However, something else came to light: backpackers are holding on to the identity as they get older. Youth travel has long been associated with the emblematic figure of the backpacker: the independent solo traveller staying in hostels to spend long periods on the road. What has happened to the backpacker over the years?
We dig into the data to try and find out. Even though the proportion of backpackers has fallen, the growth of global tourism means that their numbers have changed very little: there were an estimated 45 million international backpacking trips in , compared with 44 million in The fall in the proportion of backpackers is also evident if we follow the same cohort of people, born at the same time, over the years.
In terms of age profile, backpackers have changed little in the past 20 years. Changes in travel style are also evident, with the proportion of backpackers using hostels generally falling over time. Use of both independent and Hostelling International hostels fell between and , with the decline particularly marked for the latter. Over time, the average age of backpackers using hostels has generally risen, although there was a fall between and If we look at the same cohort born around , then we see a slight rise in hostel use between and , but a marked decline thereafter.
But does a city like Bangkok, along with similar destinations that were largely overrun with travelers before the pandemic, actually want backpackers back? After all, low budget travelers have -- perhaps unfairly -- become synonymous with bad behavior over the years, and the likes of Australia, another top backpacking spot, have seemingly taken steps to discourage them from visiting.
The tax was ruled illegal for citizens of eight countries which have treaties with Australia, including the UK, US, Germany and Japan, in October ,. With that in mind, could the after effects of Covid see places that have become weary of budget travelers opting to keep them out for good? Stuart Nash, tourism minister for New Zealand, another hugely popular backpacking spot, indicated that this might well be the case when he suggested the country would be marketing to more "high-net-worth individuals" in the future.
His words were viewed as a direct snub to backpackers, many of whom arrive on working holiday visas and take on jobs such as fruit picking and farm work. But Jenni Powell, chair of the Backpacker Youth and Adventure Tourism Association , stresses that backpackers contribute to New Zealand in many different and positive ways, and their presence has been missed.
We can't wait for the borders to open safely again. According to Powell, younger travelers visit more destinations around the country and stay for longer, which is good for seasonal growth. New Zealand has been relatively successful at containing coronavirus outbreaks, and social distancing and mask wearing has never been commonplace there, which is likely to increase its appeal with travelers. She predicts that budget travel will be the first to recover once international travel resumes, as "millennial travelers are crisis resilient.
Businesses decimated. Backpacking and hostels go hand in hand, so it's no surprise that the hostel community has also been hit hard by the absence of backpackers during the pandemic.
While safety measures vary from destination to destination, most businesses have had to tighten up safety measures by installing acrylic glass at check-in desks and hand sanitizer units and operating at a reduced capacity to ensure travelers can keep a safe distance from each other.
However, creating extra space won't have been an issue for the vast majority, who've been struggling to fill beds.
The Youth Hostel Association England and Wales , an international non-profit organization with over properties, open to schools, families, couples and backpackers, celebrated its 90th year in , but the last 12 months have proved to be memorable for all the wrong reasons. Although the grant-funded organization has survived World War II, and the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK back in , he admits this is the biggest challenge they've ever faced. Meanwhile many small, independent hostels have also had to close their doors temporarily, while some were forced to close permanently.
Unfortunately Singapore's Mitraa Inn fell into the latter group, shutting its doors back in June after 15 years in business. In an interview with Channel News Asia Insider , co-owner Viji Jagadeesh told how she'd resorted to pawning her jewelry to raise enough money to refund canceled bookings and did not have enough funds to pay the internet bill for the hostel.
It's putting a lot of hostels out of business," says Bhattacharya. They represent communities in each and every city. One such supplier is The Broke Backpacker blog founder Will Hatton, who runs backpacker adventure tours to Pakistan, Iran and Kyrgyzstan, and had been in the process of opening up a digital nomad co-working hostel in Bali before Covid hit.
For the people who pursue only leisure activities, the journey is overall rather planned and falls within an excursion. Cohen , contributing to self-development. The job they left in the country of origin will be reintegrated on their return, such as with Frans, an engineer for NASA, or Katarina, a social worker. This job is appreciated but is put aside for a defined period of time. In the case of Elise and Cosme, Elise continues to work online along the way, but the trip is well planned and is linked up to their future life plans: to learn bread techniques throughout the world in order to open a bakery afterwards, and to learn artistic techniques in order to enrich her competences as an illustrator, or even to create a book.
For some, the job left back home is linked to the trip in a cyclic way, such as is the case for Markus: for several years he has been doing small jobs in Norway over a number of months in order to save money and go travelling afterwards. The more the duration lengthens, the less planning matters; the trip becomes the life plan for an unspecified period of time, in which work is incorporated along the way. It is for instance the case for Mike, who has been travelling for more than 4 years, going from one job to another.
Wilson and G. Richards b stress the importance of the emic approach 13 to grasp the social construction of the phenomenon through the circulation of speech. For instance, Cosme and Elise say that at the beginning of the trip, they avoided Frenchmen from a fear of association with the overly contradictory image of backpackers who travel but mix between themselves.
In the course of the journey they decided to allow encounters to happen. The collection of experiences seems to show that roaming on the global scale and its more or less firm planning is situated somewhere between exploration and appropriation. For instance, Katarina had not planned to take 13 sabbatical months and to remain only on one continent. Not country but continent. Now I realise, this an option. To stay, in one, like these guys I met in Africa, they just, they are on the road for maybe a year of something, but they just stay in Africa, and they do all of Africa.
What is the difference you think? Between these two options? Katarina, a 30 year old German who has been travelling since 2,5 months, is a social assistant on a sabbatical year. These choices of destinations are thus mainly guided towards the destinations which he does not know yet:. The act of creating a social network, generally composed of Westerners, to find a small job, or to decorate a new home, sometimes a tourist accommodation, highlights well the hybridity between work and leisure, between here and elsewhere, between habitual and in-habitual experiences, which is specific to certain profiles of backpackers.
This relation between appropriation, exploration, and planning is of course often a mix, combining some unknown destinations which are quickly explored, and some destinations with a longer-lasting integration.
The use of pre-determined itineraries seems to depend considerably on the tourist environment, and in particular on the presence of a market specifically addressed to backpackers, as is the case in Southeast Asia. One can nevertheless propose certain particularities based on these results. He has more opportunities to get off the beaten track, by for instance making use of the extension of his social network. Also, it is perhaps among them that one can find the most backpackers who consider the trip to be other than an excursion, and more as a lifestyle, without necessarily wondering about the place of this lifestyle in the host society or back home.
Frequently, the same paradigms find themselves engaged in condemnation and justification of what is condemned. Backpacking thus remains to be interpreted within this tension. Ateljevic I. Benson M. Boltanski L. Cattan N. Cohen E. Cooper M. Croucher S.
Demers J. Duncan T. Hampton M. Perspectives from the less developed world , London, Routledge. Jarvis J. Kannisto P.
King R. Lagadec P. Molz J. Muzaini H. Ouamrane A. Richards G. Clevedon, Channel View Publications. Teo P. Vacher L. Welk P. Cohen in , then developed in , corresponds to a tourist who ventures off the beaten track, with no defined route, planning or travel objective, and who tries to live like and amongst the populations which he meets.
It was thus considered more relevant to isolate a more specific part going through other continents, in particular Africa or America. Inde , Gedalge, This book is often referred to by backpackers as a bible and its updated version, Southeast Asia on a shoestring , is still very much used.
One cannot thus determine the evolution of the phenomenon for the moment. Voir la notice dans le catalogue OpenEdition. Navigation — Plan du site. Via Tourism Review.
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