Dawn of a new travel era

The Remarkables at dawn, yesterday.

It takes a few weeks, but then you figure it out. Independent travel is an exercise that requires you to trust your sense of humor.

I'm spending most of my nights in hostels and backpackers. It's almost the cheapest way of getting around. Cheaper would be camping, but I couldn't carry a tent on this trip. Cheapest of all is what the New Zealanders call "freedom camping." This is basically pulling off the side of the road in some nice place and pitching your tent. I sense it's going out of style here, due to the fact that freedom campers are treating the bush like an outdoor toilet. In local paper after local paper I read articles about the local citizens up in arms about these renegades, and how they want the local government agency to basically outlaw these pigs. Seems there is much fear here about the World Rugby Championship which is coming to New Zealand in the new future. Perhaps people have fear of large rowdy groups of international rugby fans despoiling the local landscape. Hmm. A bunch of people who don't know how to ##$!@% in the woods, eh?

Still, the officially sanctioned backpacker circuit requires you to have a good sense of the absurd. In a nutshell, folks, you can't trust any rating service. Here in Queenstown I'm staying at a particular place that has a 90+% approval rating in the BBH scheme.

During yesterday's hike on the Routeburn, my fellow trampers and I discussed how a place with a number of charms in a rather inconvenient location, run by an angry eccentric with a major persecution complex can rate so highly? Hmm. I suppose if I cared I'd check the survey methodology used by the BBH. Likely there's some sort of loophole in it that allows an outlier like this to garner what's basically a very very valuable competitive advantage.

Despite the crazy making aspects of the accomodation, it's convenient for me to continue my stay at this particular hostel because I only go back there to sleep. Today it's raining, and I chores to do downtown. I'll also stay down here for all my meals. I prefer to eat with people who are not burned out on tourists. I've dealt with plenty of drama and stress in other parts of my worklife. I sure as heck don't need it here.

The New Zealand tourism industry is changing, and it's turning away from independent travellers, at least for the near future. Today's Otago Daily Times has an interesting article of just how tourism is changing: fewer British, and fewer Europeans generally, few if any of the freespending Americans, more Aussies, but they are tighter with their wallets, and a huge boom in mainland Chinese and Korean folks, who prefer to travel to big cities, on big coaches, in big groups.

It seems the outfits catering to the independent traveler need a new strategic plan. Independents tend to stay a long time, and spend their money throughout the country, especially in little places that only have scenery to sell. The recession is killing these travelers.

I'm surprised how accurate this news article is. So far I've met one Chinese independent traveler, and I first assumed he was an Asian American from the US. Mostly I'm meeting Germans and Israelis in the backpackers, and they, like me, know the value of a $.

I wonder how they propose to sell things like paragliding, bungy jumping, zip lining, pub crawling, extreme snowboarding, heli-biking, etc., to the next wave of sedate and conservative Chinese visitors.

Hmm. A new dawn indeed.