On the one hand, I think you're right to an extent - when I travel, I've almost always booked all my accommodation, car hire and so on in advance, all mediated through the Internet, and making my plans relatively inflexible. The internet definitely advantages the "well curated" stuff.

On the other hand, technology has also enabled more flexibility in travel. When my grandmother went on her once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe 30 years ago, she spent all day on bus tours, going wherever the tour company had chosen to take her. When my father and I went to China, South Korea and Japan two years ago, the only bus tours we went on were to visit the Great Wall and the DMZ. Our accommodation? Bar one location, all booked through sites like Hostelworld. Our air tickets? Booked directly by us, over the internet. We got to choose where and when we did things. Sure, backpackers and so on have been travelling with independence before we had the internet to help us, but technology has brought this independence to a far wider audience with a lower appetite for uncertainty and risk.

> When my grandmother went on her once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe 30 years ago

I think it's really sad to do a "one in a lifetime trip to Europe". Every single country has way too much to offer to do just "one trip for everything". Hell, you can spend a month a year touring France like my parents and never run out of interesting things to see after 25 years.

I agree with you, but in defence of my grandmother...

A) Things were a bit different 30 years ago. Flying from Australia to Europe is expensive now, it was even worse then.

B) Things are particularly different when, like my grandmother, you're a working class person, living in a working class inner city suburb, in government housing.

Given those circumstances, I think planning a "once in a lifetime" trip is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Yeah, of course, but you could do the same without ever leaving the US, or in any of the world's continents.

On the contrary, I find that with pervasive mobile maps and GPS, I can feel free to wander around and get completely lost and never have to worry about not being able to find my way back to my hotel.

Before mobile maps one would buy a street map for something like EUR 5,-. I still do, because I learn the big picture of a city much faster than with an app.

EDIT: <stallman>And the paper map doesn't track you.<\stallman>

Paper maps are fine in Western cities, but now you're on a street called สุขุมวิทซอย

I find I often learn the big picture better by studying the satellite picture+map views and the topographical views

For the big picture, sure. But when you're out and about, you need the small picture, the zoomed in picture, the "you are here" picture.

Paper maps are a pain and messy. Constantly folding and unfolding causes annoying creases. It takes longer to work out where you are and what route to take. Am I really arguing about why a map app is superior to a paper map?

I find that using a map app en route, as opposed to actively looking it up beforehand, often I almost immediately forget the route (and sometimes even the rough location of the destination itself).

I've noticed this in particular since occasionally using a map app to navigate around my own city, new friends or people that have moved, if I just follow the map app navigation on my bicycle, good chance I'll have to look it up again next time I go there. Before that, I looked it up at home, memorized the route, and went out (if I forget or get lost, no worries, there's backlit city maps every couple of streets on the back of certain advertisements) and next time I don't need to look up anything.

And it's not just because I memorized it once, a big part is also that I'm actively doing the navigating myself, looking around, orienting, I'm navigating the city instead of following the blue line on the screen, which is really navigating the map.

Very similar to how I, back in the old days, I had more than ten phone numbers memorized in my head (maybe even more, I don't quite remember), without really trying, just because I had to look them up in my physical (paper) address book and physically type in the (10-digit) numbers. After a while you just start to memorize the common ones.

Not saying that map apps aren't useful obviously. But I wouldn't dismiss a good road atlas that quickly.

Paper maps don't need to be recharged.

They only need replacing when out of date.

I wouldn't say all, but you do have a point. I like to wander and get lost and eat at places that look interesting. I have friends who literally spend 20 minutes reading TripAdvisor reviews before walking into any restaurant on vacation. It annoys me, but I have to admit I rarely have a completely bad meal with them on vacation.

Funny story time. My first trip to Europe, GPSs were somewhat of a new thing. I rented a car to drive from Paris to Nice with a stop in Epinal to see a US cemetery where my great grandfather was buried. The car was supposed to have a GPS, but did not. Luckily I had printed out directions/maps - or so I thought.

Once we got out of Paris and on the highway things were good, but then we had to get onto side roads in the French countryside. The directions actually had things like 'after your 21st roundabout take the 3rd exit'. Of course we got lost. I noticed a store that looked like a French version of Walmart and pulled over to hopefully buy a GPS.

Since we were a long ways from any big city, no one spoke very good english and my french was terrible. After pointing and making gestures for almost an hour I finally was able to buy a GPS and go on our way. We did make it to the cemetery right before they closed, and made it to Nice much later in the night.

It makes for an entertaining story now, but if we had not stopped and bought that GPS we would not have found the cemetery that ended up being the highlight of the trip.

A road atlas would have been much cheaper and you would have been able to buy one at any gas station without wasting an hour.

We did have some maps, and while a more detailed road atlas would have been cheaper I'm not sure it would have saved much time. Route planning and understanding local road signage can take time, particularly in the dark.

Whenever I get to a new city, the first thing I do is randomly wander around without a map for hours, and just go where ever I'm drawn to.

I've discovered so many interesting things, places and even people this way.

The biggest problem is finding friends who go along with this. I often had to ditch them and do my own thing on the first day.

I disagree that this has anything to do with information overload or "our generation". It has been true ever since traveling became affordable for the middle class. They were called "tour guides" (both human and in paper form) and many, many people booked a trip and followed them obediently. And those who looked into relaxing often went to the same few tourist resorts filled to the brim, since it was almost impossible to find out whether other places even had lodgings.

I get the same amount of serendipity now with a smartphone as I did pre-Internet. Before, I'd wander around the area randomly and then grab some tourist brochures if I didn't find anything interesting.

Now, I do the same but with GPS to help me fin my way back at the end of the day, and Google instead of brochures.

In both cases, I only use outside help when I want it. The new way is less stressful because it's easier to navigate when you're tired. But it doesn't reduce your ability to just decide to "wander over there and see what we find."

> Almost all vacations, tours, travels, etc are mapped out and pre-scheduled (even prepaid if possible) before we start on a vacation.

That doesn't match my experience at all and I suspect you're incorrect generally (though maybe it's your experience). Technology is a safety net which allows us to be more uncomfortable with lack of planning.

Take accommodation, for example. My parents would never travel somewhere without first having clear plans and a pre-booked hotel reservation. Meanwhile, I regularly travel to places without having any accommodation booked at all. There's even a large and successful app based on this sort of spontaneity: HotelTonight.

Technology makes it much more possible to go on a random detour to a totally random place and feel comfortable that you'll end up fine. Ubiquitous internet has changed travel completely.

> Take accommodation, for example. My parents would never travel somewhere without first having clear plans and a pre-booked hotel reservation.

This is more down to personality than technology. I know plenty of people who traveled spontaneously 40+ years ago. Heck, some of my ancestors left their home countries and migrated thousands of miles with few possessions and no idea what they’d do at the other end.

Speak for yourself.

There are plenty of people who will grab a backpack, stuff it with clothes, and take a last minute flight to an unfamiliar city just to hang out and see what it's like.

It's not correct to blame a lack of adventurous spirit on an entire culture, or to pass it off as generational.

If you want to get out and see what the world is really like, just go do it. Don't waste time rationalizing why you can't get anything out of it because "we're only exposed to a well curated section of various cultures instead of experiencing them unadulterated."

One problem is that many sights are now so crowded that you simply cannot visit them unless you book a time slot in advance. For example the Nasrid Palaces in the Alhambra, or the recent temporary Jeroen Bosch exhibition.

Well, there is plenty of room for exploration even with "information overload", which is more limited than it seems. It just advances to the next level. Real life examples:

- Half the record and book stores in your web search results do not exist any more, but go on with your carefully plotted shopping expedition: you are going to see many interesting other places.

- The most recommended restaurants? According to Tripadvisor, inconveniently located and sold out unless you are able to make a reservation unreasonably early. Drifting through restaurant-rich neighbourhoods looking for a good one with empty seats is more instructive, more fun and more efficient.

- Selecting a good hotel location using good databases means gaining an enormous amount of time. For example a peripheral, affordable hotel in Amsterdam with superb bus service to the train station at all hours (validated on incredibly irritating interactive maps and timetables) or a decent hotel in the centre of Madrid close to many monuments of interest, close to two underground stations covering most important lines and (as seen on Google Street View) in a nice neighbourhood.

- The hotel you found, booked and paid is actually out of business and it was listed by mistake. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find another one in a completely unfamiliar country village at ten o'clock in the night. (I succeeded with help from natives.)

> Only populist establishments enjoy decent patronage, this affects us culturally as well. We're only exposed to a well curated section of various cultures instead of experiencing them unadulterated.

I think that anyway, as a tourist, you never get to actually experience the local culture. Without living here you are never going to go below the surface layer anyway.

The shortcut is to make friends with locals. They will share the tips and tricks of the local population, plus they will point out many cultural norms and nuances that one would otherwise miss.

After you share enough experiences with locals, you cease to be a tourist.

I like to go for runs during my vacations / business travels with the added bonus of seeing parts of the city that I would normally not see or have time to visit I get lost a lot of course (even with GPS route planned out) but this only adds to the opportunity for random discoveries)

I went to Bologna earlier this month and the only thing I had planned was a cooking course for one afternoon.

I loved wandering around and getting lost, stumbling upon museums, places to eat and other interesting places. My mobile provider lets me use my data in other countries, so I was happy knowing that if I felt I was too lost, I could just open Google maps and find my way somewhere.

Sites like tripadvisor add convenience and their rating system, which allows people to filter out the ones that may be a mistake going to. (Although these systems have biases)

Yes, agree TripAdvisor and yelp type things help to avoid bad experiences, but I find them useless for finding good ones.

I usally go geocaching on vacations. This gets you to places that aren't on the typical tourist paths. Just walking from place to place without much planing beside "where's the next geocache". Only using the map so I don't get lost.

Would "speak for yourself" be too rude a reply?

Do you disagree with the main thesis of the post you replied to?

If your point is that it is still possible to be serendipitous despite broad societal trends, some words explaining ways you've found to do so, or perhaps how it was received by others, would be far more useful than a low-signal, defensive comment such as "speak for yourself".

I do agree that writing useful comments is time consuming. I sometimes wonder whether there is a worthwhile result. However, I think higher quality comments are more appreciated on HN compared to many other discussion boards.

What they're saying is that this is probably not a societal trend, as you put it. In my anecdotal experience people are doing less and less pre-programmed tours and a lot more of exploration and going off-trail because of all the information we have at our disposal.

It's like the people complaining about all the fancy Lego sets today are removing creativity from Lego, no? One kid might build the set and leave it together forever. But my kid builds the set, leaves it together a few weeks, then uses all the cool new pieces to fuel his crazy creativity.

Likewise, this summer I made a spontaneous trip to Milwaukee for their Irish festival on less than two hours' notice that a band I love was going to be there. Maybe it's just me, but I would never have made a six hour trip to a city I've never been to with no advance planning without the assurance that my smartphone was there to help me navigate my way around.