Last month we reported on the rise of glamping—a conflation of “glamorous” and “camping” that makes us wince every time we write it. We were skeptical. Even dismissive. But then we looked at a few web sites and thought about it, and decided it might be a very acceptable way to spend a little time. If you want to sleep in the semi-outdoors in a different country, why not?
See, we’re not as rigid as we thought. We were quite convinced of our openness to new ideas. Then we stumbled across a list of new travel trends from the World Travel Market 2011 and we became re-convinced that the world is full of idiocy.
Background: Every year, the World Travel Market is staged in London. It claims to be “the leading global event for the travel industry”—a four-day orgy of networking, wheeling, dealing, and desperate bookers trying to figure out the next big thing.
This year, a presenter identified eight major trends, organized by region. We found some of them darkly amusing. (There were, for example, references to countries in the Middle East “rebranding” themselves following the bloodshed of the Arab Spring. And yes, Bahrain and Libya are singled out. To which we say: Really? Rebranding is the issue?) Others were confusing. (The trend for Europe, which is on the brink of an economic meltdown, is “Luxury Without the Guilt.”)
And one jumped out at us as being lame. Utterly, irredeemably lame. The trend in the UK is so-called garden camping. According to the presenter, Baby Boomers are increasingly (because that’s what trend means) renting out space in people’s gardens, where they pitch a tent and sleep among the vegetables. There is a reference to a web site (the aptly if hilariously named campinmygarden.com) and mumbo jumbo about “peer-to-peer transactions tapping into the zeitgeist.”
We’re going to call BS on this trend. First, it takes more than one web site. Second, no one wants to sleep in someone else’s garden and drink off their hose and sneak inside at night to use the bathroom unless they are destitute, in which case they are squatting, not camping.
Final observation: Camp in My Garden claims that its “community” includes camp sites that are luxurious and not so luxurious. Inevitably, it describes the former as glamping. The latter or “basic camping” sites offer what it calls, yes, bamping. We are now anticipating additional sites with web cams that will give us the impression of being outdoors without leaving our soft beds (virtual camping, or vamping) and still others that will combine crafts and camping (or cramping).
“The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man” by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, via Wikimedia Commons
