TOURISM BECOMES AN INDUSTRY - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 10

If frequent-flyer miles were a currency, it would be one of the most valuable in the
world. In 2005, frequent-flyer miles were worth more than all of the American dollars in
circulation. (When that figure was released, several U.S. legislators wondered if frequent-
flyer miles should be taxed as income.)
The tourism industry has expanded its scope to embrace everything one can do on a
trip, beginning with religious pilgrimages, which is the oldest reason for traveling. The
modern Hajj, the Islamic religious pilgrimage, is now a multibillion-dollar enterprise and
the single biggest tourist event of the year. No longer a humble religious trek, many of the
older, modest hotels and boardinghouses for devotees have been replaced with glitzy five-
star hotels for the well heeled, to the consternation of preservationists and some religious
groups. Families from poorer Muslim countries like Bangladesh pay a lifetime's savings to
buy the required airplane and hotel package for an aging parent to fulfill a religious goal
and make the Hajj. Itinerant pilgrims are no longer common at the Hajj.
At every point of every trip, the industry is figuring out how to make a profit on every
experience, be it a made-for-tourist local dance ensemble, the purchase of a length of silk
or taking a motorboat cruise up a jungle river. Serendipity and happenstance, once the
main point of travel, are disappearing. What were once journeys of discovery, escapes from
the daily dullness of life, or a plan for retirement are now packaged trips with nearly every
aspect planned in advance. Senior travel by retirees is known as silver gold and has be-
come a mainstay of the industry. Everything can be packaged into a tour, including cook-
ing classes and bamboo-weaving demonstrations, and then finely tuned to avoid mishaps.
Entire Austrian, Swiss and German villages rent themselves out for as little as $70,000 a
week.
Family reunions, simple vacations to the beach (known as fly-and-flop in the industry),
a tour of the old Silk Road in the steppes of Asia or a tour of old and new art galleries
in Istanbul—all marketed by the industry. One of the biggest earners are conventions or
meetings. Known as MICE, the industry acronym for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences
and Exhibitions, this category covers a huge gamut of legitimate meetings, film festivals,
academic gatherings and boondoggles that have multiplied in the last decade, filling air-
line seats and hotel rooms. Las Vegas, with its casinos, sports, conference centers, hotels
and nightlife, is the undisputed capital of MICE; underlining its motto “What happens in
Vegas stays in Vegas.”
As in other businesses, the industry expands its profits by expanding the reasons for
travel. One of the biggest new fields is medical tourism, which pairs foreign doctors and
hospitals with the travel industry to make a package deal of an operation and a vacation for
recuperation on a beach or by a swimming pool. The field has grown quickly in the Un-
ited States as costs of health care and health insurance skyrocketed. Now when faced with
surgery costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the United States, a patient can opt for
an attractive tour package with medical care in Argentina, India, South Africa or closer to