Travel after Iraq?

Editorial by Patrick Totty

In the 1990s a back-alley shop in Osaka became famous among hardcore bicyclists for its ability to fashion exquisitely individualized bicycles from standard factory parts.

The secret was in using computers to measure and note each customer’s exact physical dimensions – arm, foot and leg lengths at various stages of riding and pedaling, hip width and torso size – then program the cutting machinery in back to modify each component of the bike accordingly.

Craftsmen would then assemble the parts into a whole that perfectly fitted the customer’s body.

This is a classic case of the eating-your-cake-and-having-it-too option that modern technology is increasingly giving consumers. In the pre-industrial era, everything was hand-made, but nothing was very abundant. That’s why mass-produced items enjoyed great prestige when they were first introduced.

But while Industrialism solved the problem of abundance, but introduced a one-size-fits-all sensibility. Eventually people began to see custom or hand-made items as having greater value than ones mass produced.

Now we have the best of both worlds. The industrial process assures that we know how to make a lot of anything, and computers allow us to inject a long-missing element of craftsmanship and handwork. In doing so, it opens options to the middle class and affluent that were once the sole prerogatives of the very wealthy.

In the 1980s, the slogan “high-tech, high-touch” emerged to describe how technology might allow the marketplace to personalize its goods and services, replacing “You’ll take what we give you” with “What would you like?” That slogan seems to apply to travel more and more as time goes on.

Travel is quickly becoming like the products of that little Japanese factory. While we all enjoy the benefits of mass production in travel in the form of industrial-strength infrastructure – jumbo jets, airports, railroads, cruise shops, highway networks, buses, hotels – we are freer than ever to fine-tune and customize our journeys.

There are thousands of those Osaka bicycle shops in the form of travel agents and specialty operators who can create travel packages that are perfectly tailored to our tastes, and interests. The rationale for this web site rests happily and firmly on that fact.

War in Iraq: a fly in the ointment?

Even the prospect of war in the Middle East will do little to delay the emergence of a world where, when they choose so, travelers can find small, unique or off-beat adventures and providers. If anything, the desire to travel discreetly to places a little more off the beaten path (and therefore less susceptible to terrorist activity) will increase if a war sends tremors through the mass travel market.

People will use smaller airports and planes, stay at smaller hotels and away from the usual tourist hubs (or explore their unsung attractions). This won’t be a form of denial so much as a reinvention of why people travel in the first place. The lure of the truly new and unexpected will become far more attractive than coming to a place with a travel brochure image of it already firmly in mind.

A January 7 Travelocity poll of 1,000 randomly selected Americans revealed that a significant percentage – almost 50% – would still travel despite an increase in airport security measures or the outbreak of war. There’s no way to put a pollyannaish slant on that figure, but it does indicate that there is a core of leisure travelers who intend to travel, no matter what. That hard core, finding ways around and through travel impediments, are the ones who will set the tone for travel over the next few years of the early 21^st century.

More Editorials