The year of the GOAT

If surviving two years of Covid wasn’t enough, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine highlights an important message that most of us try to avoid thinking about: Life is short and precious. We have to make the most of it while we’re still healthy enough to enjoy it. You might have heard the term GOAT, or Greatest of All Time, usually reserved for sports stars like Muhammad Ali, Ayrton Senna and Serena Williams. Travel sites have caught on and they’re labelling 2022 as the year of the GOAT – Greatest of All Trips.

An Expedia survey of 12 000 travellers in 12 countries found that 65% of respondents are planning to go huge on their next trip. Searches for “epic destinations” have jumped, as people are prepared to pay more to go further and stay longer.

The reasons are obvious. We’ve been cooped up for two years, and now the doors have opened. We also realise there’s no such thing as safely predicting the future. There might be another pandemic a year down the line; or some megalomaniac with an itchy finger might press a big red nuclear button…

Yes, it seems the time to empty the bucket list is right now.

According to another report – this time by the World Travel & Tourism Council – 70% of leisure travellers in countries like the USA, UK, Canada, Japan, and Spain plan to spend more on travel in 2022 than they did in the previous five years combined! That’s excellent news for an “exotic” and “epic” destination like South Africa. It’s the same for us. As soon as the Omicron scare passed, South Africans were out of the departure gates heading for our national parks, our neighbouring countries, and even crossing oceans again.

It’s definitely time to go big and leave home!