A new kind of travel

Innovation is everywhere, and why should the tourism industry be spared the ravages of innovation?

A new kind of tourism is said to be blossoming, especially in New York City, and it's called "immersion" or "experiential travel."

Does this mean that traditional tourism was non-experiential? Not quite; perhaps it was a bit fake in the sense that tourists would prefer to tour a place in the conventional way of putting up in a hotel and doing the recommended sight seeing. The experience could've been a faux experience in the way in which David Brooks describes a typical African Safari to be faux.

Writing about the time when he took his son to an African safari, Brooks reflects on how the American teen chose to live in a ramshackle camp under the guidance of a wise tribal chief, instead of living in a Holiday Inn or a Hyatt Regency hotel. Brooks had argued that experientially speaking there is nothing "really African" about living in a comfortable hotel; to experience a new place is to be prepared to be unhinged from comfort. Comfort and convenience can be bought with money, but experience is priceless and extreme inconvenience is part of it.

In a nutshell Brooks junior was able to experience a real African Safari, not one mediated by an English-speaking guide.

Experiential travel is somewhat along similar lines:

[It] implicitly shuns sightseeing as bourgeoisie pillage [...] and is meant to sink you deep into whatever world you are visiting, pushing a vacation toward anthropology. [...] The experiential traveler does not arrive at Kennedy Airport and immediately go shopping on upper Madison Avenue. She takes a drawing class; she rides the Lexington Avenue line at rush hour, she embeds, and presumably returns to Brussells or Seattle with an impressively nuanced understanding of the differences in commercial enterprise between Fifth Avenue and Broadway in the 20s.  

And the new habitation of choice for experiential travelers is the typical New Yorker's home.

Now I was thinking of inviting Scandinavians to truly experience an immersion in the outer boroughs of the city, not just Manhattan. I am thinking of the Bronx. As I speak, I visualize a Swedish immersion in the Bronx.