[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] Amazing Race 15, Episode 9 (Why We Travel)

[Edward Hasbrouck]

This column with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001789.html

The Amazing Race 15, Episode 9
Keava (Estonia) - Prague (Czech Republic)

Why we travel: A tale of two conferences

As "The Amazing Race 15" approaches the finish line, the remaining  
teams of travellers are becoming more and more focused on the  
footrace, to the exclusion of anything else about the places they pass  
through. This week in Prague, some of the racers recalled having  
almost forgotten to look around at Old Town Square -- one of the  
city's foremost tourist attractions -- before running off after their  
next clue.

It's often like that with real travel. As the journey nears its end,  
we get more and more focused on the geographic destination and lose  
sight of the goal of the trip.

The difference between those two ways of thinking about travel were  
epitomized by the two travel conferences at which I spent this week:  
the annual PhoCusWright conference of travel executives, and  
Hostelling International - USA's celebration of the centennial of the  
worldwide movement that began in 1909 with the opening of the first  
youth hostel in a castle in Altena, Germany.

(A campaign to get the U.S. Postal Service to issue a stamp  
commemorating the occasion was unsuccessful, but my honorarium for  
leading a workshop at the HI-USA convention included a 100 Jahre  
Jugendherbergen -- "100 Years of Youth Hostels" -- 10 Euro legal  
tender silver commemorative coin of Altena Castle.)

The PhoCusWright conference was held in Orlando, home of the ultimate  
in constructed travel experiences, Disney World. As ever, it was  
fascinating -- more on that in a future article -- but also as ever it  
was confined to one view of travel: travel as a commodity to be  
bought, sold, packaged, marketed, and merchandised. That's a perfectly  
reasonable perspective if you are part of the "travel industry", but  
it's far from the only way to look at travel.

HI-USA, by contrast, describes itself as, "A national non-profit with  
a mission: To help all, especially the young, gain a greater  
understanding of the world and its people through hostelling."

Hostelling International counts itself as the world's third-largest  
"lodging chain" (measured, I presume, by the number of guest-nights  
per year). Like a hotel chain, it generates its revenues mainly by  
"putting heads in beds". In big gateway cities and other destinations  
popular with backpackers, it competes with growing numbers of  
for-profit hostels. It worries about its brand, its marketing, and the  
color of the ink on its bottom line. It has to, or it won't survive.  
It has almost no endowment to carry it through downturns in the cycle  
of travel. It's trying to change that (can any of you help?), but the  
goal of its current fundraising campaign is to raise US$3 million over  
3 years, a pittance by the standards of many nonprofit institutions.

In these circumstances, it would be understandable if HI-USA were  
increasingly driven by business-like concerns. But it's just the  
reverse: HI is going back to its roots, and re-emphasizing programs to  
serve its underlying mission of travel not as an end in itself but as  
a means to youth empowerment, leadership and diversity training,  
education, cultural awareness, international understanding, and world  
peace.

The gala final session of the HI-USA convention celebrated some of the  
people who have contributed to the organization through their work  
over the decades since its founding. They were well-travelled and  
inspiring storytellers, yet few of their stories were descriptions of  
placed visited. Places were merely settings for their stories of  
people, relationships between them, and the changes brought about in  
those people by hostel-style travel.

I left the PhoCusWright conference with a renewed sense of the ways  
that technological innovation has created new travel possibilities and  
tools. But it was the HI-USA conference that renewed my appreciation  
that the things that make travel worthwhile in spite of its inevitable  
environmental costs extend beyond escapism, the desire for more  
notches on your travelling stick, or the consumption of packaged  
travel "products".

Travel is, as we were reminded repeatedly at PhoCusWright, the world's  
largest industry. But the HI convention the next day brought me back  
to the reality that while there is an industry that provides services  
to travellers, travel itself isn't an industry, a product, or a  
commodity. Travel is an aspect of our lives: something we do, not  
something we buy. We may pay for transportation, just as we may pay  
for schooling, but we can't buy experience any more than enlightenment  
-- even if, in the best of worlds, travel sometimes brings us both.

Bon voyage!

=====

(As Co-Chair of the Book Division of the National Writers Union, I'll  
be meeting with NWU chapters in Boston, New York City, Washington DC,  
and tentatively Chicago between December 1st and 8th.  I look forward  
to seeing some of you at those meetings.  If you are trying to make a  
living at travel writing -- or any other kind of writing -- I  
encourage you to join the NWU.)

=====

Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214