Holidaying or Chasing Brands?

In a recent article, titled "Goodbye India, Hello World - by Priyanko Sarkar, TOI, May 26th 2008", Priyanko questions the increasing trend of Indians flocking to foreign and "branded destinations" for their holidays. A welcome trend, where Indians are replacing the Japanese & Europeans in being the world's most frequent travellers. Where are they going to however? Visiting "city countries" such as Singapore, Hongkong, Dubai or Thailand. And if its in India- Goa, 10 times over!

Isn't travel supposed to broaden horizons?

Over centuries, travel to faraway lands had a sense of adventure and romance associated with it. Travellers intermingled with the local cultures, learnt something from them and gave back something from their own, to create new cultures. Travel is supposed to broaden horizons and expose people to new ways of thinking, new cuisines, customs & cultures. I once met a German teenage couple on a Frankfurt-Delhi flight - teenagers out to see India. They wanted to "explore life around the Ganges" and were travelling on a shoe-string budget (partly sponsored by their parents), without any specific agenda. They told me of a European custom where parents give their 18-19 year old children whatever money they can afford to so that their kids can "go see the world" for sometime! How romantic? A whiff of fresh air, when increasingly, people seem to want to travel within their "comfort zones" and to "branded destinations". Is this travel at all?

The Resort is the Tourist Destination!

Notice how people describe their holidays these days? "We went to a Club Mahindra Resort" or the Taj Exotica! The place they went to follows (if its a brand!) and they are completely stumped when you ask them what they saw, ate, experienced. I always wonder what people do when they go on a week long trip and stay at one resort especially in India where covering a radius of 200+ kilometers to see all the sites around is quite tiresome travelling out from this one "resort". So they stay back in this resort most of the time and come back after seeing the resort and eating Punjabi food, Pizzas or bastardized versions of local dishes (at those "colourful" buffets). All this, while they laugh at the poor old 60+ folks who take their once in a life time trip to Europe with SOTC with the comfort of maharaj-cooked Indian food.

Ask them what they saw and they would have missed out on some of the most memorable places in the area, because they thought it was passe or nobody told them about it. If its a vacation overseas, they may tell you quite excitedly about some malls, casinos, cars, airports that they saw, about "shows" in Las Vegas but nothing about The Grand Canyon nearby!

Aren't brands too common now?

We are a gregarious and vane species. We love to talk about the elitist things we did! Is going to a Club Mahindra Resort elitist anymore, or is it egalitarian now? Or visiting Disneyland, Goa or Singapore? How about trying some obscure locations, hotels and cuisines that you can "talk" about? Want to talk about a hotel, then stay at some of the great properties of the world once in a while (even if its for one night), high end Oberoi properties, Four Seasons, The Mt. Kenya Safari Club or The Royal Livingstone at the Victoria Falls.

Visit some obscure places, try the local cuisine and you'll hold your audiences spell-bound talking about it. Try Angkor Vat in Cambodia, Lake Naivasha in Kenya, Lapland Area of Finland and the 8 waterfalls in the Karwar region, Panhala, Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh. Try foie gras and oysters in France, reindeer meat and salmon in Finland, crocodile and ostrich meat in Kenya and duck feet in Hongkong. In India, try out Chettinad food, Nethli fish fry, vathakulambu in Tamilnadu, Sarson Da Saag in Punjab, Mirchi Ka Salan in Andhra and you would at the very least make your audiences think about the shitty holiday they just had in Singapore where they did nothing!

Infrastructure in India sucks, but are we checking out infrastructure?

Ask people why they don't checkout "Incredible India" and pat comes the reply "Whats there to see in India? The infrastructure sucks, the Delhi Punjabis are rude!, whats there in the Himalayas and my kids want to go to Singapore?" Agreed, infrastructure sucks in India and it will take at least another decade for it to get better. Surely a country that is a microcosm of a whole continent with its 5000 year old history, its varied traditions, architecture, cuisines, natural sites and its varied geography does have something to offer for a vacation.

Having shown your kids the superb infrastructure of Singapore & Hongkong, its probably time to see India and show your kids too, so that they don't need to see it when they retire and come back at the sunset of their professional careers in the US (getting back to their roots), to see what their parents never showed them!