It isn't now and has never been exclusively for the wealthy, of course having money will give you a lot more options to travel and it will make it easier. But if it was exclusively for the wealthy how would you explain gypsies traveling in my country (Mexico) and all around Latin America, how would you explain other groups like the anticapitalist hippies going from city to city, or just random young folks from all around the world who look for small jobs in every country. I'm giving you extreme examples, but I can give you my example too, I come from a developing country and I'm not wealthy at all, I have backpacked Europe with little money, CouchSurfing, getting cheap hostels and sometimes great airbnb deals, taking buses or trains at night (so I can travel and have a place to sleep at the same time), getting cheap tickets from kayak.com and other pages, etc, of course money helps a lot, but now that I think about it, not having a lot of money was part of the awesome experience.