We’re opening day 2 on a wonderfully romantic note.  No technology, no gadgets, no stats … just love … a story that exudes the love of travel.

 

Goh Mia Chun and his wife Sam went on a inspirational 2.5 year journey through 40 countries that became their very own Motorcycle Diaries.  As Mia Chun steps on stage, I realize that I had been chatting with him earlier at the coffee stand outside. His smile and radiating joy impressed me during our short conversation. And as he starts telling us about his adventure, I realize that what he was radiating was a romance for life that had been awakened within.

 

When they started their long trip, their initial goal was to show-off to their friends and to prove them once and for all that they can do it!  To make their friends jealous.  But as their back-packing journey continued, they quickly realized that their priorities changed.  Their focus soon shifted to immersing themselves into the world of the people that they met on their way, of the beauty of the places that they were traversing on their motorcycle.  

 

Mia Chun reminisced of all the difficult moments on their trip, such as when their motorcycle broke down in the middle of Pakistan, when people suddenly showed them tremendous hospitality without expecting anything in return.  The humane and charitable side of mankind is what they re-discovered.  And to him and Sam, this journey was better than any university education they could have ever received.  They learned about new people, new cultures and importantly, they also learnt a lot about themselves.

 

Jokingly he said that he actually learnt more about his wife than himself on the trip.  They were together 24/7 for the whole journey:  they argued, they hugged, they loved and they got through everything together.  When they got back to Singapore they both realized that they now hate not being together.  They realized how precious life is.  And that the best way to maintain this feeling is to treat life as if they’re still on the road.

 

And what about that laundry, how did they wash those dusty clothes whilst on the road?  Do you know what he said?  That he brought a washing machine along with him on the trip, but that she’s unfortunately not here with him today 🙂  I hope Sam didn’t have to deal with changing the oil filter!

 

Before it was time to call the panel on stage to get their input, we had to find out one last thing.  How did Mia Chun convince his mother-in-law to allow him to take her daughter on such a long and adventurous trip?  He quickly quipped, that this was something that money unfortunately could not solve.  He would have to find another tactic of dealing with his mother-in-law.  So he showed her pictures of some of the destinations they were going to.  Told her about other motorcycles journeys that he read about.  She was quite impressed.  So much that she soon proposed that she could come along with them.

 

Can you imagine?  Would that have killed the romance of travel?

 

As the panel walked on stage, consisting of Ian Wilson, Regional Vice President-Asia & General Manager of The Fairmont Singapore, Brad Gurrie, General Manager, Australia and Southeast Asia of Travelzoo, Kulikar Sotho, Executive Director of Hanuman Travel, Cambodia and Jens Uwe Parkitny, APAC Managing Director of Expedia Affiliate Network, I was curious to see how they were going to add to this notion of romance and travel.

 

After all, how do we keep the romance of travel alive during an age of augmented reality and GPS? How will we maintain the sense of getting lost in a foreign place? Is it possible?  Or has everything boiled down to price and OTAs?

 

Mia Chun admitted that when he was on the road, he did rely on the internet for information on border crossings, where to stay and to compare prices.  Without an internet connection it would have been more difficult to get access to this info, although not impossible.  After all, people have been traveling for millennia, way before the advent of broadband, and still survived!

 

Travel is a shared experience which you cannot experience virtually.  It gives you a sense place in terms of the people you’re with, the history you’re immersing yourself into, or the sheer natural beauty around you.  All this inspires romance of travel.  And non of this can be re-produced virtually.  You can study it online, but eventually you have to do it yourself, offline.

 

The travel experience is also about creating memories with your family and kids, something that you can reminisce  about 20 years later.  Or about meeting new people.  And perhaps you may also meet the love of your life.  It’s not unheard of.  And don’t forget that with travel, you are also getting in touch with yourself by getting lost, getting distracted and letting yourself be intrigued by the idea of discovering something beyond the horizon.

 

We also have to differentiate that there is a difference between business and leisure travel, and that no matter how hard you try, it’s likely that you will fail to inject romance into any type of biz travel.  And that is because people value their leisure time much more than their business time.

 

So how do we make romantic the whole process of online bookings these days?  The system has to let the customer find something that they weren’t necessarily planning on, so that when they book it and subsequently experience it, it will be a life changing experience.

 

Technology can facilitate in bringing back the romance of travel.  So that you will also be able to say what Mia Chun mentioned earlier, that ‘travel saved my life’.