Those who like to live their lives by hashtag — or even those, mercifully still in the majority, who look on with a certain bemusement at those who do — will have heard of #fomo, fear of missing out, the anxiety caused by living in today’s voyeuristic age.
That cultural phenomenon very quickly transferred post-pandemic to travel. In the hedonistic rush to reclaim our freedom to roam we wanted to go everywhere and do everything.
Thus high-octane trips packed full of activities and experiences became highly sought after. If you weren’t seeing and doing everything in your destination of choice — all the sights, niche tours with locals, the hot new places to eat and drink — was it even worth going at all?
But at last there is an antidote, and the trend-ulum has swung to the other extreme. Now a new lifestyle mindset — #jomo — has arrived, and it’s a godsend for those who go on holiday for, you know, an actual break.
All my travel life I’ve inadvertently been tapping into this, or the joy of leaving things out, at least — #jolo, if you will. My favourite thing to do with an itinerary is read it, imagine myself there then strike a red pen through half of it. Because, honestly, spending more of my trip getting into a boat/train/coach/car (delete as appropriate) for a hurried photograph of something that someone else thinks I should see is not my idea of a break. The net result is a harassed, tetchy and tired family, a phone full of photographs that we can’t tell anyone anything about and a niggling feeling we only really scratched the surface of where we’ve been.
Even so, it took a while to develop this approach. Steering my city-fatigued husband and jet-lagged children straight off a flight and into a ten-hour tour of old Delhi wasn’t my (or their) finest hour. Allowing myself to be persuaded into an (eight-hour) overnight round trip to visit a penguin sanctuary in the Western Cape province of South Africa wasn’t either.
On the other hand, we’ve never looked back from removing a midday tour of Scala dei Turchi and lunch from a six-night, three-hotel road trip of Sicily in favour of downtime at the hotel pool (it’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, but what can I say, they were lovely hotels). I’ve happily visited Rome without touring the Vatican and managed to get under the skin of San Diego with only a short stroll through Balboa Park on my way back to the shady solace of the hotel terrace.
Luckily, the travel industry has been quick to catch on to #jomo, with itinerary-light trips designed to help you to dive into a destination rather than skim across the top of it. Short of booking a holiday to a far-flung destination where the sole objective is to do nothing (before you scoff, the experiential company Black Tomato is offering trips to the Atacama desert in Chile and the Greek islands in which the sole objective is to contemplate the landscape and your place in it), there are ways to use travel to feel jomo and jolo.
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The luxury tour operator Abercrombie & Kent is pivoting away from overpacked itineraries towards a slower, more mindful style of travel. “Our guests are increasingly seeking space — not just physically, but mentally — within their journeys,” says Peter Chipchase, its chief marketing officer. “It’s no longer about doing more, but doing less with greater intention — whether it’s a few unscheduled hours in the day or an extra night in one place.”
My relaxation equation features no fewer than two nights in one place, three if possible, and some daylight hours for spontaneous exploration and spontaneous snoozing — also reflected in new booking trends.
“More than ever, our guests are seeking a balance between pre-planned experiences and unstructured time, allowing space for moments of spontaneity, reflection and connection in their holiday,” says Simon Lynch, global product director at Scott Dunn.
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Of course, it’s not always easy to judge how long it will take to do something, and tour operators are often overly optimistic not only about this but the amount of energy required too. Be clear with your booking agent on what you want and ask them to be transparent about transfer times and traffic volumes and tailor a tour to the number of days you have available, rather than cramming in too much. (If you’re worried, enter each leg of your trip into Google Maps every day for a week at the time you’ll be travelling to get an average journey time — you may find that the two-hour drive from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, for example, is more like four hours unless you’re on the road by 11am on the second Tuesday of the month.) And don’t forget to factor in ample time for getting from one activity to another — even dashing back to the hotel room for sun cream can eat into an itinerary.
“Striking the right balance can be challenging,” says Gemma Antrobus, managing director of Haslemere Travel and chair of AITO Specialist Travel Agents. “When you look at an itinerary on paper, clients sometimes misjudge elements like transfer times, traffic and terrain to get from A to B,” she adds. “It can seem there is more free time when in fact this is used for the touring elements of the trip.”
My advice is to spend some time thinking about the reason you’re visiting a place — and the one thing that would really give you #fomo. Do the same for everyone you’re travelling with (note, culture-averse teenagers don’t count). Insta-inspired visits to the other side of the city? Leave them out, unless it’s the one thing that will keep your children happy for the rest of the year. Ask yourself whether you’ll get home and regret not having seen/done it — if it’s an itch you need to scratch, sacrifice something else.
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Be unapologetically unambitious about how much you can fit into each day. One activity in the morning and one in the afternoon is more than enough — we often do less. Give yourself rest days in between. And make sure you can cancel if you decide later that you don’t want to do something.
After all, what’s the worst that could happen — you get home and realise you really did want to see that church with the amazing view? It’s simply a reason for a return trip. “The real luxury now lies in having the freedom to pause, to linger and to really connect with a destination,” says Chipchase. “It’s jomo at its most refined.”
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