I’m not from here. Like a lot of people, I’m from somewhere else. I’m an immigrant and like a lot of my friends growing up I always had a desire to go home. It just wasn’t that easy at first. It was a wanderlust that drew me to travel and I distinctly remember my first overseas trip to New Zealand after graduating high school. That seems an odd statement now with airfares so cheap that it’s not unusual to graduate high school and be blasé about travel.
I took a lot of shorter trips before I eventually went back home to Germany (when it was still west) because it was a long way to go from Australia and very expensive at the time. Everyone living in countries not of their birth eventually feel that pull to go back home. The VFR (visit friends and relatives) sector of the travel industry is without a doubt the strongest and most robust because of the driving sentiment, of wanting to reconnect and continue relationships that matter the most, family.
About 9 million people fly everyday somewhere in the world and statistics say that the VFR market is at around 30% of that total. That’s 3 million people a day going home to somewhere and someone. The big travellers used to be the Mediterranean countries but they have now settled so well in every part of the world and eventually brought out the family that they now no longer need to travel back home. The big movers are the Asian countries with the Chinese becoming the vast movers amongst the VFR market. With China slated to build 90 airports in the next decade we will see an increase of Chinese travellers and immigrants to the four corners of the world? We might even see an increase in Chinese restaurants. Whatever happened to them all? Like all travelers they will feel that pull to go home once they have settled in foreign lands?
As the Joe South song from the title aptly described, so much had changed from my childhood memories on that first trip back home that I had to readjust my thinking on the reasons to return home again. So much had changed that I was more a tourist than someone going home. In the end not such a bad thing, as it opened my eyes to change. The reason I now travel is for new experiences and people I have met who keep the connection going that used to be just for family.
Sometimes the reasons for becoming a VFR traveller seem one directional, as in just going home but in the end become so much more. 3 million people a day, going home, will have similar experiences that will open their horizons. With 10,000 more aircraft flying the skies in the next decade there will be a lot of people looking to go home.
Will you be on one of them, going home for the first time?
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