By Jill Schensul, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.) (TNS)
In the spirit of school’s being back in session, I thought we might do a short learning exercise today. Vocabulary — tourism vocabulary. Not those perennially misused and misinterpreted bugaboos — nonstop versus direct flight, service charge versus gratuity, and just what is a force majeure?
We should probably do that sometime in the future and save everyone some heartburn and connecting flights. But today I’d like to catch up with neologisms that have made their way into the travel jargon. Some seem to have just emerged, others have been around a while, but they’re fun to think about. Most are portmanteau words, invented because they were needed to explain the latest trends and market segments (travelers with various things in common) that can be sold travel products.
So, we’ll get a little English lesson as well as a little insight into what’s trending these days.
NEW TRAVELERS
Globizen: It’s not the much-courted millennial demographic, but those Gen Xers and Yers, 35-50, at the peak of their earning potential (attractive) — people who consider travel part of their lives, for business and pleasure (attractive). According to a recent column in Luxury Daily, a leading trade publication covering luxury marketing, globizens are demanding, have high expectations, get their travel recommendations from people who’ve been there or know other people who’ve been there — for months. They want to “experience” a place like a local — but a high-end local (upscale local apartments, for instance).
They also have an “incessant desire to share,” and because you cannot pry their fingers from their gadgets, they’ll be documenting their venturing (they want to “chart new territory, push themselves to the limit”) via, well, you know the litany …
“They are the most sophisticated and demanding group of travelers the industry has seen — far more than either baby boomers or millennials,” according to Luxury Daily columnist Tammy Smulders.
Are you one? If so, you probably aren’t reading this in a paper. Digital is everything.
Seekender: People who partake in spontaneous weekend travel to “enjoy new experiences.”
Ego-tourist: A term coined in the footsteps of eco-tourism, for people who like the ideology and social consciousness of treading lightly and meeting local people but only stay at five-star accommodations and take private transportation, meals etc., circumventing the everyday lives of those very locals they’ve come so far to understand.
List-ticker: Someone hellbent on doing the high-profile sites’ activities, mainly for the notch in the belt — to brag about it at home.
TRIP TYPES
Mashup activities, updated goals, face-saving and downspending.
Drug tourism/highliday: Going somewhere for the purpose of partaking of drugs that may only be legal, available or socially acceptable at certain destinations. Thanks to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado (followed by some other locales), marijuana tourism is an actual category now.
Some of the new terms:
Weedery: There have been tours to some of the places where pot is grown, but now at least one ganjapreneur (another neologism), American Cannabis Partners, is envisioning a sophisticated spread with a variety of venues and entertainment as well as crops — the weedery is like a winery or brewery.
The first such development is a $35 million Colorado Cannabis Ranch & Amphitheater, complete with gift shop, concert space and a rooftop bar and restaurant, half an hour from Denver. Scheduled to open in 2016.
420-friendly: 420 being code for marijuana (it has something to do with the designated time a bunch of high school friends would meet and try to score some weed); there are now 420-friendly hotels, tours, restaurants, activities etc.
Fakeation: The unusual practice of staying at home but telling everyone you’re away. Some go so far as applying tanning lotions and getting their hair tiny-braided.
Fakelore: This is described as “manufactured folklore” or folklore that is inauthentic or not genuinely traditional. I would like to add a second definition: The inaccurate and sometimes factless spiels provided by very bad guides on some tours.
Honeyteer: A honeymoon spent on a volunteer trip.
Prison break: A holiday involving a stay in, yes, a former prison. For instance, Boston’s Liberty Hotel (a bit of irony, yes?) opened in 2007 in what once was the Charles Street Jail, which was built in 1851 and was rather innovative as far as lockups went at the time. Info: libertyhotel.com.
Once a prison in a medieval castle in Oxford, England, the boutique hotel Malmaison is in the Castle Quarter, trendy and definitely the place to break out. Info: malmaison.com/locations/oxford.
Set-jetting: Tourism that revolves around traveling to movie sets and film locations.
Stereotrip: Traveling to a destination specifically to experience something stereotypical of that destination: drinking vodka in Ukraine and learning Cossack dances, for instance, or wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes in Scotland.
TOURIST BEHAVIOR
New horizons in how we think, act, and self-flagellate …
Downbragging: Bragging about how much you saved, or didn’t have to spend, on vacation. Done so that you don’t seem to be spending profligately during hard times.
Glocalization: Adapting global brands to local markets. Traveling to Spain and finding gazpacho in the local McDonald’s, for instance. Or Coke written in Hebrew on cans distributed in Israel.
(c)2015 The Record (Hackensack, N.J.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Photo: rickz via Flickr
