NICK TREND CONSUMER TRAVEL EXPERT

The past decade has seen huge changes in the way we holiday. Here are some of the key developments

Think back to New Year’s Eve, 2009. The first spasms of the economic crisis were still fresh in our minds, but austerity had yet to begin. Gordon Brown was prime minister, Barack Obama was about to be inaugurated, Colonel Gaddafi was in power. Meanwhile, Wolf Hall had just been published and Sir Terry Wogan had just presented his final breakfast show. Oh, and Thomas Cook was still a fully functioning, well-respected tour operator.

A lot has changed since then. But as we head into the next decade, how have events changed the world of travel? I’ve trawled through the Telegraph Travel archives to pick out some of the biggest trends of the past 10 years: how our travelling tastes have changed, destinations on the up – and down – the improvements and setbacks that have affected our travelling lives.

For me, there is one development that eclipses all others. In 2009 I had just bought my first iPhone – they had already been around for just over a year and about 17 per cent of people in the UK already owned some kind of smartphone. I was part of that initial wave that got hooked on the bright little screen that has transformed the way we interact with the world. Now, 80 per cent of the population owns a smartphone, including about 95 cent of 16- to 24-year-olds.

It has changed travel in so many ways. We can book hotels, flights, trains, restaurants and attractions with a few taps of the forefinger. We can locate ourselves on a map and have our route planned for us. We can tell when traffic jams will impede our journey or by how long our train is delayed. Through Twitter, we can complain directly to an airline or train company in real time. Also in real time, we can share our frustrations with others, ask their advice or help them out. What’s more, our iPhone is probably the best camera we’ve ever had. And it is always with us. We can share our pictures, make recommendations, show off on Instagram. In fact, we may even choose our next holiday based on someone else’s Instagram posts.

Of course, it has its downsides. Do we spend too much time staring at a screen? Have we become too fixated on snapping rather than looking? Have we lost that precious ability to get lost and make new discoveries? Are we so connected to work, and to our friends and family back home, that we never get a proper holiday any more?

I can’t answer these questions, but I do know that for anyone with a smartphone, the world is a very different place now than it was a decade ago. Here are some other fundamentals that have changed.

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IN FOR THE LONG HAUL

The growth in our appetite for flying saw no let up. In the past decade, the number of passengers using UK airports rose by a third, from about 218million to 292million. Most of these were short-haul flights to Europe, but we have also seen a revolution in long-haul flying, with numbers to farflung destinations up sharply.

No doubt this has been helped by a step change in the quality of long-haul aircraft. Ten years ago, the huge double-decker Airbus A380 was relatively new on the scene. Ultimately, it hasn’t proved a huge success – it’s too big to be used efficiently on many routes. But during the 2010s it set a new standard in passenger comfort. It is much quieter than the old Boeing 747s and, crucially, the cabin pressure is much higher – the equivalent of 5,000ft above sea level, rather than 8,000ft in a jumbo – which means your body can absorb more oxygen and you are less prone to dehydration and bloating.

More successful has been Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, which went into service on routes out of Britain in 2013. It’s another super-quiet, long-range plane, though much smaller than the A380. It too has a high cabin pressure, and offers higher humidity and cleaner air. All of which helps combat jet lag, and makes long-haul flying a much more enjoyable experience.

As the decade ends, we find ourself in a strange position. Just as Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg are making their presence felt, Qantas tested the longest passenger flight to