This article describes a changing trend in travel habits. Read the whole text and list reasons why travel habits are changing. Do you think there are any drawbacks to only taking short trips? Do the bene�ts outweigh the drawbacks?

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Skimming

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Leisure in the fast lane

Glen Nisbett, a London-based management accountant, is

dif�cult to reach on weekends. He might be off “experiencing

a real winter,” he says, as he did in Bergen last January, or

‘catching up with an old friend” in Venice. Or he could be

“having a riot” in New York or “just seeing the sun again,”

which he did on the last-minute break to Alicante in April.

“There are so many places I want to see, but I’m restricted in

terms of how much time I can take off work,” he explains. “So

I pack as much as possible into two or three days at a time.”

Like Nisbett, more and more Europeans are �nding that the

once-traditional four-week summer vacation is no longer an

option. According to the European Travel Monitor, short trips

of between one and three days accounted for 27% of all

breaks taken in 1999. Six out of 10 trips now last a week or

less. And short holidays are more ambitious than ever before.

Numerous factors are fueling the boom in minibreaks.

Demandings jobs and erratic hours mean that longer

holidays, which often need to be planned well in advance,

may be dif�cult to arrange. Shorter, more frequent vacations -

often extended weekends or business trips - �t into busy

schedules better. Besides, money is plentiful, and so are

good deals. Low-cost, no-frills airlines have opened up a

growing list of destinations.

City trips take the biggest slice of the short-break cake. Paris,

London and Rome remain the favoured stops but among

seasoned nomads “there’s a feeling of ‘been there, done

that’,” says Christine Ball, spokeswoman for a leading UK

tour operator. Hence the growing popularity of what were

once “second-string” cities: Lyon and Carcassonne in France,

Milan and Bologna in Italy, and Bilbao and Seville in Spain.

Eastern Europe is also catching on: Estonia’s Tallinn, Latvia’s

Riga and Poland’s Krakow are all billing themselves as “the

new Prague.” And Reykjavik, with all its all-night street parties

in summer and huge club scene year-round, is bene�ting

from the boom in young, hip tourists.

Travelers are not just taking more city breaks, they expect to

be entertained while they’re there. Says Robin Zimmermann,

PR Manager at TUI Germany, the country’s largest tour group:

“People want more out of a city than just sightseeing.” Like

fabulous food or their favourite music. One of TUI’s most

popular trips: a gastronomy weekend in Lyon, which

culminates in a evening meal at the restaurant of the original

celebrity chef, Paul Bocuse. Opera buffs are �ocking to

Verona now that dozens of tour operators are offering tickets

to Aida and La Traviata in its world-famous arena as part of

the tour.

Increasingly, European holidaymakers are going farther a�eld

for quick kicks. Lyn Hughes, editor of a magazine for

independent travelers, says that a survey revealed that the

city most readers wanted covered as a weekend break was

Rio de Janeiro. “We’re sending a writer down there this

summer to see whether it can be done,” she says dubiously.

But Lucy Nicholson, product manager for upmarket tour

operator Cox & Kings, which recently introduced four-night

trips to both Rio and Cape Town, says it’s “such a fabulous

place that you won’t even notice the jet lag.” Her prediction

for the next hot destination? Buenos Aires, a further three

hours away. Fritidsresor Group, Scandinavia’s largest tour

operator, is market-testing long weekends in Toronto and

Beijing. “It’s only a nine hour �ight,” says communications

director Lottie Knutson, of Beijing. “If it’s somewhere you’ve

always wanted to go, you’ll do it. It’s a new way of thinking.”

Reproduced from “Time Europe” magazine

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Skimming

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3. Do the bene�ts outweigh the drawbacks?

1. For what reasons are travel habits changing?

2. Are there any drawbacks to only taking short trips?

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