World Tourism Day: just another excuse to travel
Jane NethercoteLonely Planet author
27 September is the United Nations’ World Tourism Day and places around the world are marking this year’s theme of ‘Linking Cultures’. In Jaipur, historical monuments have been illuminated while in Rwanda, the government is using the day to encourage domestic travel with the message, ‘tourism, it begins with YOU’.
At the Lonely Planet office, we’re reflecting on the differences that the last year has made to travel: the birth of a new country; the knowledge that the biggest threat to your holiday is a volcano in Iceland; the speed at which technology is changing the way we travel.
Still, in travel some things stay the same. The importance of linking cultures through travel has always been at the heart of Lonely Planet’s belief system. Sure, we travel for many reasons, but getting to know other cultures – and bringing that understanding home with us – is perhaps the most important reason of all. To mark World Tourism Day, we thought the best thing we could do was point you in the direction of some travel inspiration. To that end, here are five of our favourite features from Lonely Planet’s new 1000 Ultimate Sights with 50 travel ideas to get you on your way:
- The greatest wildlife spectacles
- Most fairytale-like European castles
- Splash out: the world’s most amazing waterfalls
- The most intriguing lost cities
- World’s most amazing natural phenomena: it’s raining fish!
As a special for World Tourism Day, we’ve discounted our 10 most popular mobile travel apps – take advantage of the sale until Friday 30th September.
This is a great article! I am always looking for new ways to find better things I am more interested in easier. Living in San Francisco we are always inundated with new apps, or sites that claim to have found the solution to making a great trip perfect. While I tend to not fall trap to solid marketing schemes, every now and again I am willing to take a chance and check a site out.
I found this one http://www.ravn.com which I thought was pretty cool. It has all kinds of fun events and activities, and using your interests as well as the interests of your friends, it suggests things for you to do. While I am usually the person people go to when looking for fun things to do, I was surprised to find that they had some pretty good stuff on the site. They have NYC, LA, and Chicago getting filled up with some great stuff. Very interested to see if they pull it off. Great aesthetic and easy for a novice user like myself.
Just an idea.