Once upon a time, explorers sailed their ships to go find new land. Traveling for them was about curiosity to find something unexpected. This was the one reason that travelers were considered daredevils – people who lived their lives on the edge.
Today, travel has become a way for people to escape from their routine struggles. Be it the two-hour road trip that you make on a weekend to a lake-facing resort or a camping trip near the forest, you look forward to traveling.
As tourism is becoming accessible, the number of tourists taking trips has been on the rise. The global tourism industry grew by 3.4% in 2018, amidst a slowdown in several industries across the globe. Fueled by easier transportation and better vacation policies, travel is becoming easier every year.
For Millenials, apps like Instagram have increased the feeling of missing out. You see so many people traveling around you every weekend. Everyone is going to someplace new. Sometimes, if you open Instagram after days, it feels overwhelming. So many people doing so many things with their lives. Everyone is trying to make the most of it.
How do you travel without spending a lot of money? Without planning trips? Without taking long breaks from work?
The answers to these questions lie in Staycation – a concept getting popular in recent days. According to Wikipedia, Staycation is a vacation at home where a person does activities that are within the driving distances of their homes.
I would argue that with the advent of YouTube, you can do more. You can travel to the corners of the world while sitting on your couch. Just find a few good YouTube videos (of course, this is still time-consuming). But once you find good ones…
Let’s look at some benefits of Staycations:
- Monetary savings: Of course, the biggest reason is saving money. By taking these short vacations, you can save up your annual travel budget. While I could not find an exact number that could be saved, but people spend thousands of dollars per year on vacation.
- Time savings: Think about all the time you spend booking flights, trains or buses, hotels, tours and finding food options. If sightseeing is the primary purpose of traveling, then watching videos on YouTube is good to get a perspective.
- The ability to turn off anytime: Sometimes, the excitement of a vacation wears off after a while. There is a sense of getting back to normalcy. This feeling can be entirely avoided – you only have to shut down the television.
- No packing: Packing stuff for travel consumes a lot of time. At least an hour or so. By staying at home, you will be saving this time, which you could use to rest or to watch more videos on YouTube.
- Go solo: No need to coordinate travel with friends, adjust your schedule with others’, find food that they like but you may not, among other things. Staycations are completely flexible. Whether you stay alone at home or want to stay alone, there is enough content on the web today to keep you engaged.
I am convinced that staycation is going to become a popular word in the next decade. In fact, I even think there would be new products coming out specifically around staycations. Do you know of any? Let me know in the comments section.
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Thanks for reading 🙂
Hemant R Joshi 