Tourism reinvented

The 21st-cen­tury tourist, with new tech­nol­ogy and a wealth of in­for­ma­tion to hand, has forced tourism to offer al­ter­na­tives. Con­ven­tional pack­age deals for the masses are no longer good enough with hol­i­day­mak­ers look­ing for new sen­sa­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences tai­lored to their per­sonal needs.

Con­cepts like slow travel, soft travel and 'emod­es­ti­na­tions' are now part of the think­ing of peo­ple book­ing hol­i­days on­line, with in­creas­ing trust in rec­om­men­da­tions of other trav­ellers over the num­ber of stars.

The new tourist mar­kets pro­vide an op­por­tu­nity to di­ver­sify the tra­di­tional hol­i­day model and at­tract peo­ple to places linked to spe­cific and unique prod­ucts and ex­pe­ri­ences. In short, tourism is now only lim­ited by the imag­i­na­tion of the op­er­a­tors and con­sumers.

Today, county cap­i­tals or small towns can now draw peo­ple away from grand mon­u­ments and his­toric old quar­ters, if the ex­pe­ri­ences on offer are at­trac­tive. Today it is not enough to offer a tast­ing ses­sion with­out it being part of a wider ad­ven­ture al­low­ing vis­i­tors to con­nect with the sur­round­ings. What is dif­fer­ent is now the aim, so that peo­ple leave with mem­o­ries of com­pletely new ex­pe­ri­ences. What fol­lows are some hand­picked ex­am­ples.