Susan Michelle's Compass
The Low-Down on The Hottest Tourism Alternatives
By travel lifestylist Susan Michelle
Jun 22, 2008 - 7:51:20 PM

Not sure what to do with your summer vacation yet?  If you’re weighing sand and mai-tais versus seeing the sights somewhere, consider one of the multitude of new millennium travel alternatives instead.  Here, the latest vocabulary that’s shaking up the traditional tourism world this century:

SUSTAINABLE TOURISM : Travel that supports environmental conservation and protects cultural heritage while bolstering cross-cultural understanding and local economy.  

AGRITOURISM : Travel to rural areas to explore food production and country life via tours and hands-on activities, such as picking produce, riding horses, feeding pigs, tasting honey, learning about wine production, meeting farmers, or shopping for antiques and hand-crafted gifts.  Examples : Wineries, dude ranches, farms, orchards, state parks, dairies.

VOLUNTOURISM : Get yourself to a destination, then spend your time volunteering to help the eco-system and/or people of the local community.  Examples : Post-Hurricane Katrina, post-2004’s Indian Ocean Tsunami. (Both events propelled large increases in this travel trend.)

DISASTER TOURISM : Travel to places of natural disaster just to be a voyeur.  Example : A guided bus tour through still-wrecked neighborhoods in New Orleans.  

DARK TOURISM : Travel to sites associated with death, tragedy, and suffering.  Examples : New York’s Ground Zero, battlefields, former Nazi concentration camps, Chernobyl, L.A.’s Manson Murders site.

STAYCATION : A vacation where one stays close to home.  These vacations may be comprised of daycations , where each day is spent “vacating,” doing something fun, then returning home to sleep in one’s own bed.  Examples : Local hikes, BBQs at friends’ houses, touring nearby museums, spa days, architectural tours, or just exploring new shops and restaurants.

GEOCACHING : An outdoor treasure-hunting game in which players use GPS to hide and find containers (i.e., “caches”) anywhere in the world.  Examples : Consult one of the numerous guidebooks or websites out there to guide you through/to the 800,000+ web-registered geocaches that have been placed around the globe since 2000.

FLASHPACKING : Backpacking with flash — not only in terms of style, but also budget; more electronics and comfy hotels, less hostels and overall “roughing it.”  

NAKED HIKING : What better way to experience nature than to hike it au naturale?  Just be sure to put on extra sunscreen and bug spray, and watch for prickly thorns.  Example : Anyplace remote where you won’t get arrested.

MUSIC TOURISM : Travel to a city for multiple days just for the town’s local music festival.  Examples : Glastonbury, Coachella, EXIT.

SACRED TRAVEL : Travel to “spiritual hotspots” to connect to the locale’s spiritual/metaphysical energy, heal one’s body or soul, or participate in some ritual.  Examples : Machu Picchu, Egyptian Pyramids, Sedona, Mecca.

MEDICAL TOURISM : Travel across international borders to obtain more cost-effective healthcare, often followed by recoveries in spa-like facilities.  Examples : America (for foreigners), Mexico (for plastic surgery), India (for knee replacement), Israel (for in-vitro fertilization).

EXTREME TOURISM : Extreme sports culture, gone tourist.  Examples : Diving, climbing, snowboarding, spelunking, or hunting in the Amazon Jungle, Northern Pakistan, or North Pole.

SPACE TOURISM : Got an extra $20 million lying around?  Try a vacation in space.  Example : The Russian Space Agency is currently the only outer space tour operator.