Yes, the global financial crisis is affecting us all in some way, and often is not good news. When it comes to travel, people tend to do it less. Holidays are shorter, or destinations are closer to where we normally live. Hotels have less bookings, airlines less flyers.

But there is some good news: as a consequence of all this prices are going down, and if you’re willing to travel now you can get some great deals that you wouldn’t have dreamed of even just one year ago.

Airline prices are into a “pleasant descent“. Low cost carriers meanwhile continue their rapid growth. According to KPMG “Traditional airlines are already moving closer to the low-cost model, but they will need to do so even more rapidly. In the long run the current downturn will squeeze the gap between low-cost carriers and traditional ones.”

Hotelmarketing.com reports that global hotel prices are down by 12%. At the same time online hotel booking, ensuring better prices is becoming the main way to pick your hotel when travelling. Traveldailynews reports how according to Hotel.info “the economic crisis and associated corporate pressure to reduce costs has created a clear trend for increased use of low cost online hotel reservation tools”.

Hostels meanwhile are upscaling to fill the gap, offering more comfort at still decent prices with “boutique” and “flashpackers” hostels.  HostelWorld puts it like this: “Credit crunch sees hostels turn from bleak to chic”.

So it’s not all bad news if you have some time (or some saving) to travel in 2009. Flashpacking seems to be a great way to do it, putting together the need for comfort with the will of not wanting to blow your budget.

Travellers needs and profiles are changing, the market is trying to change accordingly. Whoever is not able to adapt will suffer. But for the consumer, the traveller, is not bad news at all.

As Carl Sparks, general manager of Hotels.com, said: “While hotels faced a challenging environment in the fourth quarter, they rolled out the welcome mat to travelers like we have never seen before to fill rooms. Properties are continuing to offer compelling rates and added value options, so it continues to be an excellent time for people to plan trips and secure great deals.”

It was long due. The increasing number of visitors, the latest online reviews and buzz on Twitter deserved a better looking and easier to navigate blog.

Moreover Blogger, which is where I was previously hosting The Tux, doesn’t really offer half of the functionality you can have hosting your blog on Wordpress.

So here it is, the new, refreshed, self hosted Tux in Backpack.

Migrating from Blogger to Wordpress was indeed painful and took many hours, but I hope it was all worth it, and readers will enjoy not only good content but also graphics that are nicer to look at.

I wouldn’t have made it without many great online resources; so here they are, in the hope that they can be useful to you as well if you’re thinking of doing something similar:

Web2Feel.com: Tons of very professional (and free) WP Themes

Laffer.net: How to redirect Blogger Beta to Wordpress.com

DevilsWorkshop.org: Moving From Blogger To Wordpress – Maintaining Permalinks, Traffic & SEO

DevilsWorkshop.org: Blogger To Wordpress Traffic & Permalinks Redirection Plugin

Codex.Wordpress.org/Answers: the answer to a tricky little issue that keep me busy for quite a while, the Headers already sent error message

So thank you for the support showed so far and I hope you’ll enjoy even more the “pimped” Tux in Backpack. And if you find something that is not working properly (which I wouldn’t totally exclude) please give us a shout.

Happy Flashpacking!

It was a year ago more or less. I had just arrived in New Zealand as part of my big trip around the world. I met some friends and ex-colleagues there. A few months before me they decided to leave the place where we were working in Dublin, Ireland, and go exploring the world. And here we meet again: an Italian (me), an Irish fellow, a Czech guy and a Finnish girl; in Auckland, on the other side of the world we were living.

I was explaining them how although I was traveling the world on my own and on a limited budget, I didn’t really feel like spending my nights in hostel dorms overcrowded with drunk 19 years old backpackers, and then next morning having to queue for a cold, uncomfortable, military style shower. So I often ended up booking some en-suite single room, but to remain within my budget I would search online for some good deals in “special” hostels.

“Of course.” replied my backpacker friends, “You’re a Flashpacker! Look at you, you even bring a laptop with you!”. And being a geek one of the first things i did was to search online for that term: Flashpacking. The search didn’t show many results, however revealed how there was (and still is) a lot of people out there with my same needs: backpacking in some comfort or why not, some luxury.

It’s interesting to look back at just one year ago, when if you searched online for Flashpacking you would have only the Wikipedia definition only a few more results. Nowadays every week there’s a bunch of articles or blog posts on the topic (the best of them of course captured in the Flashpacking Blog Carnivals here).

As time passes hostels are indeed responding to the latest Flashpacking needs; a good few of them now even define themselves as Flashpackers Hostels. The progress in technology has made laptops, digital cameras, GPS navigators and mp3 players extremely cheaper and easier to carry; the latest fashion of netbooks is a clear example.

So it’s good news all around. Flashpacking might have sounded like something not for the Backpacker on a limited budget just one year ago. Now everyone can easily afford to be a Flashpacker: a decent accommodation in some hostel is not expensive, and the same applies to a netbook to check the latest special deals online.

So what are you waiting for?

The distribution of information online is getting faster, shorter, more immediate. Introducing the Twitter and Tumblr counterparts of The Tux in the Backpack.

The Twitter phenomenon is getting extremely popular due to the immediateness of information shared…

Blog posts can take quite some time to be edited and refined; Twitter tweets are as simple and immediate as an sms message. Not familiar with Twitter? Check out how Twitter works in this video, Twitter in Plain English. Of course you can choose who you want to follow, meaning choosing who you’re going to receive tweets from.

If you’d like to receive Flashpacking tweets, mixed with general travel and geek news please consider following me.

Another interesting phenomenon, that could be described as halfway between blogging and twittering is the one known as Tumblelog. According to the Wikipedia definition: “A tumblelog is a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary”.

Sounds like a great way to me to share Flashpacking discoveries online and latest news in a faster way. So please welcome the Flashpacking Tumblr! (Content preview in the widget you see on the right sidebar). Check it out to read about the very latest from the Flashpacking world, and to be sure not to miss any update consider subscribing to the Flashpacking Tumblr RSS feeds.

Technorati tags:
flashpacking, flashpackers, Flashpacking tumblelog, Flashpacking twitter.

Living in a time of economical recession is not the best. People can lose savings, jobs, in worse case even homes. As a reaction people tend to save as much as possible, cut on spending, especially when it comes to luxury items. And as a consequence prices for many things that could be considered superfluous tend to go down. But hang on, isn’t travelling somehow considered a luxury or something to save on..? Could there be good news there for the a discerned traveller like a Flashpacker?

Ok, that’s probably too much luxury even for a Flashpacker, however…

While forecasts were pretty grim at the end of 2008, January brought a breeze of optimism, at least when it comes to travels. “Economic Downturn creates good deals” was shouting the Statesman at the very beginning of January, quoting how Genevieve Shaw Brown, senior editor of Travelocity, predicts that 2009 will be the year of travel deals.

ErevMax, which helps hotels distribute their inventory worldwide, is indeed facing the credit crunch head on to ensure hoteliers stand strong during a weakened economy. Forecasts are not good (hoteliers across the world could see rates drop on an average of 15% over the course of the next 12-months and occupancy in turn will decline), but technology (together with appropriate targeting and marketing I would add) could be able to help. And aren’t Flashpackers very tech savvy indeed? Once again a decent internet connection could be able to get you a very fair deal…

As a matter of fact it looks like the advent of Flashpacking in the last while happened also because of the credit crunch. We can assume the Hostelworld folks being subject matter experts know what they’re talking about in “Credit crunch sees hostels turn from bleak to chic” when they state that “The credit crunch is largely responsible for this realisation as consumers frantically search for ways to holiday without blowing the budget ”. And some little luxury while backpacking, without blowing the budget, definitely sounds like Flashpacking to me.

Looking closely the trend was starting already in 2008, when in Tel Aviv Youth Hostels were the first ones to Benefit from Recession, although that could have been an off-trend that changed lately. However already in November 08 we saw an article mentioning in the same title “crisis”, “Flashpackers” and “good deals”. It is indeed a very interesting piece of reading, with the Flashpacking phenomenon mentioned in every sort and shape. From the career breakers (“We are also seeing a growing number of career breakers who have had enough of the English weather and want to get way for the recession”) to hostels upgrading their standards (“They [hostels] have had to upgrade to survive because of the competition. The traditional definition of hostel as being like a school dormitory doesn’t apply anymore.”) to the sturdiness of the independent traveller (“independent travellers are too addicted and dedicated to travel to give up their plans entirely.”).

Perhaps the best news comes from the Youth Travel Matters’ report, produced this year by the United Nations World Travel Organization and the World Youth Student and Educational Travel Confederation: “50 per cent of youth accommodation providers had recently invested in increasing their capacity and improving facilities to cater to Flashpackers”. According to the same article “Youth hostels worldwide are upgrading their bunk-bed dormitories and developing innovative concepts to attract the ‘flashpacker’ market e.g. offering hostel and hotel rooms under one roof”.

So it looks like the economical downturn beside some pretty bad consequences can also provide good deals for Flashpackers and independent travellers in general. If you want to have pretty decent standards at a pretty decent price this appears to be the time. A fair dose of optimism and some spending can only help the global economy after all. And if Flashpackers love to combine luxury and good deals, for example using resources like Travelling in low season.. well 2009 could be a long and enjoyable low season!

Travellers, Flashpackers, Hostel/Hotel owners: What do you think? I’d like to hear your thoughts in the Comment Section Below..