Paris or Patagonia - your next vacation?

PARIS OR PATAGONIA
Where Will You Take
Your Next Vacation?
By Zain Deane

“You’re going where?”
“Costa Rica.”
“Umm. Why?”
“For vacation. I hear it’s beautiful.”

This was a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine who had just made plans for a summer vacation. Her choice—Costa Rica—surprised me on many levels. First, I didn’t know it was such an attractive tourist hotspot (over the course of the next few days, however, a surprising number of people told me they wanted to go there). Second, she had chosen Costa Rica over several candidates that, to me, seemed more viable vacation destination. No Paris? No Bahamas? No India or Thailand or Egypt? What gives?

Actually, my friend is merely part of a growing trend to get away from the popular and familiar, and strike out for the unknown and the exotic. There are a few reasons for this: for one, global tourism has never been more accessible, more popular, or more heavily marketed. Countries that previously have virtually ignored or mismanaged their tourism potential have invested heavily in new campaigns to attract visitors. For another, private businesses have played a major role in bolstering lesser known destinations. My friend, for example, was eager to go to Costa Rica primarily because of a luxurious eco-wilderness resort she’d found on the web. Guatemala and Colombia have also developed eco-tourism campaigns that allow tourists to either rough it or enjoy it in style.

The plethora of resorts and top-class hotels in more remote locations has been a principal drive behind the new wave of tourism. Here’s the proof in the pudding: open up Condé Nast Traveler’s Reader’s Choice Awards for 2006 and click on Best of the Best. You’ll find Botswana, South Africa, and Budapest among the top ten … in the world. How many of these places have you thought about visiting? Next, look at the Travel Channel’s current list of Top Ten Fun Family Resorts: Sure, Disney tops the list, but two through four are in Carlsbad, California, Ixtapa, Mexico, and Takilma, Oregon.

Perhaps the most extreme and successful example of a relatively obscure city (for visitors) with virtually no history of global tourism putting itself squarely on the vacationer’s map is Dubai. Many people who know of Dubai couldn’t even tell you which Arab nation it belonged to (trust me, I’ve asked; for the record, it’s the United Arab Emirates). But Dubai, following the Bugsy Siegel dream of creating paradise in a desert, threw billions into establishing a tourist’s dream city. The result? A shopping Mecca that carries nearly every major global brand name on the planet; a hopping Western nightlife scene in the midst of an ultra-conservative Muslim country; and, of course, world-class lodging highlighted by the magnificent Burj Al Arab (“Tower of the Arabs”), the world’s only 7-star hotel … for now. Plans are underway to build a new 7-star hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, as unlikely a tourist hotspot as one can find today.

Of course, economics play a factor as well. Paris, London, St. Thomas … these aren’t cheap places to visit. Guatemala, Laos, and Albania provide much more bang for the buck, along with a definite sense of “haven’t been there, never did that.” Even those who can throw money around are willing to drop a lot of cash in remote corners of the planet. Forbes’ 2006 Most Expensive Hotels in the world led off with not one but two properties in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve in South Africa that will have you shelling out around $2,000 per night.

So what’s the moral of this story? Not to sound too altruistic, but it’s refreshing to see that people are willing to explore and savor their sense of adventure. The world is getting smaller, but it’s also getting more accessible, and the more we experience, the better we can understand and appreciate it. With the supercharged political tension and threat of terror hanging over so many parts of the world, it’s uplifting to know that normal people are willing to go somewhere extraordinary.

There’s nothing wrong with Paris; but next time I plan a vacation, I think I’ll look into Patagonia.