I was fortunate to have done most of my globe trotting when I was young. A few trips to Europe, mostly by train in my teens and early twenties, followed by a couple of years living in Hong Kong gave me plenty of opportunity for travel, and by the time I was 30, I had travelled large parts of South East Asia and the west coast of the USA and was now firmly ensconced in New Zealand. I spent the next few years mostly exploring New Zealand itself; what a beautiful and varied country it is, with the subtropical beaches of the north and the majestic scenery of the south. This place is known as Godzone for a very good reason.
But as time passed, and long haul trips became less frequent, I must confess to enjoying the travel less and less. In 1992, I made an urgent trip back to the UK on crowded planes, but by 1999, the planes were even more crowded and there seemed to be much less space. Once we were advised to get up and walk around on long haul flights, but how can you do that when the drinks trolley completely fills the aisles? Having visited Paris in 1975 as a student, it was horrible to have to wait in mile long queues to go up the Eiffel Tower, to be crammed into the elevator like sardines, and then, once at the top, to struggle to find even a small space to take a photo. These things were not worth doing in 1999, and I suspect that they are much worse now.
Until the last few weeks, of course. Here is a snapshot of our world today.
I have always believed in the romance of travel, but there is very little that is romantic about it now. There is nothing romantic about long snaking queues, about having to take your boots off to go through security, to being manhandled and abused by bored customs staff, to having to limit your liquid cosmetics to tiny little bottles (that have to be viewed before you go on the plane), or to having someone else’s kid kick the back of your seat all the way from Los Angeles to Frankfurt. There is nothing romantic about fighting for space in the overhead lockers, or about being abused by the person behind you when you reclined your seat because the person in front of you just reclined theirs. There is nothing romantic about being trapped in a sardine can for 13 hours in the middle of a row. In fact, there is nothing nice about any of it at all.
You can always pay for an upgrade, of course, which will make the flights more comfortable, but that will do nothing about the 40 minute queues to get up the Eiffel Tower.
The worst thing about all of this is not the discomfort, bad though it is. Tourism is damaging many of the world’s better features. In the desire to go and see some of the earth’s beauty spots, we are ruining many of them for ever.
Think of Machu Picchu. Venice. Easter Island. The Taj Mahal. Or come closer to home and think of Tekapo and Rotorua. I travelled to Central Otago a few years ago and travelled back up the West Coast, calling in on Franz Josef Glacier on the way. There must have been 1500 people there that day. It was madness; no parking and long slow lines of tourists snaking up to view the glacier. This is not the way to view our wonderful wide open spaces.
Why do we do this? For a single photo opportunity? Just to say we have been there?
People keep telling me that the world will be a very different place when we come out of all this. I hope that the travel industry is very different. Air New Zealand has laid off 400 pilots and a lot of other staff, so some of them will not be coming back. It is the same story everywhere. National airlines will survive because their governments will prop them up, but many independent airlines, particularly some of the budget airlines, will never come back. And even though I am a lover of trade, of economic activity and full employment and of enterprise… I say good. The travel industry desperately needs a reset.
I am definitely someone who would be prepared to pay more for a better quality trip. These days, it is either dirt cheap or hugely expensive, and there is not much in between. Why not go back to the days of saving up for a long haul trip, but having planes with a few less passengers and a bit more room? Would it really kill the travel industry to do that?
Not any more, because the travel industry is on life support anyway.
If we take a look at our own lovely country, the huge numbers of visitors have made the experience downright unbearable in some places. Locals avoid Queenstown like the plague in summer. The only time I ever went on a trip onto Milford Sound, the commentary was in Japanese. There was no English translation. The boat was full of Japanese tourists. They were brusque, rude and seemed to think we had no right to be on the boat. In our own country. In 1999, we flew back to New Zealand via Hong Kong, on Air New Zealand. There was no western food on the menu for the entire trip. We weren’t the only non Chinese travellers on that plane, but if you thought that maybe you were being treated as unimportant on a plane from your own country’s national carrier, then you could be forgiven. The yen and the yuan are so much more important than the kiwi dollar, it would seem.
Travel needs to become an enjoyable experience again. Yes, you can arrange your trip to avoid the crowds, if you can afford to, but you won’t see the big attractions. For the sake of the world’s beauty spots, however, things need to change. And for those who are concerned about carbon dioxide emissions, and have been gleefully blaming the farmers… have you taken a look at the air pollution in Delhi, London, even Auckland recently? Agriculture is not the problem. It has just been the fall guy for climate activists.
How did it all get so bad? And why do we put up with it being the way it is? A few changes would make all the difference. I would like to see the travel industry stop treating people like herded cattle, like cockroaches, like sardines. If changes were ever possible, they are possible now. Then maybe we could bring some romance back into travel, and make it an enjoyable experience once again.
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