Join us for an insightful discussion with renowned travel writer Alicia Underlee Nelson, as she shares the latest travel trends for 2024. ~~ Experience the rich narratives of the Plains through a captivating essay from Dr. Tom Isern, titled 'A Foreign Country.' ~~ Discover the North Dakota Monitor, an emerging statewide news organization dedicated to in-depth coverage of North Dakota's political and governmental landscape. We'll have an engaging conversation with Amy Dalrymple, the Editor-in-Chief, about this initiative and its role in the States Newsroom project.
Transcription:
Travel writer Alicia Underlee Nelson joins us to talk about travel trends for 2024.
Interview Highlights: (full transcript below)
Prices are high now because of pent-up pandemic demand and a shrinking skilled workforce. How traveling during off-peak times saves money:
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Shoulder season used to be kind of a well-kept secret. People in the know would go not during prime summer vacation time, not during holiday travel, not during key spring break weeks.
But those shoulder seasons that typically depending on the destination are like late March, April into May. Then there's another similar season in the fall that kind of shifts according to, you know, what hemisphere and what continent that you're on. But you're looking for maybe not particular travel dates.
You're looking to be a little bit flexible about when you travel. You're looking to travel when, if it's a beach destination, when it perhaps is a little bit cooler. You're maybe avoiding the Christmas market rush in Europe, but you're doing something earlier in the season.
So maybe you're flying out and you're catching the first day. I'm just shifting a little bit. So basically the time that everybody wants to go, you're not going, you're going a little bit earlier or a little bit later.
On how slow travel saves money and creates more ease:
Well, if you're focusing on slow travel, you're probably going to emphasize a neighborhood that is on a pedestrian scale. So you're going to focus on places that are easy to walk to. You're going to want green space.
You're going to want restaurants. You're going to want places to browse. It'll probably be accessible to public transportation, which is going to be much more affordable than renting a car.
You're not going to be shifting all over because you're not going to be doing a ton of different excursions. Slow travelers well do, you know, maybe a trip to the country or a bus trip or something that's kind of stereotypically touristy. That's fine.
But we're not trying to do one, two or three of those things in a day. And I think when I think of slow travel, it's really about drilling down and thinking about the experiences that you want to have, because so many times people say, oh, I've always dreamed about going to London. And there's a trend happening now with dupes.
It's based on the TikTok dupes where you can get a similar product for less. And this is a similar concept in travel. And I like it.
Ashley Thornberg
But that makes it sound like we're being, well, duped.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
It's a short for duplicate.
Ashley Thornberg
Not duplicitous.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Okay. Just means duplicate. But of course, it's not exactly accurate either, because if someone says, I want to go to London, I usually ask them, okay, great.
What do you want to do? I want to see the Tower of London. I really want to see the London Bridge and Big Ben and all these, you know, stereotypical milestones.
And I really want to be in London because I'm obsessed with the history. I want to see these particular streets. So in that case, a dupe, there's no duplicate for London for the things that that person wants to experience.
They're not going to get it by going to any other city.
Ashley Thornberg
There's only one Westminster.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Right. They have to see those things. For that person, London's worth it.
But for another person, a dupe or, you know, a similar experience would be great. Because if you just want to go and have a pint and hang out and see what's on TV because you love British mysteries and you want to roam the streets and you want to have really good fish and chips every day. Good football.
There's a ton of different cities that would be a better fit for you. Different neighborhoods that are going to be a better fit, even if you do opt to go to London and ways that you can save a lot of money because that person's, they don't, they might not even need to go to a museum at all.
They might not want to go to a landmark at all. And that's fine. They're going to come home and they're going to rave about their experience and have a blast.
And that's perfect. Like you don't have to do what everybody says you have to do. And even dig into your own motivation, the landmarks and the places that you're interested in will direct you.
And if you're not completely married to the idea of doing that, you know, top 10 list of things you should do in a city, branch out, try a different city. A lot of times they're a lot more affordable.
Full transcript:
Ashley Thornberg
I don't know about you, Alicia, but I have noticed as I'm starting to plan the 2024 travel year, um, boy, it sure seems like things got real expensive.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
It got incredibly expensive. Although according to my research and a lot of my colleagues, it is more affordable than last year. So at least there are some benefits.
We really had a huge swing in demand, you know, pandemic pressures lifted, people got vaccinated and boosted. And I don't know if the travel sector was entirely ready for the huge amount of demand, especially like about this time last year.
Ashley Thornberg
Well, they had to do a lot of layoffs. It's easier to get rid of staff than it is to rehire, I would think.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Absolutely. So customers were ready, travelers were ready, but the routes and the staff were definitely not. And that really includes airlines.
It includes hostel staff because many of those people in the service industry had shifted to other careers. So to get people that were good and ready to go has been a little bit challenging. And sometimes when that happens, you get some price breaks, but that did not happen last year.
I was researching European travel. I have a cousin that plays hockey in Germany and I wanted to take my parents. And prices were so high.
One ticket to pretty much anywhere in Central and Western Europe was the price of what you pay for three or four. I mean, it was just, it was, it was madness.
Ashley Thornberg
I'm looking at a trip to Rwanda this year and, and I got invited on a trip to Italy and it was the same ticket price to go to Italy as it was to go to Rwanda. Yeah.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
All substantially farther away. All the rules kind of went out the window in 2023 because I think you had people, I mean, yes, there was, you know, supply pressure, route pressure, you know, hotel rooms, supply pressure. But also coming out of the pandemic, people had a lot of time to really think about their bucket list travel destinations.
And if they had the money to go and not everybody did, but those that had the money to go, we're saying, you know what? We have survived a pandemic. Um, life is short.
We were going to go to Paris or we've had this family trip to Australia that we've always wanted to do. I'm done thinking about it. We're going to do it.
And there is value in that. If you can swing it, that's great. But the challenges for a lot of people with the cost of groceries going up, the cost of gas, everyday cost of living, cost of rent soaring, the price of a mortgage and interest rates going up, it got to be really hard for people that wanted to travel to find an economical way to make that work.
And thankfully, you know, the latter part of 2023 swinging now into 2024 is giving us a few more options. And I think people are starting to become smarter consumers. They're starting to use some of the tricks and tips that professional travel writers like me have always kind of done.
And they're looking a little bit off the beaten path and really drilling down into what kind of experience that they want. And they're being a little bit smarter about thinking to themselves, does it have to be this particular city or this particular state or this particular country, or can I be flexible? Yeah.
Ashley Thornberg
Well, let's start with the easiest ways to make these more affordable. You know, you're saying this particular city. What about this particular season?
Talk to us a little bit about what the professionals call the shoulder season of travel.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Absolutely. Shoulder season used to be kind of a well-kept secret. People in the know would go not during prime summer vacation time, not during holiday travel, not during key spring break weeks.
But those, the shoulder seasons that typically depending on the destination are like late March, April into May. Then there's another similar season in the fall that kind of shifts according to, you know, what hemisphere and what continent that you're on. But you're looking for maybe not particular travel dates.
You're looking to be a little bit flexible about when you travel. You're looking to travel when, if it's a beach destination, when it perhaps is a little bit cooler. You're maybe avoiding the Christmas market rush in Europe, but you're doing something earlier in the season.
So maybe you're flying out and you're catching the first day. I'm just shifting a little bit. So basically the time that everybody wants to go, you're not going, you're going a little bit earlier or a little bit later.
Ashley Thornberg
And you're spending a lot less time in line when you do that.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
And that's huge because over tourism has been a real challenge, especially with a lot of very popular destinations and cities and states and destinations are really limiting in many cases, the amount of people that come in. Like Venice just imposed a day tripper fee. It's something like five or five 50 euro for people coming in for the day in these peak times, hoping to encourage them to come in different weeks or months to kind of shift and relieve that burden, that, that crush of people trying to minimize that.
They're also limiting the number of people in group tours to 25 or less.
Ashley Thornberg
Right. And I think there was a megaphone rule too, which I think is more geared at people who live there all of the time.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
But honestly, here's the thing. I am a tourist and I don't necessarily, I'm not necessarily against having those touristy experiences. I've done the city tour on a bus.
I've done tons of walking tours. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I think if you're in a beautiful place, a megaphone doesn't necessarily enhance that experience at all because the locals aren't yelling at each other through megaphones. They're not wearing coordinated t-shirts.
So anytime that we can try to integrate our own travel experience with what locals are already doing is going to be a win. And that's really part of a big trend that's happening to the slow travel push. That's what it's about.
It's not just traveling in off peak times. It's not just trying to travel in ways that are more sustainable. It's also slowing down and looking around and thinking, am I doing things the way that the people that live here are doing that?
Am I adjusting to the rhythms of this neighborhood? Can I take a two and a half hour lunch like they do in lots of European countries? Am I rushing through?
Am I barking orders? Am I wearing strange things? Am I checking things off the list?
No, if you live in the city, you're not doing that. So just maybe paring down your to-do list, not being quite as stressed or as ambitious in your goals, and just really giving yourself a slice of life can really liberate people from a lot of the stress of travel. Because if we don't slow down and we don't relax when we travel, it becomes like a job.
It becomes another thing on our to-do list. And that I think sucks the joy right out of it.
Ashley Thornberg
I'm a recovering “do everything on vacation all the time” person.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
And that's really common, especially in the US when we get such a short amount of vacation days. I mean, in many places, if you can get two weeks paid, that is the max you can get. And in Europe, I mean, four weeks is what you start with and you often go up from there.
There are places where people take entire months off. And so if you're used to taking the entire month of August off, for example, you're going to travel at a much different pace than someone who has maybe a week or maybe three days unpaid and you're trying to squish everything in. And also, you know, the US is a big country.
We live far away from even places in our own country. So a lot of that pack it all in mentality. We've had to do that.
Ashley Thornberg
Alicia, talking about this concept of slow travel, I think it can be hard for people to realize too that in a lot of ways it can be more affordable to take a longer vacation than to take the quick one.
Just you have more options. You can afford to stay a little bit out of city center or take a slower bus instead of the faster, more expensive train. Help us to kind of understand a little bit more there on just ways to save money by slowing down.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Well, if you're focusing on slow travel, you're probably going to emphasize a neighborhood that is on a pedestrian scale. So you're going to focus on places that are easy to walk to. You're going to want green space.
You're going to want restaurants. You're going to want places to browse. It'll probably be accessible to public transportation, which is going to be much more affordable than renting a car.
You're not going to be shifting all over because you're not going to be doing a ton of different excursions. Slow travelers well do, you know, maybe a trip to the country or a bus trip or something that's kind of stereotypically touristy. That's fine.
But we're not trying to do one, two or three of those things in a day. And I think when I think of slow travel, it's really about drilling down and thinking about the experiences that you want to have, because so many times people say, oh, I've always dreamed about going to London. And there's a trend happening now with dupes.
It's based on the TikTok dupes where you can get a similar product for less. And this is a similar concept in travel. And I like it.
Ashley Thornberg
But that makes it sound like we're being, well, duped.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
It's a short for duplicate.
Ashley Thornberg
Not duplicitous.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Okay. Just means duplicate. But of course, it's not exactly accurate either, because if someone says, I want to go to London, I usually ask them, okay, great.
What do you want to do? I want to see the Tower of London. I really want to see the London Bridge and Big Ben and all these, you know, stereotypical milestones.
And I really want to be in London because I'm obsessed with the history. I want to see these particular streets. So in that case, a dupe, there's no duplicate for London for the things that that person wants to experience.
They're not going to get it by going to any other city.
Ashley Thornberg
There's only one Westminster.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Right. They have to see those things. For that person, London's worth it.
But for another person, a dupe or, you know, a similar experience would be great. Because if you just want to go and have a pint and hang out and see what's on TV because you love British mysteries and you want to roam the streets and you want to have really good fish and chips every day. Good football.
Right. There's a ton of different cities that would be a better fit for you. Different neighborhoods that are going to be a better fit, even if you do opt to go to London and ways that you can save a lot of money because that person's, they don't, they might not even need to go to a museum at all.
They might not want to go to a landmark at all. And that's fine. They're going to come home and they're going to rave about their experience and have a blast.
And that's perfect. Like you don't have to do what everybody says you have to do. And even dig into your own motivation, the landmarks and the places that you're interested in will direct you.
And if you're not completely married to the idea of doing that, you know, top 10 list of things you should do in a city, branch out, try a different city. A lot of times they're a lot more affordable. And I've done this myself.
I was traveling in France. I wanted to go see the French coast. I wanted a beach vacation.
I wasn't super attached to any particular location and people recommended a lot of the really fancy resort towns. And I said, you know what? I'm looking for something affordable.
I'm just going to be there with my son. We'll have spent some time in Portugal and Spain before then. It was a very ambitious trip and I was tour guiding it.
I was going to be interacting in multiple languages. French is not my best language. I really wanted to just park myself on a beach, which I don't normally do, and experience the city and eat some good food.
And so we decided on the Basque coast and not even the most well-known.
Ashley Thornberg
Oh, I love that part of France.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Yeah, I do too. And it was so funny because my friend's mom is Spanish. And she said, that's not the most, we went to Andalia, which is not the most beautiful and the most well-known place on that coast.
And she said, there's so many other pretty city centers and there's so much more you can do. And I said, yeah, but Nancy, I don't, I don't want to do any of that. So we sat and we sat on a blanket, my son and I, who was six at the time, and we ate a lot of Basque cake.
We went to the market and found some beautiful olives and some gorgeous garlic and just looked at things and touched things and shopped in little seaside places and watched the surfers. And that was good. It was great.
It was one of the best little mini breaks we've ever taken. It was super affordable. And if I would have been married to that idea of, you know, a particular, um, French beach vacation, I would have spent a ton more money.
We would have spent a lot more time and energy traveling literally across the country. Instead, we hopped on a train. It was just a few hours from where we already were.
It was incredibly affordable and it got us right back for our return flight and it was so much easier. So I think sometimes we overthink it, especially when we haven't traveled in a while, when we have that pent up demand, when we were stuck at home during the pandemic. We want everything to be perfect.
We want everything to be epic. And it just doesn't need necessarily to be that way. We can go simpler.
Um, if you have a particular landmark in mind, yes, absolutely. But if you just want a mountain vacation, if you want to go hiking, if you want a European city break, if you want to visit a place you've never been before and you don't even care what continent it's on, it's okay to look at price and find a place that matches your vibe and not to stress about what anyone else thinks, because it's your vacation and you can do whatever you want with it. And that's so liberating.
Ashley Thornberg
We are visiting today with Alicia Underlee Nelson, a travel writer who has written for such publications as Delta Sky Magazine and Thompson Reuters. You can find out more about her at prairie style file.com. Alicia, it sounds to me a little like what you're advising travelers to do is to examine their own values.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Definitely. Um, pre pandemic, I taught a travel course and I do some travel quizzes. I've written some articles on the subject that when we think about the ideal trip or how we want to spend a vacation, we, we tend to focus on what we want to do.
We don't think at all about how we want to feel. And we very rarely think about how the people we're traveling with want to feel. And that leads to a lot of conflict.
Um, because we all have this vision and there's a lot of pressure when you travel, you're spending money, you're taking time off work. And the nature of travel in itself is a little bit uncomfortable. We're not in a familiar setting.
And even if we're traveling in a place where they speak our language and it's familiar, we're traveling one state over. Maybe we don't have our routines. We don't know the way back to where we're staying.
Um, the bathrooms in a different place than our normal location. So we get up in the middle of the night and we're a little confused for a second and that can be uncomfortable. So I think it's really important to understand one that, that, that, that might happen, that travel is about stretching ourselves sometimes, but I think we can have a much more rewarding experience when we sit down and think about what we really want to get out of this vacation.
How do we want to feel while we're there? How do we want to feel when we come back? And you can't really have a successful trip.
I don't think, unless you've given a little thought to that, unless you've talked to the people that you're traveling with, because what happens inevitably is you're traveling with a group of friends or a multi-generational trip with family or even with your spouse, a person that you live with and see every day. And you will think, I just want like a regular vacation or I want a typical vacation or I want a fun vacation. We don't think about what that means for us and we don't think about what that entails for the other person.
And sometimes people, sometimes people travel similarly to then the way that they live their lives every day. But sometimes people are opposite. I have a friend who between his kids activities and his work where he's on call, he doesn't do a lot in town.
He doesn't go out to eat a lot. He doesn't go to shows very often. He's, he's really busy.
He's really buckled down. He's applying himself. So when he travels, he likes to let loose.
He likes to go out to eat. And that was a shock to me because I assumed he was going to be a homebody when we traveled together as a group and that was not the case. So I think you kind of need to ask yourself, what activities do I want to be doing?
How busy do I want to be? How much money do I want to spend? And how, how is everybody else ranking these activities?
And you have to have a discussion with it ahead of time or you will end up having a discussion, hissing at each other in line somewhere because somebody's idea of a perfification is every museum in the city and somebody, that person that they're with inevitably will be want, will want to sit on the beach and do nothing. And if you don't talk about it, someone's going to be resentful. Someone's going to be angry and it's going to take a chunk out of your trip that you're going to spend in frustration that didn't need to be that way.
One person might want to stay on the beach and the other person will take a cab into town and go shopping and both are totally happy. And you just need a place, a location that gives you both of those things. And it's easier if you anticipate those needs and wants ahead of time.
And then you can choose a place that makes it easy and cost effective for you both to do those things, especially if you're on a budget.
Ashley Thornberg
What is your budget philosophy?
Alicia Underlee Nelson
I think it really depends. I think you always need to have a little more in reserve than you think you need. But I think if you're on a budget, it's best to think about how you can save money in two key areas, especially lodging and food.
Like lodging and dining, those two are huge. And you can save a ton of money just by being really mindful in where you book and how often you eat out. And there are other little things you can do.
There are tips and tricks to get you, you know, free museum days that you can check out. I recommend that for a lot of people that are on a budget. Different slower methods of travel.
The train is really wonderful. I know people that have had wonderful bus trips. I know people that have totally changed the location that they stayed in though and saved all of that money and been able to put it right back into entertainment or put it right back into a direct flight.
So I think it can be really helpful to book a place. A lot of suites have a kitchen, in some cases a full kitchen. I mean, I have made spaghetti on a hot plate in a hotel room before.
And sometimes, yeah, sometimes that's just the best way to save money. There are people that are comfortable with hostels. There are people that get to a certain age or a certain level of creature comfort and they say, you know, I'd rather do an Airbnb.
I'd rather do a home exchange. You can look into glamping as well. So if you're not comfortable camping, some people aren't, there are, you know, really great cabins that may have cooking facilities or shared amenities where you can do a lot of your meal prep in house.
And a lot of those spaces, be it Airbnbs, apartment rentals, which are pretty common outside of the Airbnb and Vrbo platform in other parts of the world, they'll also have play areas for the kids or games or videos or a shelf full of books to read. Those kind of activities, too, so that can make it, it gives you something interesting and locally oriented to do that doesn't cost you money. And so if if you're in a very cheap hotel room in a neighborhood that you have to take a cab to get anywhere, that's not a good use of your money.
But staying a little bit further out in a place where you can easily hop onto public transportation or walk to cool restaurants and things in your neighborhood where you might have a kitchen where you can cook and go to the market and really experience local life in that way, where you realize there's free movies being shown in the parks. You can do that on the weekends where you have a beautiful patio or a hot tub or a hammock or a library full of books or a garden. Now, this feels like a vacation and you have a ton of amenities for what may be a similar amount of money.
So in the second option where you have lodging and some extra amenities and you're able to kind of cut costs for your basic needs, shelter, food, water, you're getting a lot more for your money and you don't even necessarily have to leave the property that you're renting to feel like you're a part of this community and to feel like you're having a break.
Ashley Thornberg
Travel writer Alicia Underlee Nelson, we're going to have her on throughout the year for more travel tips. But if anybody has questions, you can send them to MainStreetAtPrairiePublic.org and we can get those answered on the air. I want to have you back on later in the year to talk about this, but just a minute or two to spare here to talk about the fact that there's a big solar eclipse coming up and that things are already starting to book out for this April 8th eclipse.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Yes, I know it's January and we are all still adjusting to the fact that it's not the holiday season anymore. But mark your calendars for April 8th. There is a total solar eclipse.
We will not be able to see it in this broadcast area, but there are states all the way. There's kind of a nice arc from Texas all the way up to Maine. And there are Midwestern cities that will be able to see the eclipse.
So Cleveland, Toledo, Indianapolis, different places throughout Missouri and Illinois. And you might not be thinking about this yet. In fact, this might be the first that you've heard of it.
But trust me, people that are nerds about sky-based tourism.
Ashley Thornberg
This has been in my calendar for like a year and a half.
Alicia Underlee Nelson
Yeah, they're very well aware. So hotel rooms are booking up. I don't often say, book now, it's urgent.
But in this case, it is because people will travel and they do travel for this event. And it's exciting. People get really pumped up about it.
And it's kind of a nice community event. And I mean community in the broadest possible sense. Yes, the communities that are able to see this.
That's, I mean, it's an incredible experience to have. But the community also includes people that are passionate about sky-watching and the stars and all of those fun. I think this is such an interesting outgrowth of what we saw during the pandemic.
We got interested in the world around us. People got interested in being outdoors. And to turn our eyes to the skies and be like kids again is exciting.
So if people want to travel for it, you definitely should. But you're going to need to start researching now. And you can actually go to nationaleclipse.com and it tells you where exactly it will occur. And you can figure out where you want to stay and get that taken care of this week.
Ashley Thornberg
You can find out more about travel writer Alicia Underlee Nelson at prairiestylefile.com.
Main Street transcripts are AI generated and corrected on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of Main Street programming is the audio record.