Open a newspaper. Read about the lay-offs or the shaky economy. Die a little. Recover and repeat.
But there is a silver lining to this whole economic situation. When planning my spring break this year, I found extremely cheap tickets and reasonable hotels. For curiosity’s sake, I poked around a little on the web and discovered that this is somewhat of a trend right now. Las Vegas is a steal, with stays in five-star hotels available for less than $100 a night. Cruise lines are cutting prices by hundreds of dollars. For students who are looking to travel, spending some time online is going to prove extremely fruitful under the present conditions.
“It took a couple of airline bankruptcies, a summer of staycations, a serious recession and the near-collapse of the world economy, but by golly, travelers are feeling loved right now,” wrote Christopher Elliot in the travel section of CNN.
It’s never a bad decision to travel if you’re a student who does not have a family or a home to be locked down to. We need the extra exposure, the different languages and the sometimes-suspect food of different shores to make us efficient in what is quickly becoming a global village. And it is even better when these international hops and skips come with a price tag that doesn’t make you faint.
Companies are wooing any customer they can get in this climate, and that means slashed prices. On top of the discounts, we have government-mandated breaks, we avoid Friday classes with an almost religious fervor, we have months of summer, and we have a ready group of peers with similar schedules as ours. There are very few excuses not to travel with fellow Bruins.
“I’ve never really traveled with friends from UCLA. It’s on the list of things to do. But money is the only thing in the way. That, and time,” said Faisal Attrache, a third-year international development studies student. He showed surprise when I spoke to him of the current deals and said he would look into it.
Patrick Malloy, a third-year English student, said, “I go on road trips where you just have to pay for gas. If I found a good deal, I would definitely take advantage of it right now.”
If you want to travel, now really is the time. In addition to the low tour prices, it is worthwhile to consider that while other economies are sinking, the dollar is starting to raise its sleepy head and emerge a little more powerful than before. For example, the exchange rate with the euro is much better now than it was last September. When I studied abroad in Denmark, I usually got a bit more than four kroner for one American dollar. Today the figure is almost six kroner.
Two kroner may not seem like a lot, but a good exchange rate is important when you think of how much things like food, drinks and lodging can add up to.
“Thanks to the recent Wall Street meltdown, a lot of hotels with high service standards are having fire sales,” wrote Elliot, mentioning that these hotels are offering rooms at 40 to 50 percent of their original prices.
There is the knee-jerk reflex to stay at home and hoard whatever treasure you may have amassed, but it would be sad to let such an opportunity go by without doing anything about it.
It could be that your first impulse is to run towards well-known student travel companies like STA. However, the agency has not really changed its prices due to the current climate, and going through its Web site, a plane ticket alone to Dublin is $599. The responsible side of you may want to stick it out here while you pore over job listings and invest a sizable amount in cheap alcohol to dull your pain, but escapism has its virtues. Leaving the town, the state, the country could help you get a new perspective on your situation or even stuff new ideas into your psyche.
For anyone graduating or looking into working this summer, the process has not exactly been a picnic. But students should pick up and just go to a place they’ve never been, some exotic place they thought they would never visit. That is, of course, if you have some disposable income. But I definitely think it is worthwhile to spend it on travel in this situation. It will produce the biggest bang for that buck.
So take a day, a week, make some plans and somehow find a way to stuff a porcelain pig with whatever extra cash you might have. Now is just the best time for that sort of thing.
If your real reason for travel is an epic hunt for the Loch Ness monster, then e-mail Joshi at rjoshi@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.