Why Travelers Are Upscaling

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

Google’s MyTouch Is Ready To Hit The Road, But Can It Keep Up?

By now, you’ve probably passed by a zillion of the posters hanging in T-Mobile shops advertising the arrival of the newest Google Android smartphone: the MyTouch. You might even occasionally see ads for it on this very website, but rest assured that they didn’t us to write this; it’s just what we do—review the travel benefits of new technology, just as we did with the release of the Palm Pre back in June.

So will the MyTouch be a great addition to your no doubt already hefty arsenal of travel gadgets? Yes and no, but to truly answer this question we’ve got to break out with the dreaded iPhone comparisons.

First, visual appearance and feel: Although slightly bulkier and with a smaller screen than the iPhone, the MyTouch actually understands that sometimes we will be carrying too much stuff or that our fingers are just too fat to do with a completely touchscreen interface.

What we’re trying to say is that the MyTouch has some buttons, thank the heavens. Just a few—the necessaries—and a trackball to scroll which requires less thumb movement than scrolling on iPhone, which sometimes makes us feel about to drop the thing. You can easily dash through the terminal with your rolling suitcase in one hand and the MyTouch in the other, and check your flight boarding time.

Applications: Happily, most of the MyTouch applications out thus far are free, just keep in mind that there are far, far fewer than available for the iPhone. Some slick travel ones we’ve seen thus far have been Cab4Me (which duh, finds you a nearby call and phone numbers) and the awesome Layar. Layar is augmented reality, something the iPhone is still thinking about, and it displays info on nearby locations utilizing both your GPS and phone camera.

Google Love: The iPhone might allow you to download the Google Earth app and other Google-related items, Apple has severely shot down Google Voice. Sure, it negates having a talk or text plan since it provides free voice and text communication over the internet, but the MyTouch doesn’t see a problem with it. This is of course HUGE for international calling; no phone cards! No desperate collect calls! It’s truly the clincher; those who switch from other smartphones will most likely be jumping on the MyTouch bandwagon for this functionality.

Conclusion: The MyTouch is nice and ready to hit the road, but we won’t be devoting an entire category to it anytime soon. Those dying for a new phone and who would greatly benefit from free calling and texting (and wouldn’t we all), should go for it, or…mark your Google calendar for the winter release of the HTC Hero, the successor to the MyTouch.  by JetSetCD – Jaunted

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