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Why Travelers Are Upscaling

Author: Matthew Kepnes

Somewhere before my bus broke down in Australia, I was called a flashpacker. Despite traveling for 18 months, it was the first time I’d heard the term. A flashpacker is defined as a person, unusually in their mid 20s to early 30s, who travels like a backpacker but has more disposal money as well as electronics such as a camera or laptop. Flashpackers also expect better hotels and services.

Neither fully backpacker nor tourist, flashpackers are new to the traveling vocabulary. Flashpackers rest in hostels, carry a backpack, and find cheap transport but blow their money on meals, beer, tours, and parties. They usually aren’t going into a hostel without a reservation or wearing the same shirt for a week. A number of hostels are up scaling to accommodate the growing wants and desires of flashpackers and you’ll find them in all corners of the planet. Flashpackers still have no fixed voyage and all the time to meander around but don’t pinch every penny. They are backpackers with means.

Backpacking is not about a look, it’s a lifestyle. Just because a person doesn’t have a certain look, doesn’t mean they lack the will of a backpacker. It doesn’t make them less of a backpacker. It goes against the backpacker outlook to look down on someone because they travel a different way. Aren’t we supposed to be embracing different ways of life?

It all comes down to what makes a backpacker a backpacker. That’s sprit. The desire to explore new places and experience new people. Backpacking is about opening your mind to new things and looking differently at the world. It’s not about the stuff you carry. As your spirit is the same, what stuff you carry shouldn’t matter.

We’re all flashpackers, whether you like it or not. We may not be driving up to the hostel in a limo but we all expect a little “flash” nowadays. According to a Hostelworld study in 2006, 21 percent of people travel with a laptop, 54 percent with an MP3 player, 83 percent with a mobile phone and a whopping 86 percent travel with a digital camera.

Think about your last excursion- how many travelers did you see with cameras? Ipods? Laptops? I can’t remember seeing one person without a camera, and at least 3/4 of the people I saw had Ipods.

The truth is we all travel with expensive electronics now. We check our email and Skype our friends. We all have a camera and most of us have an Ipod. We are flashpackers and it’s not a bad thing. All this stuff allows us to stay better connected with our friends, our family, and helps us better document our travels. The key is to once in awhile to put down the camera, turn off the computer, and enjoy the culture you came to see.

The backpacker who set off with 1 shirt, a small pack, and two baht to his name is getting hard to find. Most of us have a little more income and expect a little more but we still carry his spirit. We still seek new cultures, exotic locales, and long term travel. We still look for cheap hostels and transport. We camp on that jungle trek. The difference is that now we also want a location to plug in our camera, check our e-mail, and take a hot shower. We just want to be pampered…once in awhile.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/why-travelers-are-upscaling-731744.html

About the AuthorMatthew Kepnes is a lifelong backpacker and recent flashpacker who has spent many years traveling around the world. Visit his website about how to travel the world and learn more about flashpacking.

A comment by SocialiteTravel.com:

Although we agree with Matthew above regarding the point that everyone is somehow related to the Flashpacking lifestyle, we also would like to point out that although everyone these days may carry some sort of electronic gizmo, not everyone travels with a “backpack”, and that my friend will categorize you as a “flashpacker”. Happy Hip Travels =)

Photo: mybackpacking.de

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The Plug-Inn Hostel in Paris, France is now open!

“The only ‘Boutique Hostel’ in Paris, where style, comfort and value all connect!”

No need to run down the hall for your hot shower – bathrooms in every room!

The Plug-Inn Hostel is tucked away in a calm street around the corner from the world-renowned Moulin Rouge, in the middle of the trendy Abbesses neighbourhood, on your way to the Sacré Coeur and its breathtaking view of Paris.

The fresh design and modern touches of our Boutique Hostel compliment perfectly the charm of this historic quarter.

The rest of town is accessible on foot, or with the two metro lines (2 & 12) found on our doorstep.
Gare du Nord (for the airport or international trains) is a 5 minute trip away.

Get a real feel for Montmartre…the unique artist and cabaret neighbourhood.
If Picasso, Van Gogh, Cocteau, Satie, Toulouse Lautrec, Renoir….…and Amelie made it their home, why not you?

Feel the splendour of bygone cabarets, bohemian cafés and artists’ ateliers…..the Montmartre village area is now home to over 240 bars, cafés, bistros and pubs.

FREE Sheets & Towel
FREE Breakfast
FREE Internet in the lobby
FREE WiFi everywhere
FREE Great service!

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The eco-friendly iPad has many assets that make it a great tablet for the environment. First of all, it will undoubtedly save quite a few trees from being chopped down because of its e-reader feature.

Another green attribute of the iPad is that it is highly recyclable according to Steve Jobs. He states that the iPad is arsenic-free, BFR-free, mercury-free and PVC-free, so it can follow Greenpeace’s Guide to Recycling Electronics. One more awesome aspect is that the battery life is 10 hours so the device doesn’t need to be hooked up to an outlet for a good period of time. The iPad’s 30-day standby battery life means that it hardly needs to be charged at night! My phone cannot even claim that and it does a whole lot less than the iPad.  Via: Luisa Amanda Gomes

References: apple, inhabitat

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Located at Teuge airport, this luxe lodge transforms a former 120 seat, Cold War era plane into an amazingly beautiful and luxurious pad. The luxury plane hotel suite includes an infrared sauna, a jacuzzi, and three flat screens.

I was in the Netherlands once, and I got so FUBAR, I can’t even explain. But let’s say I am a classy individual who wanted to explore the finer things of that country that did not include the word ‘chronic,’ I would stay in this luxury plane hotel suite.  Via: Robyn Currie – HotHotelReviews

Photo Gallery

References: treehugger

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After touring the W Hollywood yesterday (sorry, no photos allowed just yet) we learned that the hotel will be using Sanctuary Chargers in-room. Awesome! But wait, what are Sanctuary chargers you ask?

Sanctuary is a product from Bluelounge that enables you to charge all of your gadgets in one box, by offering a multitude of charging cords from cellphones to iPods, iPhones, PDAs and other gadgets that use a USB or mini-USB port to charge up. In fact, The Sanctuary is capable of charging over 1,500 different types of gadgets. Here’s how MacWorld describes using the product:

Using The Sanctuary couldn’t get much simpler: remove the tray, plug in its AC adapter, find the correct cord for your device, thread it through one of the notches, replace the tray, and voilà. A green LED light on the power brick will tell you that your devices are receiving power—if it starts to blink or dim, it’s a sign that you may have too many things connected, and that The Sanctuary has had to reduce its power intake.

This is a HUGE relief to see in hotel rooms as it means you won’t have to bug the front desk and then pray that they have your type of charger and you won’t have to run out to the nearest drugstore or electronics shop to buy a new one.

We’ve already used these excellent chargers at W Boston but you can also find them at W Hoboken and W Washington DC.

And in case you were wondering, the desks at the W Hollywood (which is still on track to open January 28th) will also have 2009′s Must-Have Amenity, Plug Panels. Now, if only we could get free WiFi here too….

Seen a Sanctuary Charger in your hotel room? Tell us where in comments below.

Via: Julianna – HotelChatter

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The Whitelaw Hotel, Miami Beach

As you can imagine, most hotels in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are sold out for Super Bowl weekend—or have ridonkulous rates around $1,000 a night. But there are still rooms available for less. Hard to believe, we know, but look what happened yesterday: the Jets beat the Chargers! Anything can happen!

There are a few catches, of course, the first being that you’ll have to stay at least four nights to secure a room in most places. Generally, this means from Thursday, February 4 to Monday, February 8.

Here are two rates in Miami and one in Fort Lauderdale that were still available for those dates when we checked via Quikbook earlier today:

· Acqua Hotel: This boutique hotel in South Beach had rooms for $203 a night.
· Whitelaw Hotel Rooms are still available for $281 a night at this member of the South Beach Hotel Group.
· Hampton Inn & Suites, Fort Lauderdale Airport: Standard rooms and king suites are both $199 a night.

In other Super Bowl hotel news, we learned via the New York Times that the NFL booked Fort Lauderdale’s Harbor Beach Marriott Resort and Spa for the A.F.C. champion team, while the N.F.C. team will get to live it up at the Intercontinental in downtown Miami. That doesn’t seem fair now, does it?

Jets and Colts fans, however, take note: You can still book a room at the Harbor Beach Marriott, from $729 a night. Which is a small price to pay to sleep with greatness, no?  Via: MsRebecca – HotelChatter

[Photo: Nutch Bicer/CC BY-ND 2.0]

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There’s the old expression you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, a statement that rings true in most scenarios save for a few, one of them being hotel lobbies. In most cases if the lobby is nice, it’s a safe bet to say your room will measure up the same and vice versa. If the Andels Hotel lobby is any example of that then you can only imagine what the rooms would look like here: sleek modernity meshed with turn of the century brick work.

Designed by Polish architecture firm Jestico and Wiles, the Andels Hotel lobby balances the grandiose with the inviting to create a truly unique environment.  Via: Alex Scott – HotHotelReviews

Photo Gallery

References: andelslodz, thecoolhunter.net

SocialiteTravel.com – The World’s Largest Community for Flashpackers and Jet Set Gurus!