The hazards and benefits of travel in a digital age

The Dhofar Mountains, west of Salalah, Oman. Stephen Lock / The National

Earlier this month, a family of four that included a Dubai-based engineer, were swept into the Arabian Sea as a powerful wave crashed onto a rocky outcrop near the tourist hotspot of Oman's Al Mughsail beach. The mother was saved but went in to shock on learning about her missing husband and children. Footage of the incident on YouTube went viral. It captured the moment when excitement turned to panic and horror. Such rapid and dramatic reversals of fortune are a hallmark of tragedy.

This incident occurred a few days before I was due to take a family holiday in the same region of Oman (Dhofar, Salalah). Watching the heartbreaking video of this tragic incident woke me up to the potential dangers of getting too close to the sea during the khareef (monsoon) season. A picture paints a thousand words, and that image of a ferocious wave sweeping little children out to sea left me with a heightened sense of safety consciousness and primed to follow the prescribed precautionary measures to the letter.

One of the benefits of holidaying in the digital age is our easy access to detailed and up-to-date information on the locations we intend to visit. I remember the pre-internet days when the High Street travel agent was the font of all knowledge on potential holiday destinations. This data imbalance, known as an information asymmetry, gave travel agents an advantage. The internet eliminates information asymmetries, which is why so many travel agents are on the brink of collapse.

Today, many of us mostly book online, perhaps after reading comments left by previous visitors. We might also seek out impartial opinions concerning specific destinations on social media. Increasingly, we share and learn from each other's experiences: the good, the bad and the tragic. The internet is a triumph for transparency, which has led to better-informed tourists.

Rather than travel agents, we now have "travel influencers" on social media. Operating on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, they sway public opinion on destinations, excursions and hotels.

In recent years we have even seen the emergence of influencer-hosted travel experiences. This is where an influencer accompanies a group of followers on an international trip with a well-curated itinerary of photo-worthy excursions. For example, Alyssa Ramos of MyLifesATravelMovie on Instagram has run group trips since 2016. This year, Ramos is hosting 15 trips spanning seven continents. It makes one wonder whether travel influencers are the new travel agents.

Another change wrought by digital technology is the exponential growth in photography. Digital photography, especially with smartphone cameras, has massively increased the number of holiday snaps we take. Based on industry estimates, our snap rate has tripled since 2012, with 1.72 trillion photos expected to be taken during 2022. A downside to this is the phenomenon of death by selfie. Each year brings new reports of tourists attempting to take ill-advised selfies. Recent incidents include: "tourist falls into volcano after taking selfie" and "French tourist dies trying to take selfie at Thai waterfall".

Such holiday photography is typically an attempt to record a special occasion and generate documentary evidence of one's pleasant experiences. Ironically, though, in our increasingly frequent attempts to capture magic moments, we may be losing them.

There is mounting evidence that smartphone photography can sometimes lead to a degraded memory of an actual experience. One study published in 2014 in Psychological Science describes this phenomenon as the "photo-taking impairment effect". The article is based on an experiment where one group of students photographed exhibits at the Bellarmine Museum of Art. At the same time, another group browsed the exhibits, eyes-only. When tested the following day, the eyes-only group significantly outperformed the photography group at recognising objects from the museum's exhibit.

Travel shapes us. But through our technological innovations, we also shape travel. Later this year, the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking is publishing a special issue exploring research focused on the concept of digital travel. The Covid-19 pandemic taught us, en mass, that physical travel is not always an option. Similarly, ill health, physical infirmities, and advancing age can make travel difficult. Might digital travel become an increasingly popular substitute for physical travel? It might also help offset travel's negative environmental impact.

As the Metaverse (Web 3.0) expands and virtual and augmented reality become more sophisticated, it is easy to imagine people taking bespoke virtual holidays. For example, such a trip could involve a day at the Louvre Abu Dhabi and a night at Cesare's Palace, Las Vegas.

I recently had a sample of what this digital tourism might feel like. It was at a technology exhibition in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The instalment included virtual reality tours of some of the world's great mosques, including the Kaaba in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. I have previously visited both holy sites, and the virtual visit was a lesser experience by far. That said, such virtual tours have the advantage of giving visitors access to typically off-limits areas, such as being able to look inside the Kaaba.

Physical travel, pilgrimage and the traditional holiday won't be supplanted by their digital equivalents any time soon. However, being able to take digital vacations on evenings and weekends from the safety of our own homes seems highly likely to catch on.