Showing posts with label cool camping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cool camping. Show all posts
Death of the guidebook?
That's the headline of a story in The Age yesterday written by former Lonely Planet writer Chris Taylor who recounts his discovery that the author who'd updated the China guide before him hadn't visited places himself, but had sub-contracted a cafe owner (who subsequently recruited his cousin!) to do the research instead. Taylor argues that due to increasing competition, guidebooks can't generate the sales revenues to justify the high fees required to ensure the kind of legwork and first-hand research that results in personal recommendations. That Lonely Planet's fees aren't high enough is true, but good writers will still do the legwork. So, is the guidebook dead? Kind of. But this isn't the first time it's been suggested: see The Death of the Guidebook? (The Observer/The Guardian, 2006) and Guidebooks: RIP (The Times, 2007). And I certainly don't believe the Internet killed the guidebook. There are travellers who still prefer discerning critical information written by experts who travel for a living over 'reviews' by people who take holidays once or twice a year. And there are still travellers who prefer carrying a guidebook to printing reams of paper off a website. I don't think all guidebooks will die, just the Lonely Planet style, and by that I mean the mainstream, one-size-fits-all continent and country guides, although I think LP is on the right track with the Encounter guides, as they were with their 'Best Ofs'. As anyone with any kind of marketing sense knows, rarely does one book (or film or CD for that matter) appeal to everyone, and the ones that do, like blockbuster movies or airport novels, tend to be bland, flawed and lack complexity and style. One guidebook can't be all things to all types of travellers, whether it's budget, mid-range or top-end, old or young, singles or couples. When they try to please everyone, they don't do very well at pleasing anyone. However, guidebooks have been taking a different direction for a while now. Consider the success of niche series Wallpaper, for travellers into architecture, art and design, and Luxe, focused at a style-conscious set. Aimed at a narrow target audience, they contain travel content created with their readership firmly in mind. The phenomenal success of Cool Camping, one of the UK's top-selling guidebooks last year, and the outpouring of emotion toward the enchanting hand-crafted Love travel guides are further evidence that travellers want more from their guidebooks. They want guidebooks produced for them. Well, don't we all? What do you think?Whenever I travel around the Middle East, I always find it interesting that tourists from the region don't use guidebooks. Admittedly, they're often pilgrims visiting sites of religious significance, such as these Iranian women in Damascus. But they still visit museums, go shopping, and eat out. They don't speak Arabic but somehow they manage, they find their way around, and they still seem to have a good time.
We're all going on a glamping holiday - again, and again, and again
A problem with the travel media, and the US media in particular, is their enthusiasm for publishing syndicated travel stories (they’re cheaper) and their preference for masking that the story was syndicated (everyone wants to publish original content, right?), which means the same story appears in a dozen or more different publications in different guises. I have no problem with syndication – my own stories have been syndicated – I just prefer that papers be honest about it. The Los Angeles Times glamping story Say, has the butler cleaned the trout yet? is Kimi Yoshino’s same Seattle Times story Glamorous camping: tent, butler, $595 a night which I quoted in my last post on the glamping trend. What’s even more disappointing in the travel media today is that there’s little analysis of or insight into the growth of travel trends generally. To use the glamping phenomenon again, aside from the trivialities, the most we learnt from the body of coverage was that the trend opened up exotic travel destinations to a traditionally uninterested demographic, as Courtney Weaver mentioned in Roughing it in Style in Business Week. Interestingly, one of the most insightful comments came from The Grinder, a food rather than a travel blog, which saw glamping as being symptomatic of a growing gap between America’s rich and everyone else. Now why couldn't a travel journalist have suggested that? I'm not after in-depth socio-economic analysis here but when a writer covers a new trend, such as glamping, wouldn't it be interesting to know the how's and why's as part of an introduction to the phenomenon rather than just read about the fact that one resort's comforters don't touch the floor and that you can plug in your hairdryer at another. Maybe I just expect too much from the travel press?
The travel media goes glamping
As the cool camping phenom- enon was peaking in the UK last year, ‘glamping’ was starting to gain momentum in North America, where travel journalists admitted the trend had just recently traversed the Atlantic: “It’s known as “glamping,” or glamorous camping, a British import inspired by A-listers who wanted to be in touch with nature without touching the dirt and dishes,” the Seattle Times' CeCe Sullivan reported last May in Gather ’round the haute-grub campfire: “The tents are spacious; according to reports some are lined with antique saris and Persian carpets, and some feature fluffy down comforters tossed over mattresses that never touch the ground.” In case we'd forgotten, a few months later in the same paper Kimi Yoshino reminded us in Glamorous camping: tent, butler, $595 a night: “The number of visits to U.S. national parks is declining, but “glamping” — glamorous camping — is on the rise in North America after gaining popularity among wealthy travelers in Africa and England, where luxury tents come with Persian rugs and electricity to power blow dryers.” As one glamper tells us in that story: “It’s nature on a silver platter”. It’s a shame that level of quality and finesse didn't make it into the writing and that much of the glamping coverage dished out wasn’t worth dirtying a paper plate for - most publications ran with the same 'Ditch the smelly sleeping bag and go glamping' and ‘Where Wild Meets Refined’ angles, the same hackneyed ‘tick-off’ technique (“Gourmet chef – check. Wi-fi and laptops outside by the fire – check. $75 cigars, expensive liquor and wine – check”), and the same lack of creativity many of their UK counterparts applied to their ‘cool camping’ trend, with the same text used time and time again. Don't you hate that?
'Trailer trash' and 'glamping'
Caravanning may be attracting aristocrats in the UK, and with it a whole new posh lingo, but in the USA there’s still a stigma attached to staying in caravan parks because of the perception they're only home to the poor and unemployed, succinctly and unsubtly encapsulated in the term ‘trailer trash’. While ‘trailer trash’ may be derogatory, some self-effacing trailer-dwellers use the term themselves with good humour, going as far as to celebrate the creativity of trailer trash. Sites such as Missouri Trailer Trash, created by 28-year-old factory worker Neil Nesslage (interviewed here by Newsweek), features a trailer with a car hood as an awning! The site also has a quiz you can do to determine if you’re trailer trash, an online store where you can buy trailer trash t-shirts and mugs, and links to trailer trash sites. At Redneck Warehouse you can buy a trailer trash Barbie doll who is pregnant, has curlers in her hair, and a cigarette hanging out her mouth. (On a completely different note, Tin Can Trailer Trash is an enlightening, amusing and often moving blog by a woman who has been living in a trailer provided by FEMA since Hurricane Katrina. Her first posts explain why she started the blog.) It's easy to see then why and how the North American travel media embraced and ran with 'glamping', glamorous camping, with even more gusto than UK travel writers excessive coverage of 'cool camping'.
Caravanning and camping are… posh!
Camping, camper- vanning and caravanning are so incredibly popular in the UK now and have such wide appeal they're even attracting aristocrats. That’s right! According to a January article in The Sunday Times: “A few years ago, the trend-watchers would have happily sent camping and caravanning holidays the way of the tinned pilchard and string vest,” (reporter Cally Law obviously slept through the cool camping craze and hasn't heard of Agyness Deyn, singlehandedly responsible for bringing the string vest back into fashion again), however, Law tells us the Camping and Caravanning Club membership has grown 44% in the past 10 years while the Caravan Club has experienced a 33% increase. The cause? The unpleasantness of air travel (surely an understatement after the recent Heathrow T5 debacle?) and a rediscovery of UK attractions: “Not that the kind of families used to the comfort and convenience which hotel living provides will have to rough it... Standards have been rising in response to a more demanding customer profile,” Law says, and as evidence: “At Ayr Holiday Park in St Ives, Cornwall, for example, the lavatory blocks have mosaic floors and piped music.” But of course they do! We already knew this - we read it in that April 2006 BBC story ‘Why the British Carry on Camping’ which I blogged about the other day: “The toilets at Ayr Holiday Park in St Ives, Cornwall, for example, have mosaic floors, heating and piped music.” Law goes on to enlighten us: we could “spend a whopping £250,000 on a motorhome - or get rolling in a caravan for just £10,000. Most modern tents are cheap, light, simple to erect and keep you snug all night long, whatever the weather.” (Huh?!) “Even the vocabulary is new,” she continues, “caravans are now tourers, static caravans are holiday homes and camp sites have become holiday and touring parks.” (Really?) Law informs us that: “Viscount Coke, 42, of Holkham Hall on the north Norfolk coast, is an enthusiastic caravanner." He's also owner of Pinewoods Holiday Park on his estate at Wells-next-the-Sea, a British Holiday & Home Parks Association (BH&HPA) member and Caravan Club president. Law writes: "When he was a child, he and his family used to spend all their holidays under canvas, and often visited his grandmother at her static caravan at Mother Ivey’s Bay in north Cornwall. “We had a whale of a time running about with the other children,” he says. “It’s classless, it’s safe, you are in a family park where lots of the owners know each other and it’s about location, location, location." It's all making sense now. Coke owns “550 holiday homes at Pinewoods, including 12 luxury wooden lodges overlooking Holkham National Nature Reserve”. I wonder if the Viscount issued that 2006 press release everyone seems to be quoting from? Is he the one we thank for getting us all back to nature? I have no problem with ‘posh camping’ although it's not as catchy as ‘cool camping’ – it’s lazy travel journalism I have the problem with. I do like the Viscount's 1965 22ft Airstream Safari. Nice.The luxury tent pictured is at Karijini Eco-Retreat in Karijini National Park, Western Australia.
Cool camping: how many hipsters believed the hype?
The cool camping cool caravanning hype may have convinced style-conscious travellers to get out of the city and get away to the country to pitch a tent for a weekend or two, but did it really fuel some kind of fashionable camping revival? Had camping ever become chic in the first place or was it just a clever bit of marketing that the travel media perhaps embraced a little too enthusiastically? It was a fresh and novel idea after all. And let’s admit it, ‘cool camping’ has a ring to it, don’t you think? Fortunately, one travel writer decided to find out if people were really sleeping under deer skins in daisy-patterned tents and how much things had really changed. For “What, no yurt?”, The Guardian's self-styled ‘urban pansy’ Benji Lanyado set off for Blackberry Wood, the coolest UK campsite according to Jonathan Knight's Cool Camping bible. Lanyado discovered that Blackberry Wood (despite its charming name) was actually “blissfully free of posh tents and designer wellies”. The reality, he found, was that it was just a good old-fashioned camping spot - only after the re-branding, it got busier. And that’s the thing about camping, it’s just a plain old-fashioned travel experience, a great way to escape everyday life and get out and enjoy nature. It’s simply good fun. Did it ever need to be sold as the next sexy travel trend? As Knight himself wrote in The Times' ‘Britain’s Perfect Pitches’: “Its very appeal lies in its contrast with our modern lives, in the chance to lose electricity, the traffic, the television and telephone for a while. Chilling in the countryside, sleeping under the stars and breathing clean, fresh air, is a rich and recharging experience…” If there's been one positive outcome from travel writers’ fixation with camping’s cool factor, it's that the mainstream media now devotes more column inches and web pages to the activity than ever before. The Times even has a dedicated section solely devoted to Camping and Caravanning. Now that has to be a good thing, right?Pictured is our tent on platform, with double bed and bathroom, which we stayed in at El Questro's Emma Gorge. More impressive than the accommodation were the stunning bush surroundings and birdsong outside your (canvas) door.
Hands up if you traded the Airstream for a gypsy caravan?
“Hands up if you traded in the Airstream – for a Gypsy Caravan?” The Times asked in The Family Bandwagon. This article must take the cake in a long line of silly stories over the last couple of years by lazy travel writers who all too keenly latched on to the cool camping cool caravanning phenomenon, freely quoting from the same press releases (well, that’s what they’re there for, right, is what they’re thinking) and borrowing ideas from each other. Don't get me wrong, I do think gypsy caravans are pretty cool. Check out these prettily-painted wooden wagons at Gypsy Caravans, these cosy things at the Gypsy Caravan Company, and these darlings at Gypsy Waggons, which, incidentally, are a favourite with legendary guitarist Ronnie Wood (and I’m surprised that juicy tidbit didn’t make it into the article, seeing celebrities can be credited with giving caravanning and camping the makeover it needed). Regardless, you have to agree this story is rather ridiculous: “First camping went upmarket - now it is the turn of caravanning,” Emma Mahony writes, “Who remembers when camping holidays were just wall-to-wall nylon from the sleeping bag to the kitchen area, and one match lit in the wrong place could spell the end of your holiday? Your children? Probably not. They are more likely to think of camping as a cotton yurt experience with luxury kilims on the floor and a cedar-wood barbecue area outside.” Really? (My comment of dismay). “But just as camping has had a successful image makeover, with Cath Kidston tents (Oh, no, not again! Me again) and family festival-goers, so caravans are now looking to have their face lift.” Gypsy caravans, Mahony tells us, are the hottest thing in caravanning: “Ignoring the fact that fashion stylists have been using the rural Gypsy Caravan for years, elbowing the real Romany couple to one side in order to drape clothes over models…” (Oh, c’mon now.) “Suddenly those same gypsy caravans are having their wheels oiled and being offered up, complete with lessons in horse care, as venues for family holidays… In Wales the static Romany originals are suddenly so popular that companies such as Under the Thatch, offering its gypsy caravans at £329 per week, have no availability until October. Real show-offs are even buying their own from Gypsy Caravans.” Cute idea and everything, but I have to ask, how many gypsy caravans have you seen on the road? And would you buy one?
Cool camping vs cool caravanning: a case study in 'cool' travel writing
Travel by caravan, RV or kombi may be just as cool as camping if vehicle registrations and club member- ships are anything to go by, but to the travel media it’s cooler to write about camping – unless the caravan is expensive, luxuriously fitted out, comes with quirky extras or retro-cool packaging, or is simply not a caravan. For the travel media it’s more palatable for travellers to camp than to caravan. Even though travel writers are perfectly willing to jump on the cool camping/cool caravanning bandwagon, employ the same buzz words, regurgitate the same press releases, and borrow ideas from each other. If they have to write about caravanning it must be qualified and if the traveller must caravan, then they must do it in a luxe vintage model or retro van with kitsch value. (Despite campers being allowed to pitch £50 tents.) Take The Observer’s much-critiqued (by me) Cool Camping article where we’re told “...the lowly mobile home has had a Changing Rooms moment.” (My italics.) And: “Also on the continent, Belrepayre Airstream & Retro Camping is more trailer flash than trailer trash.” Ouch! (My italics again.) The story continues: “Closer to home, Vintage Vacations rents out three shiny Airstream trailers on a farm on the Isle of Wight. With interiors more suited to the pages of Wallpaper* magazine than Butlins, this is the UK's swankiest camping experience.” But “if you really want to be mobile, Scooby Campers has just set up shop... Rental of its re-conditioned VW campervans (which come with cream leather upholstery, SatNav and a CD of Sixties 'Scoobymusic' to set you on your way) starts from £250 for a three-night weekend and similar companies are springing up around Britain. Be warned though, that 'mobile' is a relative concept; budding Jenson Buttons need not apply." I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of snobby writing and derogatory language doesn't have a place in travel writing. Call me a snob but I prefer an Airstream to a daisy-patterned tent any day, however, I'd happily camp in either and gladly write about both on equal terms. Isn't the important thing that they allow us to travel? Isn't that cool enough in itself?Okay, if I have to choose an Airstream then I'm opting for The International Line and the Ocean Breeze please. Check out the photos. Call me a hypocrite, it's retro-cool, I know.
Cool camping: cowboy-print tipis and other chic accoutrements
Forget the need to worry about whether your gear is waterproof, breathable or even lightweight “The only question cool campers will be asking of their equipment this summer is whether they should opt for Ted Baker's flying duck-motif tent or Cath Kidston's cowboy-print tipi,” The Observer told us in ‘Cool Camping’. And that was only the start of it, they threatened. A mini reindeer skin was a must for getting cosy around the camp fire, as was the Ted Baker range (naturally) of blow-up tiger skin mattresses and foldable camping chairs that looked like padded leather chesterfields, available from Blacks. While at Millets, we could choose from Cath Kidston’s (of course) cowboy-print tipis, floral windbreaks, and stripy camping chairs. If the cool camper still couldn’t find anything to suit their style, they could simply create their own with the Eurohike Paint Your Own Tent kit, which comes with waterproof paints and brushes. If you’re taking your tent to a music festival you want to make it stand out after all. But how could the happy camping-by-day clubbing-by-night camper not find anything hip among the Hed Kandi range? Surely the Hed Kandi sun seat (“the perfect assist for those hazy days and balmy nights”) would be the first thing to go in the shopping cart? And right after it would be the Hed Kandi Snuggle Bag (which can be zipped to another) for a “close knit disco nap in your Boudoir tent”. Yes, the music festivals have a lot to answer for. Of course, I’d gladly pack away a tiny Grilliput barbecue, a portable shower, an Aerobie Aeropress espresso maker, and a compact travel mosquito net any day. They may not be covered in cow-print or daisy-patterns but they’re my idea of creature comforts. But if rainbow colours and kaleidoscopic patterns are what it takes to inspire some of us to get out and experience nature, then here’s to cool camping with all its chic accessories! Don't you agree?And, um... yes, that is a mini-bar in the 'tent', and, yes, I'm afraid that is a bookshelf on the wall... but it is holding travel guides, there were mosquitoes, and the Mekong River and Burma are just outside. You can see them from the outdoor rain shower. Oh, and from the massage tables.
Cool camping: creature comforts, clever marketing and celebrity campers
A Mongolian yurt, luxury tented cabin, wooden wigwam, or plain old pup tent... wherever you choose to roll out your sleeping bag know that (just like caravanning), camping is cool. Or so the media has been insisting for a while now. More Brits were taking their tents to the country than ever before, BBC News told us in April 2006, raising the question “So how did camping become cool?” in ‘Why the British Carry on Camping’: “Boy scouts, hippies and soggy tents… camping used to have an image problem”, but not anymore. Thanks to celebrity campers Kate Moss, Jodie Kidd and Sienna Miller taking an interest in pitching tents (sound familiar?), along with chic camping gear to show off - “Ted Baker blow-up mattresses, Cath Kidston sleeping bags or Mongolian-style yurts” – camping became “more palatable” to those who loved the idea of the great outdoors but didn’t want to give up their creature comforts. While Cool Camping series author Jonathan Knight admitted top designers introduced camping to a new audience by bringing a sense of style to the experience, he said there was more to the trend: "The designers made it cool but the popularity is because more and more people are living in towns and cities, many without a garden or outdoor space, and camping offers them an antidote to urban life." (As one happy camper in the story said: "You can gather round a campfire with smoke in our faces and there's something very relaxing about that.") Also that month in an article called ‘Cool Camping’ The Observer claimed camping had come a long way since “the dank ages”: “Pull up the tent pegs of history and pack away memories of soggy childhood camping trips,” Rhiannon Batten wrote, “Nowadays, staying under canvas is less about smelly sleeping bags and dank communal toilet blocks and more about thread-counted sheets and tents that come with private showers… Pitch up at the right spot and you'll find facilities designed with an altogether new breed of camper in mind - one who likes the idea of getting back to basics just so long as it involves the comfort of a Cath Kidston sleeping bag, Ted Baker blow-up mattress or even a kingsize bed and a duck-down duvet. Welcome to cool camping.” (Haven't we read this somewhere before?) The writer then gave us a rundown of cool camping options: Kenyan safari-style lodges, Maharaja-type hunting tents, yoga-camps in Turkey, hi-tech Alpine eco-pods in Switzerland, and – the "ultimate in bohemian chic" – Mongolian yurts in Cornwall. What has me wondering is not which was cool first, camping or caravanning, but who sent out the press release? Jonathon Knight? Or was it Cath Kidston or Ted Baker? Whoever it was, at least they got everyone outdoors.The photo? Oh, that old thing, that's... um... our luxury 'tent' at the Four Seasons Tented Camp at the Golden Triangle.
** I've been wondering how many people actually live and travel in yurts, other than Mongolians of course... and the people over at TrekHound have only sparked my curiosity further with their extraordinary compilation of research on yurts. Check this out! Very impressive.