Trendsurfing: Concept tourism (The Times)
By David Rowan
It can be so hard for the fashionable holiday-maker to stay ahead. Just when you had caught up with Siberia or the Arctic as the latest hip destination, along come the trendhunters to warn you that actually you have got it all wrong. It is not location that now determines where you should head, but rather the "concept" of your journey that marks you out as happening. So strap yourself in and let's embark on a journey around some of today's buzzworthy tourism trends.
We'll need, obviously, to ensure that we are as carbon-neutral as we can be, touching down at airports along the way to plant a few acres of forest. And let's stay in tiny low-budget "pod hotels" wherever we land, with just the basics of bed, basin and bag storage to show how fashionably undemanding we are. Yet with holidaymakers facing so much choice these days, destinations and hotel groups are having to repackage themselves in creative new ways to attract our business.
Take the "procreation vacation", an idea being aggressively promoted across the Atlantic to lure frisky couples who want to start a family. In the old days if you wanted a baby, there were well-tested rituals available that involved... well, something to do with birds and bees. Now, according to the Starwood hotel chain, prospective parents also need to spend a couple of grand on three-night getaways that prepare the reproductive system with customised spa therapies and herbal concoctions.
"We're simply enhancing the baby-making process by offering island remedies that have been passed down for generations," claims Bill Thompson, a marketing executive for Starwood, which offers procreation breaks at three properties in the Caribbean and Bahamas. For two or three thousand dollars, you get romantic dinners, aromatherapy massages and reflexology, all said to increase the chances of conception. Not forgetting glasses of sea moss elixir for the men and pumpkin soup for the women, both claimed to promote fertility. And if that all sounds too unpressured, you could check in to the Miraval Spa in Tucson, Arizona, which offers help with ovulation timing as well as classes in "nurturing sexual intimacy". The spa promises to help couples "energise all the dimensions of their vital sexual connection" - although when we noticed that its website offers advantageous "group rates", we quickly made our excuses and left.
Rather less romantically, more and more destinations are allying themselves to the ghoulish phenomenon known as "dark tourism". This involves pilgrimages to places associated with death and tragedy, and although battlefield tours have been around for centuries, a newfound marketing impetus has lately been spreading the concept around the world. You can tour villages destroyed by the Asian tsunami, or ride a GrayLine bus through the quarters of New Orleans hit by hurricane Katrina ("see the resulting devastation that displaced hundreds of thousands of US residents," the sales pitch screams). There is even an emerging academic field devoted to studying dark tourism, with a seminar planned for next month at the University of Southampton called "Journeys through the Holocaust".
The Dark Tourism Forum, the specialist academics' online meeting place, gives space to consumers of this nascent travel industry. Katie Robinson tells of her visit to the Ground Zero site in New York ("not enjoyable; I felt as though I was intruding"), and Mike from the Wirral reports back from Dachau concentration camp ("I felt as if I shouldn't have been there").
The sacrifices one must make for fashion.
(The Times Magazine, November 25 2006)
It can be so hard for the fashionable holiday-maker to stay ahead. Just when you had caught up with Siberia or the Arctic as the latest hip destination, along come the trendhunters to warn you that actually you have got it all wrong. It is not location that now determines where you should head, but rather the "concept" of your journey that marks you out as happening. So strap yourself in and let's embark on a journey around some of today's buzzworthy tourism trends.
We'll need, obviously, to ensure that we are as carbon-neutral as we can be, touching down at airports along the way to plant a few acres of forest. And let's stay in tiny low-budget "pod hotels" wherever we land, with just the basics of bed, basin and bag storage to show how fashionably undemanding we are. Yet with holidaymakers facing so much choice these days, destinations and hotel groups are having to repackage themselves in creative new ways to attract our business.
Take the "procreation vacation", an idea being aggressively promoted across the Atlantic to lure frisky couples who want to start a family. In the old days if you wanted a baby, there were well-tested rituals available that involved... well, something to do with birds and bees. Now, according to the Starwood hotel chain, prospective parents also need to spend a couple of grand on three-night getaways that prepare the reproductive system with customised spa therapies and herbal concoctions.
"We're simply enhancing the baby-making process by offering island remedies that have been passed down for generations," claims Bill Thompson, a marketing executive for Starwood, which offers procreation breaks at three properties in the Caribbean and Bahamas. For two or three thousand dollars, you get romantic dinners, aromatherapy massages and reflexology, all said to increase the chances of conception. Not forgetting glasses of sea moss elixir for the men and pumpkin soup for the women, both claimed to promote fertility. And if that all sounds too unpressured, you could check in to the Miraval Spa in Tucson, Arizona, which offers help with ovulation timing as well as classes in "nurturing sexual intimacy". The spa promises to help couples "energise all the dimensions of their vital sexual connection" - although when we noticed that its website offers advantageous "group rates", we quickly made our excuses and left.
Rather less romantically, more and more destinations are allying themselves to the ghoulish phenomenon known as "dark tourism". This involves pilgrimages to places associated with death and tragedy, and although battlefield tours have been around for centuries, a newfound marketing impetus has lately been spreading the concept around the world. You can tour villages destroyed by the Asian tsunami, or ride a GrayLine bus through the quarters of New Orleans hit by hurricane Katrina ("see the resulting devastation that displaced hundreds of thousands of US residents," the sales pitch screams). There is even an emerging academic field devoted to studying dark tourism, with a seminar planned for next month at the University of Southampton called "Journeys through the Holocaust".
The Dark Tourism Forum, the specialist academics' online meeting place, gives space to consumers of this nascent travel industry. Katie Robinson tells of her visit to the Ground Zero site in New York ("not enjoyable; I felt as though I was intruding"), and Mike from the Wirral reports back from Dachau concentration camp ("I felt as if I shouldn't have been there").
The sacrifices one must make for fashion.
(The Times Magazine, November 25 2006)
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