The best thing about mobile devices is we can use them as we travel. The worst thing is, when we move a little, it usually doesn’t have the infrastructure needed to function. For example, I can think of the Blackberry I’ve been testing for a few weeks. Receiving emails anywhere and being able to answer them is indeed an extraordinary working tool. Until we reach the GPRS (the standard GSM net, the most used in mobile phones) net covered area. That is, we can’t go too far away from urban areas, or our Blackberry will not have signal. Not to mention notebook computers and its WiFi needs, or even count on normal signal on mobile phones. There are many mobile devices, but at least in most of Latin America, the basic infrastructure is limited to more populated areas.

Now well, many people are surprised that the Net doesn’t have more travel related applications that can be executed from a mobile device. There are tools such as Splash Travel, available for Palm OS, but not much more. I believe such absence is absolutely logical. What’s the point in creating such a social network that work in a mobile device for travelers, when most of the planet lacks of ubicuous locations to Internet? Even if Wimax started to expand rapidly, the possibility of internet connection available in most of the country is a long, 10 years perspective, or longer. Will web applications for mobile devices take that long to arrive? In our region, in the south of the world, it’s most likely. In Europe, where distances are shorter, they will appear much sooner -and in fact, tests of social networking for mobile phones are already being done in this area of the world.

If you want to read more about the topic of Mobile 2.0 - that is, the arrival of collaborative and participative tools for mobile devices- you can read the excellent summary published by Read/Write Web (thanks to Juan Pablo Paradelo for the info). For a more comprehensive definition of Mobile 2.0, check out Dan’s Blog.

Starting april 1st, the european community will begin to formally demand every bolivian citizen that enters this region to previously obtain a visa. According to official sources cited in the spanish newspaper El Pais, this measure was taken due to the “intense migratory pressure” from Bolivia. Other countries of the area already in the list of nations that need a visa include Colombia, Peru and Equator.

Despite the declarations made by spanish and european community’s authorities, it seems pretty obvious that in a short term other latin american countries will be added to the list. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not usually optimistic in these issues. And even less, if we analyze how has the migratory policy and the US - Europe tourism regulation evolved, with increasingly more strict measures.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to go to a travel agency, and on the computers you could see a paper sign with the entry demands to the European community. A certain amount of money per day, credit cards, round trip tickets with no more than a 90 day stay in the region, etc. And I thought, while an european backpacker can travel almost anywhere in the world with a relatively small amount of money and have a long trip, most of us are not allowed to do that. Eventually, only thos with the right passport will be able to backpack around the world. Or am I being to pessimistic today? (Thanks, José, for the notice).

Starting from common sense: isn’t there lots of people who would love to be a travel writer? To be able to go from one place to the other, and being paid for this, is something truly enviable. Unfortunately, things sometimes are not so simple or pretty. Every time I read the phorum or blogs that gather travel writers or journalists -particularly freelance in english language media- I find an aboundance of complaints. That the payment is low; that there’s more marketing and less journalism; that the good times are gone… Any journalist knows that his job is quite conditioned by advertising, the incomes of the media and the attractiveness of the section you work in. And apparently, the media’s travel sections are more read by advertisers and actors of the tourism sector than by ordinary readers. Which would explain, partially, why the “media readers” choose the Internet to inform themselves about destinations. The reason: they can talk directely to other travelers and tourists without necessarily having to undergo the media’s filters and the travel companies’ marketing areas.

Let’s return to travel writers. Some days ago, The New York Times published an interesting article about the problems of being a travel guides writer. The core issue: this is work, not a leisure travel. So, everything you do when you travel in such conditions is… move around the places that will be useful to develop a travel guide that’s helpful to other travelers. That’s not what we see as usual in a travel, where we rather assume we’re relaxed and move from on place to the other without hurry or problems.

Do we move without hurry and carelessly around the city? I’m afraid this form of tourism we have incorporated as “what we do when we travel”, is quite far from many real travel practices. More likely, when we arrive to a city, we usually have so little time, we move frenetically around in order to see everything our guide has marked down as “must sees”. And it’s not only during the day, at night we also have to go out, take pictures, walk around, check out the “local environment”. At the end, when we return from our vacations, we’re more exhausted than when we left. Although, of course, strangely happy.

Could it be that, in fact, practices generally associated to travel writers are increasingly becoming part of our routines as travelers? When we travel, we produce more things in order to publish them in the Internet: pictures, travel notes, videos, etc. I know many of these supports were already common to travelers, taking notes is a travel tradition of many centuries; and taking photos, of many decades. But there’s a more clear idea of producing “private” and “public” versions of our travels, something common for a tourism journalist, but not so much for the rest of us. Of course, these “public” versions of our trips are possible thanks to new forms of Internet publications, such as blogs, phorums, etc.

Will we end up as travel writers, but without working in a traditional media?

And what about the problems of travel writers, finally? Better read the New York Times note (you’ll need to register in the site, for free, first)

The New York Times article was originally seen at Travel Writers.

In my routine of travel blogs and sites reading, I found out, at Tim Leffel’s site, that Budget Living magazine, targeted at backpackers and people who travel on low budgets, had closed. And its editor says this:

“The name ‘budget’ worked great with readers,” he said, “but it was a hurdle for advertisers. The name was a mixed blessing.”

That is: while the “budget” denomination is appealing to the public in general, in the same way the word “backpacker” is in our environment, advertisers finds it horrible. Thus, we have a product that may appeal to many people, but also attracts the “wrong” readers, from marketing’s point of view. Why wrong? because they’re not willing to spend a large sum of money in their travel.

Such assumption has caused that at many latin american countries, the travels section is written for five stars travellers. This happens even in newspapers, despite some of them are quite massive. The conflict is important to analyze because the issues between “the public’s interest” and the “advertisers uninterest” should be resolved. Otherwise, we’ll keep lacking good publications for the public that wants to travel without spending too much.

And there’s another issue: my perception -only, since I couldn’t prove it with numbers- i that at least here, in Argentina, the backpacker public is noticeably reluctant to support editorials initiatives regarding to cheaper ways to travel, even when these are good and not pricey. As I wrote in the entry dedicated to “extreme backpackers”, many times there’s some sort of common sense by which one “should not spend a dime at all”. So, in this extreme version of the story, the backpacker is not someone who spends little, but someone who wants to spend nothing. Of course, in the long run, such attitude holds potential dangers in relation to the local people who provide tourism services and who have to deal with people who want everything for free; and without any editorial proposals. The reason is simple: many readers don’t want to spend anything, even when the publication would help them organise the trip and save, and advertisers just don’t want to see their ads there. And that’s that. At least in this part of the world, the only travel magazines existing are aimed at middle-high class tourists. Luckily, we have the Internet, but a complement from the editorial world would be really good.

It’s quite common to consider the Internet a threat in the editorial world. It’s almost as if the perception were “we had a great business model, but now there’s the Internet to disturb and ruin it all”. But to consider the Web as an enemy is a mistake. Rather, we have to turn the Internet into an ally when obtaining better information. For instance, by allowing us to have a simpler contact with our readers, in case of travel guides. What for? To update info, prices, locations, for example. Nowadays, to think about a model of contents creation completely made by paid specialists just doesn’t make sense anymore, since most of these functions can be carried out better if we are able to create a community around our product. The idea is not simply “to lower costs”, but to help the always meager budgets destined to create a travels product find better ways to present information. That is: not just dedicate to collect information. That doesn’t have any aggregate value. We cannot compete with the Internet there.

As I’ve said before, I believe travel guides still have great opportunities in this market, even when the presence of the Internet is, for some, a threat. Part of these opportunities are so thanks to a central point: guides are capable to formalize information and present it neatly; to do the same with the Internet, we’d have to spent a lot of time searching, and finally we’d end up with a bunch of printed sheets, not too confortable to carry around.

This trend to formalize more adequately information is something that distiguishes guides such as Lonely Planet, for example. Recent editions are placing emphasis on the subject of tours. For instance, they make sections where they recommend what places to visit in a determined city, depending on how many days do we have available. This way, they help the tourist organise better his time, a scarce resource when we travel.

The other interesting thing is that guides should emphasize the trend the Internet is finishing to establish: it’s not only about having a didactic speech, from “specialist to student”; rather, there should be a relation among equals. That is, from traveller to traveller. The important thing is not to teach the other what he should see, but to provide him the tools he needs to live his own travel experience. Because that’s travel: an experience.

An almost common sense overlook would say those touristic destinations that suffered some natural or man-caused disaster, such as earthquakes or terrorist attacks, suffer a very important economic damage. The reason is simple: tourists stop visiting the area because they fear for they safety. You know, there’s nothing less attractive for tourism than lack of safety.

But it seems like we’ll have to change our minds about this. According to the International Herald Tribune, touristic destinations that suffered some kind of disaster not only recovered quickly, but even surpassed the figures in revenues and number of tourists they had before the problems.

For example, Sri Lanka, which last year was affected by a tsunami and no less than 30 thousand people died or are missing, this month has the highest reservations number in its history. In october 2002, more than 200 people died in Bali in a series of attacks to places frequented by tourists. While it’s true that, after the attacks, the number of tourists went down to less than a million, in 2005 almost one and a half million will have visited the island. In Phuket, Thailand, more than 500 swedish people died because of the tsunami; less than 12 months later, the swedish are flying in larger numbers towards Phuket than before the disaster. And something similar has happened with London, which hasn’t had any bigger issues since the metro attacks. The interviewed people in the Herald note say that even destinations that has had quite bad publicity due to unsafety issues, such as Brazil, are getting increasingly more reservations.

Some of the explanations coming from travel agents and specialists are quite impressive. Some say that the war with Iraq and the topic of terrorist attacks has become an everyday issue, and doesn’t impact tourists anymore. What yesterday was a big shocker, today is commonplace. No matter how, the important thing is that the destination gets publicity, even negative.

Of course, this mediacentered explanation -the media has banalised disasters and attacks- shouldn’t be easily accepted. It’s obvious something is changing in the tourism market, to the point that tourists, once reluctant to visit any minimally insecure destination, are now willing to run risks, not taking too seriously natural disasters, and visiting a greater variety of destinations. Taking risks was once a travellers patrimony. Are tourists becoming more and more travellers?

Have you noticed that those who define themselves as travellers keep placing things to differentiate themselves from tourists, while tourists don’t even care for whatever travellers do?

For a long time, we’ve been used to a one direction type of information. The media presented articles, we read them and, at most, we could send a letter if we had any question. Interaction didn’t go beyond that. But in blogs, which usually allow comments, the situation is quite different.

Let’s take a note about some european destination, for example. The journalist made some previous research, travelled, told what he’d seen, and period. How he got there, is not part of the note; that is, certain production conditions were erased from the final text. If he’d gone there as part of his vacations, or if he was invited by some country’s tourism office or travel agency, that’s something we don’t see printed. In a way, that became part of the backstage, part of the note’s making of process readers didn’t have to know about.

With the arrival of blogs and comments spaces, these things have begun to change. If I wrote some entries dedicated to some european destination -hopefully soon, let me dream a little- good part of my reader’s questions would be, precisely, about that backstage. How much did the ticket cost, how did I find out, what guides and Internet sites I consulted, how to prepare for the trip, how much for the lodging, where did I stay…

If my answer was “I was invited by a travel agency, and I spent my time from tour to tour, all paid, and I have no clue about how much these things cost” -since, of course, I didn’t have to pay for them or even care about organising my trip- my experience of the place will lose sense for my readers.

Since I didn’t have to plan the trip as any other person has to, I’ll be unable to answer most of the commentators questions.

And here’s an interesting distance between graphic journalism, which doesn’t allow direct interaction with readers, and blogs which allow comments. The travel experience of the travel journalist who has someone else plan the trip for him, is not too interesting for the reader who wants to know more information to plan his own trip. And this is part of the process we’ll all have to learn: we are not able to provide answers to all questions, and without our readers help we wouldn’t be able to handle everything.

In the future, the most interesting travel stories will be those produced by our equals, other Net users. Like it or not, journalists and the tourism industry will have to get used to it. Because the travel experience is not only about experiencing the place; planning the trip itself is part of our questions and doubts.

One of the key issues in the backpacker’s trip is the topic of expenses control. To be able to visit places with the least money possible is what distinguishes this type of tourism, and for this matter many destinations usually create a specific supply of hostel and camping accomodations, generally by part of the private sector. But the decision to spend less sometimes generates the appearing of a specific group of backpackers: the extreme backpackers. These ones are not looking to spend less; they, simply, don’t want to spend anything at all. They’re trying all the time to access services without paying a dime; they’d rather sleep on the street or anywhere as long as they don’t have to pay a few bucks for a camping tent or a hotel bed; they don’t use a single bus and are capable of staying on the route for days as they wait for an opportunity to hithchhike. There’s a certain pride in these kind of actions. It’s not strange, when we travel in an environment characterized for the presence of backpackers, that conversations tend to focus on who spent less; sometimes, a few cents define the discussion, and the resulting feeling is that who spend less can travel better.

In many cases, the strict in expenses backpacker trip is not a choice; there’s the willingness to travel and very little money. So, one has to be very disciplined and not spend too much if we want to keep on moving. This implies looking for the cheapest places, where we can cook, if possible; trying to save as much as we can in transportation; and usually looking for economic ways to have fun.

The problem is when many of these backpackers get together, in determined seasons, in rather small destinations, with a small population. Let’s get real: few locals would look friendly at people who want to visit their town but are not willing to spend a dime in it and who have set a goal of getting everything they can for free, when possible. One case: it’s quite common in the north of Argentina to charge for the use of public bathrooms -something usual in Bolivia and the south of Peru, but not so much in many areas of Argentina, particularly in the biggest cities, such as Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Rosario, where most of the argentinean backpackers come from. The result: long discussions between the backpackers that don’t want to pay 25 - 50 cents (US$ 0.08 - 0.16) to use the bathroom and the local people who live from the business exploitation of their town. And this is just one case. I suppose there are similar situations taking place in some other countries, but with other types of services.

When I talk about “realism”, I try to be practical: it’s hard to ask a local population to receive tourists in the best manner, if these don’t bring any benefits or if they just provoke damages. There are, of course, some limits: in many destinations, people want to charge you even just to look at the landscape, and these kind of abuse are not rare. But on the traveller’s side, excess is not unusual either. Travelling cheap does not mean, simply, to consider paying for something a sin. It’s about, above all, economizing in expenses by restricting only to the basics and indispensable. But it’s not realistic to demand the local people to watch the occupation of their public spaces in exchange of nothing.

Part of the ideas of this note came up from the comment Victor left on the article Los otros mochileros (spanish only), about the impact on Iruya, a wonderful location on the north of Salta in Argentina, of the massive arrival of backpackers, particularly during the argentinean summer time. That I disagree with some of Victor’s statements shouldn’t make us lose sight of the fact that there’s a problem to be solved in what he’s pointing. Backpacker travelling is a beautiful experience that has to include respect for local populations; getting to know their ways and habits is a form to observe the huge diversity of Argentina, many times lost under the stories that presents it as a “white and european” country. If local populations start to perceive backpackers more as a disturb than as a pleasant visit, in the long run they’ll do what many destinations that want to take advantage from tourism have done: to close free public spaces, raising the cost of hotel and other services, and delegating the task of removing “unwanted visitors” from the location to the police. The idea: to point only at “profitable tourists”. Let’s not pull the rope: authoritarian solutions are always an option in the minds of many people.

Crisis times are moments where new business opportunities appear, some executives say. Of course, crisis also empowers the search for that “idea” that will save us economically while others sink.

The decadence of traditional economic activities, linked to agriculture and industry, has forced many people to look at the services sector to survive or to make business. And tourism appears as one of those interesting areas, and apparently it won’t stop growing during the next years at very promising rates. It doesn’t matter if data support this perception; the truth is that in the mind of many people, the reconvertion towards tourism seems a reasonable economic proposal in a context of growing social empoverishment.

Thus, industrial areas recycle their buildings into shopping centers and malls; country estates are dedicate to rural tourism; and the most diverse proposals arise, destined to take advantage of the existent infrastructure -architectonic, historic, even atomic tourism, as we said in a previous entry.

The problem is the idea that any cultural or social capital can be reconverted into tourism withour major problems. This attempt to touristify everything that surrounds us, many times is nothing but a desperate way to find an opportunity window in a moment of crisis. The most serious point is how this common sense of “everything can be touristic as long as we plan it” turns into economic demands towards the government, who presumibly has to support these initiatives, and invest in infrastructure and tax reductions to favor the tourism sector. Of course, afterwards, the profits will end up in private hands, as usual. Anyways, it is clear that this “economic support” is given in countries more developed than latin american countries.

Some examples of how the state assumes certain expenditure to help the tourism sector can be found here, here and in a PDF document by the Tourism World Organisation, which recommend to subsidy commercial practices related to ecotourism.

For instance, the touristic overexploitation of Machu Picchu can be damaging for Peru in the next years, if the ruins end up by falling apart. Despite many have benefited from this touristic attraction direct or indirectly, it’s obvious that the state will have to spend millions to fix the problem. Which is nothing trivial for a country like Peru, that has urgent social needs as any other country in the region.