Those were the days, but now is better
The scene is San Marco Square, Venice, in early 2001. There are few lanyard-wearing cruise tourists but a tour group huddles for a photo as the guide pulls out a ‘‘digi-cam’’, and a pickpocketer is thwarted by a money belt, which holds an increasingly rare traveller’s cheque.
Elsewhere a lost couple, jetlagged after their latest flight on an around-the-world ticket, pore over a fold-out map and a guide book, planning their first pasta meal. Another couple on their way to the airport, pop a last-minute wine purchase into their carry-on bag, without a care that the bottle is over 100ml. Oh, times, they have changed.
Calling cards
Not too long ago, you left for a holiday and your friends and family never expected to hear from you for weeks or months. Now, they can’t escape every unwarranted update from your intercontinental itinerary. Pre-millennium, corner shops did a roaring trade in calling cards and phone booths the world over – Great Britain’s red phone boxes remain an icon. But if their image endures, their practicality does not.
Along came omnipresent wi-fi, cheaper data, smartphones and, most importantly, apps that combined all of the above such as Whatsapp, Skype, Viber, and Facetime. Add to that the huge oversharing mess that is social media and you have over-communication, no matter the nation.
Round-the-world tickets
Airline alliances such as Star Alliance and Oneworld, as well as trusty STA Travel, do still promote round-the-world (RTW) tickets, where airline partners link their respective hubs into an intercontinental itinerary. The RTW ticket promised value, a bit of wiggle-room, stopovers and value. To me, it seems like a hangover from the long-haul flights from last century, when long-haul flights were forced to make multiple stop-offs enroute.
This generation of travellers barely knows the difference between a flag carrier airline and a budget travel company, such have the lines blurred. Our current historically low airfares have eroded the value of RTW tickets, whose rules now seem rigid and prices too high when, with a multicity search on an airfare aggregator website, you can piece together itineraries easily with fewer restrictions on any combination of airlines.
Traveller’s cheques
Nothing will show your age like referencing traveller’s cheques. So let me point out that I am young enough to only have seen them in use, but never used one. In their heyday they were revolutionary, a safer and more effective way to pay for holiday purchases abroad without cash.
Now, I struggle to think of anywhere that would accept these 20th-century travel relics, ruthlessly replaced by foreign exchange cards that move money across borders in real time, with better exchange rates and security.
Road maps
A key frustration of childhood roadtrips to the big smoke would be the increasing irrelevance of our ’’AA map of Auckland’’, which had Spaghetti Junction etched in as a work in progress and had satellite towns of Papakura and Albany, rather than one congested mass of urban sprawl. So many U-turns. No wonder these tomes were the first things to be upended by the digital revolution. Thank you GPS.
If car GPS was the beginning of the end for road atlases, then smartphones and Google Maps were the nail in the coffin. The latter combination should also soon put an end to car rental companies offering GPS hire as a rip-off additional service. Is navigation a useful skill? Yes. Must I be tested with every road trip or city walk? No, although slightly slow software ensures there are still a couple of arguments when we miss a motorway exit.
Digital cameras
They were essential travel kit in the first decade of the new millenium. No longer were we hostage to the limitations and high prices of Kodak and Fujifilm. You could review pics as you went, to avoid the horrors of a perfect shot ruined by an errant finger over the lens.
And let’s not forget the Cybershot’s ancestors, the Kodak disposable camera, any film camera and the Polaroid. There was a grey period around a decade ago where a (wealthy) traveller’s backpack may hold: a smartphone with camera, a digital camera, a professional long-lens camera, and a GoPro. Although standalone digital cameras are going the way of the dodo, its legacies of the travel selfie, constant photo reviewing and the bulk photo upload to social media live on.
And what’s ripe for retiring?
■ Animal exploitation tourism: No more sedated tigers, elephant rides and dolphin experiences – we’ve all seen Blackfish, right?
■ Splashing out on a DSLR camera to only end up using your smartphone more. Phone cameras are improving by leaps and bounds, while a huge camera doesn’t suit most holidays.
■ Travel wallets. Is there anything left to put in them, now that your money is mainly on the plastic and border guards demand that your passport is not encapsulated in one?
■ Zip-off trousers. If not now, then when? Outside of hiking holidays or expeditions, most holidays don’t require special clothing. Try to fit in.
■ Foreign exchange kiosks. Maybe I’m calling it too soon, but the days of ‘‘cash is king’’ must be drawing to an end.