The Evolution of Travel
This isn’t a history lesson on how the travel industry has evolved. This is a personal tale of how travel has evolved for me. I was lucky when I was growing up to have parents who thought it was important for my brother and I to see more of the world than just the corner of it where we were living in western Colorado. When we became old enough to appreciate it, we started doing family road trips - to Yellowstone, to California to see the ocean, to the midwest and Canada to check out the Great Lakes and the national parks along the way. Our family trips piqued my interest in travel. When I started traveling on my own, I embraced the road trip model as well, camping or crashing at friends’ houses along the way. I saw much of the US and Canada this way. It even led me to my future home in Whitefish, Montana.
I have been to Europe twice. The first time I was in my early twenties. I booked a 3 week trip to Greece to meet up with a friend, and some of his friends, who had been traveling around the world for several weeks already. To plan for my trip, I bought a copy of Let’s Go: Greece and got a flight into Athens. Once I arrived, these seasoned travelers showed me how to navigate without an itinerary. We would make a decision to head to a new location, hop on a train or ferry and choose a place to stay once we arrived. We saw the sights, but more importantly, we met so many other young travelers, drank ouzo and stayed out way too late. My friends were heading from Greece to Italy to Spain, with the ultimate goal of running with the bulls at San Fermin (a festival in Pamplona, Spain). They convinced me to continue on the journey and I convinced my parents to wire me some extra money. I extended my trip by four weeks. Four weeks! Can you imagine having that kind of flexibility and lack of responsibilities? So, on we traveled from Florence to Venice to Interlaken, Switzerland to Barcelona, creating our itinerary along the way.
Over 20 years later, I returned to Europe, but this time with my husband and two teenage sons. Knowing I was responsible for the success of the trip, and everyone’s general feeling about travel, I made a solid itinerary. To plan for our trip, I spent months researching. Hotels, hostels and homes were booked well in advance. Rental cars were reserved. I even booked some of the more popular activities before we left home. We had a great trip starting in Amsterdam and touring around the Netherlands, then on to Berlin and Copenhagen, Denmark. We completed our trip by staying with some old friends (who we met on a safari in Africa in 2000) at their fairy tale home on a Danish Island and then to a village in western Germany to visit our former exchange student and his family. The lack of spontaneity was a comfort to my kids. They liked knowing we had a place to stay each night and where we were going next. Plenty of days were not planned out and we made decisions about how to spend our time once we knew more about the area. And, how did I feel about it? Honestly, I was a little stressed out hoping I got the dates right and the rooms booked correctly. But, we only had a few hiccups, which we dealt with, and had a great trip.
Now five years down the road, I think it sounds wonderful to let someone else deal with the hiccups that might arise, and often do, on a big trip. As a travel advisor affiliated with Uniglobe Travel Center, I have access to over 90 suppliers whose job it is to make sure my travel plans (and yours) happen as expected. And, if they don’t, they are there to help get things back on track. They have “boots on the ground” in most destinations, so they are able to assist easier. They have the connections and the insider knowledge to solve problems. This sounds incredibly reassuring to me and way less stressful. Maybe I have earned some peace of mind.
