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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