Give us all a break
You’ve gotta love brochurese, that engorged form of language reserved for selling dreams.
Ah, you’ve gotta love brochurese, that engorged form of language reserved for selling dreams. Most of us can spot it a mile off in real estate propaganda and retail sales catalogues but our age of Covid has seen the words and expressions used to describe travel experiences reach new heights of hyperbole.
Manyt of us have been locked up or hunkered down so long we’re visualising any holiday destination as a shimmering Shangri-la and may have lost all sense of proportion. So when an accommodation website promises a romantic-sounding bushman’s hut or a glamping site complete with a gauzy ”lifestyle” pic, we’re likely to succumb to the deal of the day and, before you can say due diligence, we’re headed to a converted toolshed or a meagre tent in the bottom of someone’s garden. These are extreme examples, but nonetheless true.
Holidays have always been treats, the escapes we deserve and look forward to. The decades-long trend to break the calendar into many interludes away doesn’t mean that each shouldn’t be as precious as an extended summer family vacation of the kind many of us cherished as children.
I’ve long had an issue with that word resort. Its overuse has rendered it meaningless. A palm tree and a coloured drink does not a resort make. You can’t just stick a sign on a motel and pretend it’s something else, although that hasn’t stopped many operators. The same with retreat. Perhaps a cabin by a remote lake really is a retreat but not when there’s a lack of hot water, and metal bunks with lumpy bedding. What are we actually retreating from? Our power showers and fancy mattress toppers? And even worse when you’ve paid a premium for the promise of isolation and there’s a backpackers’ lodge around the bend. Then there are meaningless descriptions such as “designer decor”? Designed by who? The local pine furniture warehouse or the elves at Ikea? Please just stop.
But at least we live in a world of wall-to-wall feedback and if we research properly can rely (sort of) on comments from past guests and, if we’re cluey, work out who’s just a grump looking for a refund and who’s the operator’s doting mother. When you get “best place I’ve ever stayed” and “what a dump” in consecutive comment boxes, the truth probably lies somewhere between.
Travel is about emotion and expectation and we can’t test-drive the experience. But as we prepare to launch ourselves into the great unknown, let’s do our homework as if our future depends on it. We all deserve a break.