Is This the Golden Age of Travel?

Writing about travel can mean focusing on the crappy stuff: baggage fees, airline security, bedbugs, and so on. That's why sometimes I find it useful to take the long view, because in many ways, we're in a golden age of travel. So, just in time for Thanksgiving, here are things I'm personally grateful for.

But first: What are you grateful for, travel-wise? Join the discussion I started on TravelPost.

• You can fly almost anywhere rather easily, which wasn't the case 50 years ago. Moreover, airfares have not kept pace with inflation.

• The weather has to get pretty bad in order for flights to be disrupted.

• The Internet has made finding hotels infinitely easier. It used to be that all you had to work with was a guidebook, and maybe a travel agent and a brochure. Now you can often choose the exact room you'll be staying in. And thanks to sites like TravelPost, real travelers' experiences at those hotels are just a click away.

• There are also far more inexpensive accommodations than there ever were before: inns, motels, and B&Bs, vacation rentals, even Couchsurfing.


• It's a lot simpler to pass as a local, or at least to not look like a tourist, now that guidebooks and paper maps are disappearing. What's more, the "Lonely Planet effect"—travelers all going to the same places because they read about them in a guidebook—is disintegrating as travelers find a million new sources of information on restaurants, shops, hotels, activities, and attractions.

• So many people from other countries speak enough English for you to get by (which is no reason not to learn as much of the language as you can, of course).

• Keeping in touch with folks back home is a breeze, whether it's by email, Skype, Twitter, or Facebook.

And that's not even getting into seatback TVs, personal entertainment (iPads, etc.), cell-phone parking lots, Google Maps, airport kiosks, digital cameras, ATMs.... I'm well aware that several of the things I'm grateful for have downsides, but let's save those for another day. In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday.

P.S. Great photo, right? It's by photographer Katie Madeline, and it's Gadling's photo of the day.