What we’ll bring home
If three major needs in relation to holidays are to see somewhere different, relax and reconnect then a fourth might be the need to remind others and ourselves where we have been. The creation of memories and story telling around events is a fundamental human need and various objects and images can be used to facilitate this. One of the oldest customs in relation to travel has been the picture postcard, although this seems to be dying out in favour of instant updates to social networks such as Facebook and the streaming of events on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter. Nevertheless, we would expect physical postcards to endure a little while longer, especially with older holidaymakers in traditional resorts.

Another item of the way out, or so it seems, is the physical photo album. Not only do albums increasingly exist online (no more post holiday family slide nights) they are increasingly narrow in their subject matter. Selfies (photographs taken by a photographer of themselves) now account for 30% of all pictures taken by 18-24-year-olds in the UK, so even if the photo album does survive, they will be thinner, or at least less broad, in the future. Perhaps what will happen is that, realising this, individuals will crowd-source images of themselves with others or buy library images of sights much like we used to buy Viewmaster slides.

To be continued…