Revenge travel  

We live in an era where etymologists and grammarians are collaborating to come up with new words or phrases that are politically appropriate. So that, as we now often hear, the physically disabled is now called differently abled. Those who are mentally retarded are now referred to as mentally-challenged. Those who are not blessed with height are now called vertically challenged. 

There are phrases too that have been coined because some words were perceived to have negative connotations. For instance, the phrase “thoughts showering” is now widely used instead of the word “brainstorming.” They go for it because storming or forcing the brain to come out with great ideas does not do anything good at all while “thoughts showering” encourages one’s mind to think and come up with great ideas freely. 

On the other hand, it also in this era where techies and innovators are also coming up with jargons of their own. Words and phrases that look and sound negative but have positive connotations. For instance, several decades ago, we adopted the phrase “burn the CD”, which means to write a content to a CD. We are also embracing the word “disruption” as good when added to the word “business” in referring to “any innovation within an industry that radically and lastingly changes the way all companies in that industry operate.”

Recently, industry moguls and mainstream media have coined another phrase using also a word that has negative connotation to the word “travel.” The word “revenge” is added to the word “travel” to come up with a very popular phrase nowadays, “revenge travel.” While some grammarians, media personalities and travel operators disagree with the phrase, it is enormously getting positive responses. To them, the thought that we must take revenge against a debilitating virus in modern times cannot be ignored.

True enough, literally, there a lot of reasons why we must take revenge against COVID 19. To recall, until the end of 2019, world tourism was flourishing. It continued to rise despite wars, political chaos and threats of extremisms, among others. In fact, even countries with so much sophistications in terms of threat-readiness and were on their toes 24/7 were not spared of those threats too. Yet, their tourism initiatives thrived.

It did rise constantly even if the paranoia that no one was safe obtained. A survey published by the World Economic Forum (The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2019) confirmed this.  According to the report, “in 2018, the industry helped generate 10.4% of world GDP and a similar share of employment, and has shown enormous resilience over the last decade.”  It further reported that “fueling this expansion and relative resilience was the continuing growth of the middle-class in Asia and other parts of the world.” On account of this growth, the industry boldly predicted that “in the coming decade, industry contribution to GDP is expected to rise by nearly 50%.” 

Considering the trajectory then, such prediction was so appropriate. However, as the citizens of the world were held hostage by the virus, such projected increase were never seen or felt. In fact, not only that it did not increase, the global tourism industry, as a whole, was almost brought down to ground zero. 

Today, the citizens of the world are up in arms and are travelling again. With the thought of taking a revenge against COVID 19, despite high plane ticket prices (due to the oil price surge), demands are surging. For instance, Allianz Partners (a travel insurance company) “analyzed more than 40,000 trip itineraries planned for this summer and concluded that American travel to Europe will jump 600% from last year.” And this is not limited to Europe. In an industry conference last month, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said that “demand is off the charts.” The fact is, according to the report, the “airline industry is struggling to keep up.”

We can feel this so called “revenge travel” in the country too. I am one of those who already made trips domestically and am a living witness to this development. Also, conventions and conferences are back even in Cebu. As a testament, the certified public accountants in Cebu and neighboring provinces had a very successful summit at Radisson last Thursday and Friday with more than 500 in attendance. 

As a testament that domestic travels are starting to go back to pre-pandemic level, our resource speakers (who are mostly from Metro Manila that included renowned economist Bernardo Villegas), expressed their optimism as their respective flights were all fully booked. 

Indeed, it is time for revenge.