Once upon a time, planning a vacation meant visiting the Taj Mahal, or the Gateway of India or even the London eye. But today, the essence of travelling is changing. People are into slow travel mode where they can relax and also engage in meaningful activities in hidden gems rather than popular places.
The paradigm shift from visiting the most popular tourist destination to lazing around the hardly known destinations is quite visible. Today, people prefer to peacefully visit one spot and engage in a few activities, rather than making a short trip to a very popular spot and squeezing a lot in very little time. And if you are wondering, why this is so, then there are ample reasons for the same.
The over-tourism fatigue: Famous destinations like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Puri, Vaishno Devi, Chennai in India or international places like Bali, Singapore, Maldives are suffering from over-tourism. High transport and accommodation price, -peak season or not- a spike in public venue ticket prices etc have all contributed to this fatigue. People prefer to visit a hidden gem where there are less people, noise and life doesn’t rush.
Social media influence: One cannot deny that social media plays a powerful role in the discovery of hidden gems. A few months ago, Indian social media feeds were full of vibrant visuals of discovering sakura-look alike or sunflower fields. These visuals tend to blow up and make more and more people curious about visiting a new place.
In search of new experiences: Rather than standing in a queue to get a very crowded glimpse of popular monuments, people prefer to engage in hyper local activities. These may range from attending a pottery session or visiting an art village or taking snorkeling or paragliding sessions from trusted guides or going on a safari and enjoying a meal in the middle of the forest. Sometimes, people prefer to visit a local café and observe the culture for hours on the end familiarizing themselves with the people and place.
High cost of travel: If you zero in on any popular destination and start calculating your cost, you would notice that it would take less to visit a hidden gem than going to a popular destination. This stems from the availability of home stays, hostels and guest houses which cost comparatively less. Moreover, local food stalls cuts down on your food budget. Basic in-land transportation can be adjusted to your budget with slight bargains. These help cutting down the cost of visiting a hidden gem. Moreover, with better connectivity, hidden gems are also becoming easily reachable nowadays.
Status symbol: If you are a passionate traveller, then your respect isn’t determined by whether you have visited Paris or Mauritius. Rather, it can be measured now by revealing, if you have had experiential journeys across a tea garden or a coffee plantation or seen the Northern Lights or visited a certain tribal belt and observed their lifestyle.
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