The art of… rediscovery
As learning experiences go, it turns out there is nothing quite like a global pandemic that confines us all indoors for months, tests our personal relationships to the extreme, and reconfigures daily life as we know it. I can’t be the only one who feels like I’ve chalked up about a decade’s worth of life experience and personal development in recent weeks.
During the first few weeks of lockdown, I could practically hear the clunking in my soul as my priorities reshuffled; as I realised who my real friends were (the wise, the compassionate, the hilarious), what really mattered to me professionally (the pure joy of communication, nothing involving Instagram), what I needed in my daily routine to feel content (a barefoot walk on the beach, something hot for lunch, a heartfelt chat with a friend).
The pandemic changed my taste in music, TV, books and films, with much of my usual pop culture intake suddenly becoming hopelessly irrelevant or unbearably depressing. Almost overnight, I stopped being remotely attracted to mopey, misunderstood musician types, and realised the only men I was interested in are the ones working in wards, delivering food, or building chicken coops in their gardens. And of course, in recent weeks, as I began tentatively daydreaming about travel, I realised my tastes have turned radically retro.
I think we’ve all accepted that the travel landscape is going to look fairly different for the next few months, but this really doesn’t need to be a picture of bleakness. If you can just apply a sepia tint to the future, it all looks pretty charming. Because it looks rather like the past.
Travel in 2020 will inevitably be a simpler, stripped-back affair, with big, lavish international breaks off the menu. Travel in
2020 will almost certainly be more nature-oriented, with glamp-sites and remote lodges currently looking a lot more safe and sane than jampacked resorts or busy city festivals.
Travel in 2020 will be a more intimate affair, with smaller gatherings of close friends and families. And travel in 2020 will be much more regional, a year of staycations and backyard explorations, which we should celebrate, because the regional retail and hospitality industries desperately need our support.
Right now, we’re not being distracted by dazzling discount flights to cities across the world, or “unmissable” offers to exotic beach spas. Instead, we have the opportunity to remember forgotten travel daydreams. It’s a time to reassess what we really crave from a holiday, and rethink how far we need to travel to satisfy this craving. It’s a chance to revisit that childhood holiday spot, or return to that honeymoon hotel, or finally make that pilgrimage to the wine region we’ve been supporting, bottle by bottle, for years.
I’m not saying that we won’t see any innovation this year. Far from it. The travel and hospitality sector is going to have to hustle like never before, adapting to a new business model and attracting new customers. But as consumers, this is the time to rediscover forgotten classics, to celebrate what we have on our doorstep, and to make sure we support and rebuild the sort of travel landscape we want to inhabit.
Come to think of it, most of my lockdown lessons aren’t exactly epiphanies; for the most part, I’ve remembered things about myself I’d forgotten I knew. In my frenetically-paced pre-Covid life, I was in danger of forgetting what I loved, what really mattered, what made me content. During lockdown, I fell back in love with 1960s French cinema and 1970s soul music. I remembered the satisfaction of making Irish stew. I rediscovered the joys of long, solo bike rides. Phone calls to family members became more important than work calls.
Sure, some of us have shiny new habits thanks to the lockdown; a new yoga obsession, an infallible banana bread recipe, a few words of colloquial Spanish. But for many of us, the main legacy of this time will be that we became reacquainted with ourselves, with all distractions removed. As travellers, this means we’re taking a break from chasing the “new”, and instead celebrating and supporting what we have in front of us – the classic hotels, restaurants and regional destinations that were squeezed off our travel agenda by glitzier international offerings. We’re embarking upon a collective voyage of discovery, and it’s going to be quite the adventure. ●
This is a time to rediscover forgotten classics, to celebrate what we have on our doorstep.