American travelers are being charged up to 3 times more for vacations
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When my wife and I went to Egypt ~20 years ago and would be shopping for anything, we decided to test this exact thing out. We'd pick a trinket common to any vendor, like a souvenir pyramid, or a ceramic bowl. We'd pretend to not know each other, and my wife would ask the price in English, and I would ask for price in Russian. Russian price was typically 1/3 that of English. And that's the starting price, to be bargained down.
After the test, all of our souvenir shopping was conducted in Russian.
Oh, we got the best deal of the trip right there.
The wealth gap between traveling Westerners and the average local in countries like Mexico and Peru is staggering. I recently did a 5 week trip in South America with my (South American) partner and my attitude was to generally just accept whatever price we were quoted rather than bargain down. E.g. for a 2 hour taxi in Cusco you could bargain from $20 down to $15 if you tried, but as someone who earns 6 figures in the US it seemed morally reasonable to not bother (and less stressful too IMO).
The example I often quote was me, a blonde European, in Cuba, just walking down the street. Someone with a rikshaw stopping next to me and going like "City tour! 20$" or something without me making eye contact or anything, just out of the blue. I shake my head, "15$!" and when I turn away because the person apparently doesn't want to accept any no, it's "10$!" - so apparently the actual tourist price would have been 10 but the opened with 20, without me even showing interest. [ofc it wasn't $ but you get the gist of the numbers]
Because the way schools are set up - everyone in a geographic area has to travel on specific weeks. So airlines jack up prices incredibly. Like - from some price that a family might be able to swing to almost medical emergency prices.
I'll be sure to take advantage when the time comes. But if you want to know why on average US people are ignorant of the world vs other western countries - you have your answer.
That sounds like supply and demand 101.
The direct answer here is take your kids out of school whenever it’s cheapest and then have them hang out at home during the “official” vacation period.
This is what I'll be doing. I'm fortunate enough to homeschool for the time being, and that's my number one goal now, ensuring enough financial stability that we can continue to do so.
Of course, for you personally, it's probably the right decision, despite the problems it causes with childrens' socialization, because of the huge problems in American public schools these days, but for a society, it's terrible. In a high-trust society, people send their kids to public school (which is free) for a high-quality education, and don't worry about things like school shootings.
There's no way I'd ever raise a kid in the US.
That can be difficult to pull off, probably especially in public schools which probably have less flexibility to bend the rules.
But, yeah, it doesn't sound like some great conspiracy. And unless you live near the Canadian or Mexican border, of course it's generally going to be more expensive to travel to another country compared to living in France.
Ask around. It's not worth foregoing thousands of dollars potentially because you want to avoid a conflict that resides largely in your head.
Most States have an specific number of days that you must attend to advance to the next grade. You may have to factor in whether they count sick days, religious holidays, or other allowed days off (e.g. take your daughter to work day). As long as you're under that cap they won't do anything.
If you are under that cap, they probably won't do anything anyway.
And if missing a few days of school is the tipping point in whether your little Jimmy or Julie has a decent education, you've got much bigger problems.
I really, really hate comments like this. It gives an excuse for pure greed and you basically throw your arms up and say "well, it's supply and demand that's just how it works!"
There are only so many flights that can fit so many people, right? So.. instead of keeping the prices reasonable (i.e., basically the same price as other times +/- a few weeks out).. they jack up the prices because they know people want/need to fly then. So they sell out their flights at the price of their choosing- and only people who can afford (or are desperate to go over their budget) get to take flights.
'Supply and demand' isn't some mathematical law of nature that must be obeyed.. it is literally based on greed and charging as much as you can for something. If everyone had similar wealth amounts, then perhaps one can argue that's "fair enough" because it inconveniences people to a similar degree. But since we have such vast wealth inequality, "supply and demand" screws 90% of the population yet again.
Say you have 10x more demand than capacity for that one week. Do we pick at random? First to book? The techie who builds an automated platform to snipe the tickets?
I’d argue that insisting on the low demand price during periods of high demand is pure greed on the part of the consumer. It’s like demanding a ribeye for the price of dog food grade ground scraps.
The reason people in the US are less traveled is because you essentially have to cross an ocean to go anywhere. Some people like to go to Canada, but that is pretty similar to the US. Most of the people that I know that go to Mexico stay at resorts for safety concerns.
Edit: I would assume the median number of times an individual has crossed an ocean is still 0. Even for citizens of rich countries. I don't think this number is going to change with the current technology branch being developed by Boeing and Airbus. Maybe in a century Hyper loop, Electric Airplanes, Space Elevators, or trains on floating bridges will have advanced enough to change this to 1 or 2. Maybe a seemingly low-tech solution like Zeplins or Boats can be done fast enough, cheap enough and safe enough for broad appeal.
Australians manage to travel more than average despite being an island surrounded by ocean. The need to cross an ocean discourages travel much more in a culture which thinks "two weeks paid time off, don't even think of taking them both at the same time" is an adequate amount of vacation allowance and thinks extended mid/pre-career breaks for international travel are a weird anomaly rather than the norm.
There are far more communities and cultures to explore without the need for overseas travel.
As an American who has spent 6 years living abroad, I think foreigners vastly underestimate the size and diversity of the United States and North American how many meaningful travel experiences can be had despite the fact that there are relatively few national governments
* The US has 63 national parks. Some of these have cultural and historical significance. Many have biological or geographic significance. We also have over 6,000 state parks, many of which are significant. The variety and sheer amount of public land we have is truly a national treasure. It's really common for people travel for activities such as hiking, camping, hunting/fishing, skiing, mountain climbing, snorkeling, kayaking, etc etc.
* The US exports a lot of culture. It's very common to travel for culture. Concerts, festivals, broadway plays, museums, world class theme parks, mardi gras, fashion week, hollywood tours...
* The US has some of the top international travel destinations. Maimai, Las Vegas, Disney, NYC. D.C. attracts tourist and is very dense in monuments and museums.
* Due to the large amount of worldwide immigration, the US is pretty diverse.
Sure, but if you leave the tech bubble my experience is that those other Americans quote something like a single 14h trip by car in the last 10 years as their "remote vacation" experience so I'm not sure how much that really applies. Yeah, you can totally see different stuff with just this, but I have a feeling even trips to other parts of the country are rare for many people.. and even when they live in California they go to Las Vegas, Hawaii, or Mexico.
That said, I'd say at least 3/4 of the "normal tourist" Americans (again, not the tech people) I met here in Germany are from flyover country and not from where you'd expect from the population density map (both coasts), but it's all anecdata.
A large fraction of that is to New Zealand and Indonesia, where they aren't crossing an ocean. Sydney to Bali is a roughly six hour 4,600 km flight. That distance won't get you from Boston to Dublin, which is about the shortest international flight from the US to someplace outside of North America. Los Angeles to Tokyo is almost twice as far.
> a culture which thinks "two weeks paid time off, don't even think of taking them both at the same time" is an adequate amount of vacation
Cultures don't think, individuals do. And almost every individual in America doesn't think that two weeks of vacation is adequate. They think having a job and being able to put food on the table is better than not being able to do that. Most Americans are victims of shitty corporate policies. It's hard to push for better working conditions when billionaires have spent millions dismantling the labor movement over the past several decades.
I was up to 3-4 weeks of vacation at a job I had pretty much the whole 90s. During that time, I took a few month-long vacations to places like Nepal. I had coworkers who basically questioned out loud "How could you do that? I could never go away for that length of time." Depends on the company and role of course. (I was subsequently with a very small company and it would have been difficult especially for non-summer months.) Never had an issue and, in fact, they pulled out all the stops when it was time for me to leave to try to get me to stay. But a lot of people assume that norms are carved in stone and they often aren't, especially if you're valued.
Hopefully this isn't the same for a lot of the folks on here. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to take even a few days off only for it to be denied by a PM or EM or HR because "we're busy".
The average unskilled Australian teenager doesn't have more ability to put food on the table or negotiating power than the average US software developer, but will be much, much more likely to spend the next six months travelling round Europe (closer to San Francisco than Sydney) without even having to join the Peace Corp or learn a language to prove their worthiness, or to turn down or quit a job that doesn't give them enough holiday entitlement.
Corporate policies and legislative priorities are a product of culture too: it's not like Australian billionaires love their labour movements.
For example, I'm definitely not figuring my son's grade 2 timelines into my travel plans. He loves school and everything, but he can skip it for a week somewhere if that literally saves the family thousands.
That might be an acceptable tradeoff for you, but it's worth knowing about beforehand.
No, they're saying that there's nobody else for them to play with while on vacation.
Some people, particularly with younger kids, plan vacations that have some sort of child care component to them, which gives the kid opportunity to socialize with other kids their own age (and also gives the parent some free time to do things that they can't do while taking care of their kids). Some hotels offer this as part of the package, as do cruise ships, etc.
If I have two strikes after this comment, I'll just see myself out.
Currently, everyone with kids takes vacations at the same time. That means that all kids go on vacation at the same time, so whenever they're on vacation, there are likely to be lots of other kids there.
If everyone with kids took vacations at staggered times, fewer kids would be on vacation at any given time, meaning whenever they're on vacation, there are likely to be fewer kids there.
That is the tradeoff that OP is referring to.
More generally, if you have a small child, the probability of sleep deprivation is pretty high, so i should have taken that into account.
So, like every other trip ever that doesn't involve meeting people we know?
Thankfully, school systems do tend to stagger their spring breaks so at least there's some variation there.
Grades and school projects mean a lot to my kids and one of the most important things I'm trying to teach them right now is to have a sense of responsibility and respect for their own work and commitments.
Years later I was having dinner with a coworker and his teacher wife and explained it to her. "Yeah we'd go to like science exhibits and museums and all, it was really fun!" She was just aghast. Like 'y-you can't just t-take kids out of school?!'
Some people treat their job as if it's the most important thing in the world, to everyone.
Dentists still can't realize that flossing isn't everyone's #1 priority every single day :P
Also, schooling for younger children isn't exclusively about the obtaining of actionable knowledge. For some children, it can be disruptive to yank them out of school.
Other families might have a problem that this teaches their children the lesson of "rules for thee, but not for me" --- that it can be okay to ignore rules just because you don't want to follow them. That isn't something that everyone is okay with.
Can you elaborate, so I can strike them off my to-move list forever?
>Also, schooling for younger children isn't exclusively about the obtaining of actionable knowledge. For some children, it can be disruptive to yank them out of school.
Yes. Your child-mileage may vary. My kid doesn't care, one week out of school does not impact him negatively, whereas travel impacts him positively.
>this teaches their children the lesson of "rules for thee, but not for me" --- that it can be okay to ignore rules just because you don't want to follow them.
They can then take great care to ensure the kids understand that this is not, in fact, the lesson. My kid doesn't attend school because "that's the rule, gotta go to school", he enjoys it for the social and the learning aspect, so his showing up to class does not rest upon compulsion either by the parents or the school. If this ever changes, I'll deal with that then. Also, it is of course completely okay to ignore rules you do not think of as important if there are no consequences to breaking them. My responsibility as a parent is to carefully curate the consequences bit to ensure I only enforce non-stupid rules. I want my kids to learn that too.
Just another casualty of Goodhart's law, it would seem.
> The research was undertaken by cybersecurity company NordVPN which manipulated the location of their computers on their browsers using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
For as dumb as geo-restricted content is, there's a certain irony to the fact that the new form of TV is sponsored by talking heads telling you how to get around content restrictions of other forms of TV, and shilling for that is part of what it means to make it big.
1. Most Americans aren't good with money.
2. If you know someone will start bidding much too high, low-ball them first.
3. The tourist is a universally hated abomination that deserves to be lightened of its burden.
But there were definitely parts of the country where, based on how you looked, the starting price would be x and if you looked different it would be y. If i felt i was being taken for a ride, i would just walk. I even had a street vendor see i went to the next person selling the same thing but was less on the take and bought from them. This guy started following me and basically harrassing me. I had to actually raise my voice to get him to walk away.
That said, as a result my favorite parts of the trip were in my buddies hometowns where tourists werent common and thus, I was treated as a local, or at least a curiosity (I definately got looks at some restaurants as they were shocked i would eat the same things everyone else did without hesitation). In a few cases some asked to take picture but it was always warm welcome.
In certain parts I felt preyed upon and if you made eye contact it was like you were "hooked". I am much more likely to walk away from those encounters. That said, i dont like tourist traps in general, even in my hometown stateside.
We even tested this theory in some places where my buddy would go first and place his order. Then I would get the exact same thing and when we sat compare the cost. It was interesting to say the least.
Also what we noticed was that in his hometown, this never occurred. We paid the same anytime we tried this, even in the markets. It was to a point that by the end of the trip i was going out on my own and just getting what I wanted and most cases if my basic understanding of Vietnamese wasnt sufficient i was even comfortable fanning out some bills and having them pull what they needed.
If you go to a shop without marked prices in some country, you can either compare to an equivalent item at home, or to something from a different country that's not up to the prices at home, and still easily be off by 1 or 2 orders of magnitude. And that's even without the "I don't even want to haggle for that amount".
But let's say that mug would cost you 5$ in the gift shop in the neighboring city what is it worth to you in the vacation place? Either you don't care, hand them 5$ and think: maybe that will 4$ I overpaid will help you more than my next coffee at home, or you think: I've seen this exact mug at the seemingly more honest shop next door for 1$ - so you'll think that is a fair price? And then you might notice that they would sell it for 20ct to a local, apparently still making some sort of profit. In which scenario does the "ridiculously high" price start? Bonus points if you had already purchased a mug for 10$ in the same country, but in the capital city.
My personal opinion for that would be that I'd prefer to give 1$ over haggling down to the local 20ct, which can still be a ridiculous 500% - but it simply won't hurt me. Of course I can stomach the 5$, but it already seems like a bit of a ripoff.
He said prices just naturally change 'second by second' and any changes customers see when booking as normal before changing to incognito is merely a coincidence."
I never trust anyone whose primary persuasive argument boils down to "trust me".
While I do agree there is predatory pricing that takes advantage of IP geographic information, and that USA pays more on average because of USD - the whole article is a marketing mouthpiece for nordvpn.