A very interesting topic broke out within the social networking realms the other night, particularly Twitter. One lad had posed a question, asking where any of the people in his circles would go (in Africa) if they had a travel budget of £1,600 and there were some great destination ideas which came about, such as the Seychelles, Mauritius, Egypt, South Africa and even some specific landmarks at specific destinations, like the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
The interesting bit about it however is that a general consensus was reached among everyone that a mere £1,600 isn’t really enough to travel to those exotic destinations they feel like visiting. This is why people believe that those of us who travel frequently are undercover millionaires of some sort, even though we insist on travelling under the tag of budget travellers or backpackers.
People seem to have a distorted view of just what it costs to travel and I guess by no fault of their own because this perception is in a sense championed by a lot of key players throughout the travel and tourism industry.
For the most part, people who aren’t frequent travellers, like those who take that one annual holiday, only get exposed to the travel and tourism industry during peak season. Even if by some chance they get to travel under deployment from the company they work for, the contact they come into with the travel and tourism industry does nothing to suggest to them that it can be much cheaper than what it appears to be. For example, your company might be flying you economy class as part of your deployment for some official company business abroad somewhere, in which case you would conclude that something like flying business class is exceedingly out of the reach of the average person if the entire company which employs you can’t afford to fly you business class.
For those of us who are fortunate enough to have time to travel during off-peak tourist seasons a whole other world of travel exists in terms of the costs. For one, the average traveller may see an advert run on television by a prestigious airline and then proceed to try and book a ticket directly through that airline’s website if they can afford it, whereas us budget travellers would get our flight tickets through a budget tickets online agency.
This way we get to fly further for cheaper, often even at up to 50% of the price “normal” travellers gladly pay as they hold the view that that’s just the way it is.
The same applies for accommodation – budget travellers can stay longer in what appear to be exotic and expensive destinations because we’re willing to lay our heads to rest in the likes of backpackers and hostels, which in itself opens up a whole new world of opportunity since you get to meet people, put your heads and pennies together and get more done much cheaper.
