visiting. I think some of the dimensions already included in the index are accounting for general infrastructure, but it would be great to get more specific data.
- If I seem obsessed with collecting city rankings is because I believe cities matter. While large cosmopolitan cities act as a bridge to the rest of the world by spreading global culture, smaller cities in the surrounding areas may have a very different attitude yet be excellent destinations for certain types of activities. This means that all the data needs to be very granular.
There are “softer” elements that will have to be added to the index down the road, but I’m not sure how to account for them yet. To understand these I have to refer back to my post a village… once upon a time
I’m thinking “slow-urban”, a slum of hope attracting urbanites, an inexpensive property characterized by the lack of urban infrastructure but rich on more important aspects of life. The antithesis of our suburbs.
Being the antithesis of a suburb implies a certain buzz that is common in “happening” city neighbourhoods; a sense of locality which eliminates the need for unnecessary commutes for daily chores; an interesting community that seeks to grow by tapping on the resources of each individual. All this while providing a safe distance to the always busy urban pace and its obsession with hyper-productivity. For these characteristics I have yet to find a good metric.
Back in September I made a cryptic invitation to those interested in previewing a new kind of travel guide. Since the most read post in the last year is best reasons to travel, I know that most readers of this blog are very interested in all things travel, foreign countries, cities in other latitudes and all the experiences that will derive from them. So now that the product is almost ready for public launch I wanted to extend an open invitation to get in: register for a free account, upload the best travel photos you have, geotag them and get a beautiful map of your trips around the world like this one:
It may seem like a simple tool, but the power of imagery to inspire can’t be denied, and somehow I believe this blog has the mission to inspire people to understand the world beyond the boundaries of your city and find opportunities to reach out and become part of a new global culture.
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