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This year has been a particularly difficult season to travel for many people, with the war in the Middle East shutting off many cherished destinations, and wildfires and extreme heat across Europe disrupting plans. Of course, on any human scale of values, the devastation and loss of life that has taken place is vastly more troubling than some wrecked holidays.
There are also longer-term reasons why people report that holidays are either difficult to go on or no longer so enjoyable. Smartphones make it impossible to disconnect. The mechanics of travel have become tougher, particularly in Europe. There have been severe anti-tourist protests in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. Financial pressures have climbed, and the tourist industry is adept at extracting its profits in difficult times.
According to HSBC, holidays have become much more expensive since 2019, rising by 30 per cent, far faster than inflation. To manage costs we are adjusting how we travel this summer. The most common changes, according to research from YouGov, include choosing domestic holidays instead of international travel (19 per cent), reducing spending during the trip itself (18 per cent), selecting cheaper destinations (17 per cent) and taking shorter trips (16 per cent).
We all need different things from the break from day-to-day life. A summer break should still be a chance to rebuild and renew, not a reminder that these are tough times. Here are half a dozen principles to help cope with these rising pressures:
A holiday should ideally be something special to us as individuals, as families, or as groups of friends. That’s the whole point. That does not mean it has to be abroad, and nearly one in five Britons are opting for domestic holidays instead. If you just want to flop on a beach with a book that’s fine, but it’s more likely for the break to become something truly memorable if it is built round an idea. That could be anything: an activity or sport, a place that has particular resonance, a bucket-shop project, whatever. Activity holidays, particularly among young people, have boomed and four of the top 10 things tourists value relates to experiences they encounter, alongside basic issues such as safety and cost.
A good holiday can be an extension of the best that is happening in our non-holiday moments, because you can relive parts of it when you get back home. Take two rather rarefied examples. If you are passionately interested in, say, cathedrals in Europe, and have finished a trip at St Peter’s in Rome, you round it off by comparing it with St Paul’s when you are next in London. Or if you were fly-fishing in the west of Ireland, you try out the same flies in a well-stock local river or reservoir, though probably with less success.
Maybe the most memorable holidays of all are those that can only be done at a particular moment in time. That could be anything from a visit to Berlin at the end of 1989 just after the wall came down, to one to America last month for the World Cup. There’s actually a special day next week with the solar eclipse, though it’s a bit late go to Portugal or Spain for the total version and we may have to make do with the partial eclipse visible in the UK. As it happens, however, there’s another total eclipse in August next year which sweeps right across Spain before heading towards Egypt and the Middle East. It will almost certainly be cheaper to see the eclipse next year from Egypt rather than Spain, and you’ll probably get a better view.
If you are planning to travel for a certain event, it goes without saying that planning ahead and booking months in advance will save you money. There are also several other ways to hold down the costs of a foreign holiday. They include small things such as paying for a bill on your card in local currency rather than paying in sterling. You almost always get a better rate. And there are bigger ones such as choosing to go off-season, and staying in a secondary city rather than a famous on – so Rotterdam in the Netherlands, rather than Amsterdam.
One of the big trends in travel and tourism is wellness – rising by 16.6 per cent a year. The idea here is that you can make sustained advances in your general well-being by maintaining a healthy lifestyle and reducing stress, and that you can set this progress off by choosing the right place to go on holiday. It could be anything from walking in Zambia to a sauna in Finland, or if you are so inclined, a wellness cruise in the Caribbean. The key point here is that this is not a one-shot holiday that’s over and done with. The purpose is to help you live a healthier and happier life.
Finally, there are holidays that help you along the next step. For young people, this could be how to get a first job in, for example, Australia. The purpose of the holiday would be to gauge where to try to build your life if you were considering emigrating. Is the grass really greener? For anyone approaching retirement, it’s the other way round: the aim would be to work out whether you would really be happy in Spain or Florida, or whether it would drive you nuts. The UK government advises anyone planning to retire abroad to have a long stay there first.
The common thread in all these points is that in an ideal world holidays should reduce stress in people’s lives. They should help them make better decisions about what they really want and what makes them lastingly happy.
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Conflicts in recent years have sharpened my feeling of how lucky I have been to visit so many wonderful places in more peaceful times.
One example is Libya. There was a brief period around 2004 when it was opening up. British Airways had just started flights to Tripoli, and diplomatic relations under the Blair government had warmed. So I went there, looked at the great Greek site at Cyrene and the even more impressive Roman one at Leptis Magna. Then the war came and the country was in effect closed to visitors.
Another example is Iran. Our visit there was in 2016, again when it was being opened to visitors. The UK was in the process of reopening its embassy, and political relations, while not exactly warm, were perfectly correct. Again, it was a privilege to see the great sites – Persepolis, naturally, but for me the most memorable of all was the huge tomb of Cyrus the Great. And now I fear one of the towns in which we stayed has been bombed – and of course any tourism is closed and is likely to remain so for a while. This is chilling, for just 10 years ago, the world did seem to be opening up.
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