ONE of my Viking ancestors could probably be classified as an early, slick copywriter, when he named the world’s largest island Greenland – so, what’s in a name?
As we motored past Washington and Boston during our last sojourn in the UK and recalled seeing a Newcastle and an Ipswich in Australia, I decided to check out whether the idea of “homeland” names inhibited the early emigrants. They were adventurous folks and the copied nomenclatures were few and far between. Instead they created their own names often reflecting the nature and surroundings like Moose in Wyoming in the USA on the Snake River.
Or Eagle and Fox near Fairbank in Alaska, famous for its Howling Dog Saloon. And who wouldn’t like to start the day in Sunrise Minnesota and end it in Sunset in Arkansas.
Sometimes local names can inadvertently spell English names such as Ham, France, Muck in Scotland, Gaelic for the Isle of Whales. I have been to Hell in Norway, but I have yet to visit Superb in Saskatchewan in Canada. And, yes, we did slow down to drive through the village of Faster near Legoland in Denmark.
So why should names be relevant to the travel industry? Because it relies on the reputation built around the names. Try selling Dubai thirty years ago or Abu Dhabi or Muscat for that matter. Bahrain might have just rung a bell. Today, all four cities are renowned because of the extraordinary marketing efforts to sell these destinations during the past 20 years.
Some cities become famous due to their sheer size – London, Paris, New York, Moscow. Mumbai, Cairo. Others have had to work pretty hard to achieve a place in the travel agency itineraries -think of Perth, Cape Town, Phukhet, Barbados. Others became household names, because their names were shortened by travellers like LA and KL.
Sometimes, in hard economic times like we are facing today, vacations and for that matter commercial trips are all about money… and I don’t mean Dollar located in Clackmannanshire in Scotland or Pound in Virginia USA, we are talking real cash, which is disappearing fast, as the recession bites.
Therefore, the glossy brochures piling up on our shelves and the expensive DVDs extolling the merits of beaches, bargains and bars are not worth the space they occupy, if the price is not right.
For example take Dubai - the worldwide coverage of the Palms and the new Metro may have aroused the wannabe visitor’s interest.
But that will soon fade, if the prices are too high. It was therefore good news for the local tourism inbound operators to hear that regional hotels and airlines are starting major efforts to make the UAE more attractive by reducing rates to reflect the present economic conditions.
Outbound agencies will be scouring the world for countries, where the Gulf currencies get a good exchange rate like the UK, where agents in the know will be searching for bargains in Brighton and Blackpool, both destinations popular with the Gulf nationals.
It is times like today, where the experienced traveller and agent can -use those many years of globetrotting to good effect by, for example, recalling the fam trip which an airline provided to Australia, where you came across that three-star fantastic hotel and the delicious giant doughnuts, or the earlier days when you explored the world on a few dollars a day … do they still have tuk-tuk’s in Bangkok?
Do those underground stations in Stockholm still provide a cultural mystery tour costing virtually nothing? Wasn’t there once a fantastic stroll around Greenwich Village in New York? And the cheapest ever ocean voyage from Manhattan to Staten Island?
Of course, we are lucky in the Gulf region, where there is still an unquenchable spirit and a reasonable income level for the more pricey holidays, but in general they will be in the minority in a year, where travellers and agents will have to work extra hard to make the Dirham fly further.
SPEAKING OUT BY Jonna Simon
