Opinion
Technology is handy, writes Josh Martin, but local knowledge is better.
For three weeks, my head had been buried in an iPhone, looking up only to read street signs and take the occasional landmark selfie. With plenty of travel apps available, I'm a less obvious tourist cliche than the bewildered map-reading dinosaurs. But, the same over-reliance on guides sucks the spontaneity
out of travelling.
You're never going to "discover the secrets" of a city if 5000 TripAdvisor reviews have beaten you to it. Navigation, accommodation, degustation and participation all determined by an app. But the digital-aided successes were dotted with dismal failures.
The AirBnB apartment rental was paid months ago, the train tickets booked online, even the walk up the hill loaded on Google Maps. And then nothing. We dialled and redialled the phone number. More emails. We harassed locals in poor Italian, chasing the mysterious owner of the Cobalto Blue apartment. Nada. Did the staff of the driving school next door know our errant host? The receptionist didn't, neither did her colleague, the owner, the owner's mother, or the cleaner. Finally, a deliveryman ranted a series of Italian names and with a frantic waving of hands, calls were made to the property's manager.
It was a scene from Italian Fawlty Towers, minus the hotel. This would never have happened if I had just stumped up the cash for a hotel (or, given the Amalfi Coast hotel rates, a hostel). Travel technology had made me a sweaty, sunburned idiot reliant on a cast of colourful locals. Hours later, our host Carmen waddled up the path blaming everybody but herself.
