9/11 and Travel, Ten Years On

[David Paul Appell]

On the lovely morning of September 11, 2001, I was working as usual in my 7th Avenue Manhattan office as executive editor of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, when thanks to somebody over on the publishing side with a dinky in-office TV came word that a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. As we sat there increasingly nervous yet numbed, trying to continue to work with one eye on the news, one editorial assistant admitted to me at one point, "people here are scared, they don't know what to do."

As things went from bad to unimaginably worse downtown, Arthur and I finally made the inevitable decision and sent everyone home, especially since with bridges and tunnels closed, some of them were going to be spending the rest of the day just getting there. I myself wandered down 7th Avenue to my Chelsea apartment 21 blocks south, through streets filled with similarly disoriented and shocked New Yorkers, almost like something in one of those urban post-apocalypse scare flicks. I thank heaven that I lost no one I knew in the catastrophe, but like many New Yorkers I lived with grief, anger, and anxiety for months afterward. Within four months I 'd sold my apartment and left New York.

Now, as the landmark 10th anniversary arrives this weekend, we've all been seeing, hearing, and reading a flood of coverage on what it all has meant for the United States and the world in this past decade. At the time, my boss Arthur Frommer was pretty pessimistic about 9/11's effect on travel, and in many ways he was right, especially in the short and even medium term. The business -- and we, the media covering it -- took a scary hit in those next months, and some at the time wondered how and even if it could ever recover. Of course the industry did eventually climb back, and then some, but not unchanged -- for example, most of us are all too familiar with how airline travel lost whatever residual pleasure it might've clung to and turned into even more of an almighty hassle (just going through Newark Airport a few months ago got me so aggravated it made ME wanna bomb something). And of course the Internet has quickly revolutionized the business and experience of travel, from researching to booking to sharing -- including of course, my own two-year-old site, Tripatini.com, which does all of the above.

And on September 11, 2011, with a chunk of the Western world at least still reeling from the long hangover to 9/11 -- endless war mixed with endless shopping, the hollowing-out of America thanks to a wildly irresponsible ride filled with credit/real estate bubbles and rising income inequality -- it's also clear the threats to travel these days are mostly more economic than political, martial, criminal, or terroristic (well, depending on where, of course; I don't exactly notice a booming, er, I mean robust tourism industry in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Somalia).

And so now, precisely a decade later, here I sit at our TravelBloggerShow in the world's gaudiest tourist trap, go-go Las Vegas, listening to some of the stars of today's travel media universe -- folks like Grant Martin of Gadling.com, George Hobica of AirfareWatchdog.com, and Wil Klass of SpotCoolStuff.com -- prognosticate to an audience of bloggers and travel industry pros on how to make it in these challenging times and what the future may hold.  

Besides the changes in travel I mentioned above, we've also seen a broadening and deepening of the offerings out there, both geographically and otherwise. Senior citizens who might've simply opted for Vegas once upon a time, and families for Disney World can now be found ziplining in Costa Rica or on safari in India. Other blooming trends, of course, include adventure travel, extreme adventure travel, ecotourism, voluntourism, learning vacations, and a host of others. In other words, let a thousand travels bloom.

On the tech side, it's amazing to think that while Web sites have been around in numbers since the 1990s, Facebook and the explosion of social media has only been a real phenomenon for half a decade or so.  Half a decade, think of it -- and it has almost completely transformed the landscape. That alone tells me that anyone who tries to predict the future of travel -- even by extrapolating more of same -- is on a fool's errand.  I do think, though, it's safe to say that diversification will only increase, both technologically and in terms of where, why, and how we travel.  And it's a journey I'm still excited to be on.

[Mark Pawlak]

Great post,

 

Ten years has disappeared in a moment. Much of this experience has been because of the repeated representations of the event. 

Events that have since unfolded across the Arab world have put 5/6 more countries off the map for most travel companies - so, if anything the world has, for once, become a little smaller. 

That said, the role of the blogger is evolving. Independent opinions are hard to find in a sponsored world, and it's often the lone writer, the traveller without borders - and budgets - that provides the closest, clearest picture of places unseen.

Adventure companies are working in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Danger in these vast countries is restricted to certain areas, and perception of violence often exceeds the reality.

The point you make about tourists taking on adventure travels is an accurate one. Living longer and realising there's much more to a holiday than sitting on the beach, older travellers are proving what athletes have known for a long time: there's no age limit on fun.

Regards,

 

Mp