Travel is Life Intensified

By Jian Shuo Wang on 2010-03-28 22:24 · Friends

Elliot Ng has many great thoughts. He does not talk too much, but from time to time, I think of something that often turned out to be from Elliot.

Elliot said this before:

Travel is life intensified

As an travel industry expert, his comment is very sensational from a personal level.

I searched for the term “life intensified”, and found out this interesting blog entry: Why I Travel:

Travel is intensified living." The actual sentence reads “Travel is intensified living - maximum thrills per minute and one of the last great sources of legal adventure. Travel is freedom. It’s recess, and we need it

A topic I was thinking for a long time is, how to enable people to travel in their own city. Travel is a life-altering experience, and if we can get that experience without long distance travel, that would be both financially efficient.

One of the program I can imagine to help people in Shanghai to actually travel in Shanghai - get away at weekend to a little hotel at the city center (or far away) and start the day from there? Anyone has the same idea?

P.S. Another favorite quote about travel, and life is: Life, an Accumulation of Mileage.

3 Comments

Thanks, Jianshuo.

Heh. OK I'll try to speak more. :)

It's only everything about China that leaves me with especially few words! I think often of your Elephant and the Blind Men story, and the result is that--with regard to China--I approach your country with an attitude of 稻光养晦.

I like your idea of helping people do short vacations, with:

1. focus on their point-of-origin - find options that are nearby and low cost to get to.

2. focus on the "experience" rather than the scenic attraction.

The travel industry is very focused on products. And people in all countries, but especially in China, are very focused on "iconic" attractions. This results in a "check-the-box" approach and people taking tours that treat these scenic attractions as a checklist...how many attractions can I go to for the amount of money and time that I have? This approach is true for travelers of all countries.

Will Chinese embrace "experience-based travel" more? Or, more accurately, which Chinese customer segments will? Perhaps my dream reveals my own 小资 perspective!

— elliottng · 2010-03-29 01:29

Haha, Elliot, you invented another term: "check-the-box approach of travel". That is exactly the way many people travel.

— Jian Shuo Wang · 2010-03-29 17:37

I like the idea of travelling inside a city. I had to run a few errands in Shanghai over the last two weeks, and I am amazed how many different standards of living and how many different people there are. Since I bought a SLR camera recently, I plan to go for some photo trips in Shanghai, to catch the different surroundings people live in (rather than the tourist attractions). Maybe that could be an interesting experience for Shanghai locals as well?

Regarding the check-box approach, I have to say that this is what Japanese and now Chinese travellers in Europe are most known for. It is well known that Japanese tourists like to go for "See Europe in 10 days" kind of trips, where they visit at least one country per day. But to be fair, this is probably related to the few days of leave Japanese people have - in Germany, having 30 days of leave is not so uncommon, so Germans can afford to take a longer look at places.

— Christian · 2010-03-31 13:54