Technology in Travel

“Want to come to Europe with me, next week?”

You can imagine the inevitable, universal reply. Despite being quite introverted I made the decision to, on a very short notice, travel to Europe on my own. While transitioning jobs last year, I set out to visit Dublin, Milan, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Copenhagen. Given that no one answered my query in the positive, it so happened that I had a single constant travel companion, my iPhone.

Apart from providing an excellent camera to document my journey, my iPhone was the 1 indispensable tool that got me across 7 countries in 3 weeks. This placed in sharp relief the fact that technology continues its trend of disrupting the way we travel. Experiencing strange places is far more manageable than any previous generation could experience. I am a klutzy, awkward person. There is a litany of strange incidents that prove this, but technology helped even me escape this odyssey alive and well.

The comedy of errors began before ever leaving Albuquerque. With services like Scott’s Cheap Flights providing intelligence on highly affordable international tickets, a savvy traveler will find that it pays to fly different airlines for various legs of the trip. Delta may have the cheapest flight to the East Coast, but one is hard pressed to find a better flight than the $90 Norwegian Airlines Poughkeepsie to Dublin. The downside, if one leg has a cancelled or severely delayed flight, all others are jeopardized. My flight to Philadelphia, connecting to the Hudson Valley, was cancelled because of weather. While being scolded for millennial silliness, an expressive customer service agent said I was in trouble as I did not book the whole trip with their airline. She offered the generous solution of a $3,000 ticket to my destination. Again, the inevitable reply is obvious. Never pay $3,000 dollars for a flight. Just don’t. I quickly jumped on to the app of a competitor airline and within minutes found a much more viable option, $400 to New York City. Now I still had to get to Poughkeepsie. A quick Google and a call (an ancient use of a telephone) connected me with an Uber-like transport company. They picked me up in NYC and drove me Stewart International. Total cost: $460. Never pay $3,000 for a flight. Technology makes it unconscionable.

As one sets out from the train station or airport, Uber is taking the nervous and awkward experience of a cab ride out of the equation of vacation. You may easily call a car in one’s own language, see a driver’s rating, and be told ahead of time which car will be yours. No cash will be used at the time eliminating exchanging currency in a transportation hub where the price of that rite of passage is much higher. Technology has increased the convenience and safety of transport.

Hotels are comically inflexible in certain situations, a trip booked on two-week’s notice being one of them. They also necessitate a sanitized experience of a new city. Airbnb demonstrates the power of a good idea and technology in fundamentally disrupting a staid industry. Airbnb allows a visitor to understand how certain segments of the population lives and meet locals as soon as you arrive.

None of this is to say that you should not spend time doing at least minor studying of a new language or culture to add true depth to your travel experience. What technology does is ease the anxiety of immersing oneself in that culture. Spending less time worrying about how to hail a cab will leave more time to research interesting restaurants near your apartment and save enough money to buy a ticket to a show at the opera house you saw in that one movie.

We must not forget the possible downsides of becoming a worldlier individual. Airbnb’s expansion has had the side-effect of pricing many locals out of the real estate market in cities like Paris. Landlords with money can buy several properties all with a mind for short-term rentals. Dwindling supply places upward pressure on the price of apartments and houses that would have been reserved for those looking for a home. This housing crisis exacerbates the general tourist overload in places like Venice and Dubrovnik which have many calling for legislation to limit visitors. Furthermore, a recent trend in rail-travel rich Europe seeks to remind people of their expanded carbon footprint when summer holidays involve jet travel. Social justice, economic, and environmental concerns must be addressed by that same world of technology that got me out and about.

The tech that we are endowed with has so many applications. One is making that daunting notion of traveling abroad look ever more manageable.