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Before about 1990, how did you manage travel? Maybe one quick phone call home from the telco office, or pick up mail at AmEx every week or two. Abroad for less than a month, simply incommunicado, hoping someone remembers to pick you up at the airport. My father died when I was in Bolivia, it took 3 weeks for word to reach me.
Plane tickets hand-written, no charge to change booking, even different stopovers in a different airline on a different date, weeks after missing your flight. Just walk into any travel agent.. Somebody has your money, someone will fly you, they'll sort it out.
The cover on your Frommer guide says "Europe on $5 a Day" and even Stockholm was possible, at the hostel on a ship in the harbor, eating dinner at the cooking school.
What are your memories? Or ask your parents/grandparents about theirs.
1) Traveling required a lot of planning. Since most travel information was mailed at that time, you needed to start requesting information months in advance.
2) It was much harder to find information. To find out about summer accommodations at Canadian Universities took a lot of persistence and often weeks and ... phone calls.
3) Travel agents were often the holders and guardians of information ... and they knew it. Unless you were like me and had access to Eaasy Sabre, you could count on the pact that you would be paying more than you needed to for flights, hotels, and car rentals.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Using 'Pulse-to-tone dialers' for checking email from Hotel / pay phone.
Traveling with friends / kids / meeting up at remote international destinations coming from various routes was often a 'waiting-game'. Especially when Spanish and French train workers went on strike (often), and you were stuck for a couple days in some remote rail station..
Travel agents sometimes. Otherwise lots of planning with phone calls (landlines) directly to airlines, hotels... . Fax machines! Waiting for a fax from an overseas hotel when attempting to book feels like yesterday to me. Word of mouth from fellow travelers regarding best days to book this or that for the best price. We would read travel magazines and guide books cover to cover. It wasn't rocket science and we made it work, but it is so much easier now.
Every flight in the world was listed in the OAG, a monthly catalog-sized publication subscribed to by travel agents, and friendly agents would give you an outdated edition. Endless hours of fascinating browsing, and an inside look at possible connections when you do decide to fly.
I remember picking up mail at the main town post office, I think it was marked "general collection". References for places to fo, came by chatting with other people. I would save some coins so I could call home every week, using the pay phones.
How when ships were leaving Sydney and I imagine other ports, they had streamers and also your family and friends could just go aboard to say farewell.
In Europe you needed to book long distance phone calls and it was difficult when the operator did not speak English. It was really exciting when we got to the US in 1977 and we could make a direct call home.
But we discovered Americans were not in the habit of wearing seatbelts in their cars whereas even then we did.
We would usually pick our accomodation from the choices in the Qantas brochure and book through a travel agent. Actually I have started doing that again as I am completely and totally over doing the research and choosing from too many choices. Qantas Holidays pay people to do that.
Best of all back then and something I miss incredibly, you could be out of connection with the world. When we went travelling in 1977 for six months I had the feeling that we would never be so free again. I was thinking more of things to come like babies and careers. Did not anticipate the difference the internet would make.
For car vacations, we would research destinations at the library in the travel section. After selecting a few destinations, we'd get the librarian to help find the chamber of commerce address of the cities that interested us. Then write a letter to the C of C asking for hotel information. This almost always resulted in a packet of brochures about hotels and attractions arriving a few weeks later.
Next we'd write letters to the individual hotels requesting details on rates/deposits and whether there were openings the week we wanted to be there. Usually we'd spring for a phone call to our first choice after we received the info, to ensure via a "real" person the room was available. Then send a final letter with a check for the deposit.
If the trip was multiple days, we'd just wing it and start looking for hotels mid-afternoon as we drove. We'd just get off the highway and, if we saw a hotel go there, or ask the gas station attendants for directions. We always found somewhere with a room, since we overnighted in non-touristy places.
The big difference is the amount of lead time you needed to plan a trip "back in the day". My grandparents were dust-bowl Okies and could have been the inspiration for "The Grapes of Wrath". Their tales of crossing the country in a rickety Model-A were amazing. Since they didn't have a telephone, it was all just launch and hope for the best. They car-camped on some nights when they couldn't find a motel. To them, our back and forth mailing method was amazing luxury. To my digitally connected kids, it seem archaic.
I'll not bore the young'uns with my stories of traveling to Europe to work, with no cell phone, no credit cards, and only the cash and traveler's checks (in my shoe). Each time, I had to leave the US with enough money to last 6 months and budget it accordingly over that time. Sometimes my wife would have to wait a month before my letter arrived informing of my safe arrival. Things are better now, imo.
We researched buying travel magazines, went to the library and scoured the travel books, sought advice/experiences from friends and relatives and read the travel sections in the newspapers drooling over the exotic destinations.
Of course, we learned more about geography by stocking up on many folding paper maps and spending time actually plotting out the entire route, the timing, where to stay and what to see. In doing so, on the actual trip we used our own internal GPS (our heads for sense of direction) for guidance. Fun times and a great learning experience.
Before about 1990, how did you manage travel? Maybe one quick phone call home from the telco office, or pick up mail at AmEx every week or two. Abroad for less than a month, simply incommunicado, hoping someone remembers to pick you up at the airport. My father died when I was in Bolivia, it took 3 weeks for word to reach me.
Plane tickets hand-written, no charge to change booking, even different stopovers in a different airline on a different date, weeks after missing your flight. Just walk into any travel agent.. Somebody has your money, someone will fly you, they'll sort it out.
The cover on your Frommer guide says "Europe on $5 a Day" and even Stockholm was possible, at the hostel on a ship in the harbor, eating dinner at the cooking school.
What are your memories? Or ask your parents/grandparents about theirs.
Oh man, those were the days.
You would go to a local post office or phone exchange office to make an international call home.
Tickets were physically bought from travel agents in their offices like a retail shop.
I was studying at a university in Europe. And still have saved some of those hand written letters that would take weeks to arrive from home.
No security lines and taking off your belt n shoes, and get your rear end scanned at the airport.
Generous leg room between seats.
Quality real food was served for free in domestic airlines. Flight attendants were babes.
And there weren’t any nasty and third glass ghetto type passengers on the plane.
Last edited by GoCardinals; 06-28-2019 at 07:51 AM..
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Fun times and a great learning experience.
