enRoute | The Travel Report 2008 — Canadian Bias?

On my way back from Calgary to Toronto, a flight that I make usually four times a year, a had a quick browse through the December issue of Air Canada’s in flight magazine enRoute. My curiositywas peaked by a traveller’s survey enRoute | The Travel Report 2008. It asked typical questions like ‘What is your next destination?’, ‘Favourite European City’ and ‘Your favourite thing about travelling’. But overall I found many travellers tended to have a Canadian bias in their responses.

I found that Canadian cities rated higher than expected. For example, who knew that Vancouver would be rated in the top 10 for ‘City with the most vibrant nightlife’. While I have not visited some of the other cities on the top 10 list, I have been to Vancouver and it did not impress me. I would submit that both Lisbon and Madrid definitely deserve an honourable mention in this category. It would have been interesting to know what some of the cities listed in ‘Other’ people chose.

Even more shocking was that Toronto made it on the list of  ‘City with the most interesting modern architecture.’ Granted the new archetecture for the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Art Gallery of Ontario is quite impressive, but these two buildings alone don’t make up for the boring skyscrapers that dominate the downtown skyline.  I think the only reason Toronto made that list was because it has no ancient architecture!

The most entertaining part of the report was reading the sections that had written responses like ‘Your best travel tip.’ I agree with most of the tips except “Always pack more than what you think you’ll need.” — a rookie mistake. Believe me when you are going through security or hauling your suitcase/backpack around you will regret following this advise. Bringing more just means you have more things you can lose, right? Besides the only thing you really need in case of emergency, the life preserver of a traveller, a credit card. The Mastercard adage, “for everything there’s Mastercard” truly applies here. One tip that I will take to heart is “Visit Nunavut before it’s ‘discovered.’ ” I would love to visit the north of Canada, especially before it is overwhelmed by tourists or global warming! This tip definitely made me move up Nunavut on my travel wish list.

Finally one thing it would have been interesting to find out is the age of the respondents. I almost laughed out loud when I saw the number one response to ‘Your preferred type of accomodation’ was luxury hotel. I know this would be my parents response to the question, but while it is nice to to endulge once in a while there is somehting to be said for ‘roughing it’ in a hostel. I was surprised that hostels weren’t even mentioned! They are a great place to meet locals, fellow travellers and get the best tips for cool places to see. Now while it is not cool for people my parents age to be staying in hostels, for anyone under 30 it is THE place to stay. Which makes me wonder if everyone would responded to this survey was over 40.  

This made me realise how diverse people’s travel interests were and how they change with age. With many of the results, I found myself in disagreement with the top picks. I think this boils down to where you’ve been. If you’ve only visited a handful of cities in Canada and the United States, of course Toronto has a pretty great nightlife. But as the saying goes the more you travel the more you know. And I think what is most telling about the diversity of travelling interests is the percentage of people that picked ‘Other’ for some of the top rated city categories, in some cases this was as high as 40%. So as with every survey take the results in context.

 

 

Home Sweet Home

Since class is now officially over, I can begin to look forward to things ahead. One of them is going back to Calgary at the beginning of June. While cleaning out my hard drive and thinking of summer, I came across these photos of a trip to Jasper a few years ago…Enjoy!