The Off Peak Edition

On travel, crowds, and contrarian movements

Michael Williams is a friend of WITI. He’s a writer and marketing consultant living in Los Angeles. In 2007, he founded A Continuous Lean as a way to celebrate the often under-appreciated companies. Over the course of his career, Michael has become one of the leading advocates for well-made things, travel, style and American manufacturing. Subscribe to ACL here. -Colin (CJN) 

Michael here. This may be obvious to everyone, but the current state of travel has mandated a shift in how we think about timing and destinations. So far this year I have had two perfect off-peak trips to Europe and I don’t know if I can ever slot back into the life of a high season traveler.

I didn’t really start to travel seriously until I was on my own as an adult. This had the benefit of helping me form travel habits which are completely built on personal goals and perspectives. I was never a person who wanted to go to every country on the planet, my goal has always been to travel narrow and deep. I want to understand a place by going there repeatedly — to attempt to see it as a local. (Though I know I will never truly get there without living in a certain place.) This is why I went to the same cities over and over, and why I attempted to spend part of every summer in the same small town in Maine or on the same Italian island.

There were always minor considerations to be made to avoid the most hectic moments. I wouldn’t dare travel to Southern Europe in August when everyone from the continent is there taking their government-mandated holidays. But today, given the price of airfare, hotels, crowded airports and lounges, I have discovered just how great off-season travel can be and how much I need to reconsider travel plans going forward.

Why is this interesting? 

To travel semi-comfortably as a family in peak season is pricey. Hotels have goosed their rates to eye watering levels (without service levels to match). The parameters of school holidays and typical vacation slots have created this new pricing reality and I’m starting to think that we’re not peak people anymore. We aren’t suckers. We don’t fight the crowds or pay unreasonable rates — we’re low season people now.

This January my wife and I went to Florence for Pitti Uomo. Winter in Florence is delightful. It’s generally not extremely cold and there are virtually no crowds. As you can imagine, the pricing is much friendlier than peak summer in Tuscany. It’s just a better experience on every level. We had such a good time it made us reassess summer travel ambitions. We also live in a place with plenty of beaches and sunshine so some winter travel is actually a nice change of pace — and at least I finally have an opportunity to wear all of the nice outerwear I own.

This past week we went to Aberdeenshire, Inverness and the Scottish Highlands. In the past the target for Scotland was always summer. Perhaps not surprisingly, the primary objective for me is to play golf so the weather forecast does matter which is why June, July and August were the focus for those trips. Last week I came to the realization that the other seasons aren’t as extreme as I might have thought. Sure it can be cold, windy and wet, but that’s also how things could be in the summer in Scotland. To me the risk of bad weather is worth all of the other benefits of the low season.

The dreaded gorse was so wonderfully in bloom. Having only been in the summer, I’ve never seen the landscape with this colorful accent. It was a perfect off peak experience.

All of the golf courses I wanted to play were easily available and I was able to book into the best hotels for where I was playing at the low season rates. I’ve never rented a brand new car, but my transportation for the week had 5 miles on its odometer before I took it all across the Highlands.

When you talk to the locals about the weather you start to realize that many of them play golf all year in Scotland. Sure it is cold in the winter, but many of the courses stay open unless there’s snow coming in. Let’s not be insane and go in December, but the off-season key here is just avoid the obvious months of June, July, August and September. Consider April or October. The weather can be quite agreeable and most hard-to-get places are wide open. Being there off peak makes you feel like you know something everyone else doesn’t. And what feature of travel is more important than the feeling of superiority!

Beyond Europe, consider Hawaii in the summer. Last year we went to Kauai in the summer for the first time and it was magic. We were so pleasantly surprised at how calm things were. The west coast treats Hawaii like the east coast does the Caribbean, so the focus seems much more on the winter and spring break. Summer is a bit more wide open. The flights aren’t full and the pricing for everything is more manageable. The weather is practically the same since the archipelago is so close to the equator and the trade winds blow all year to cool things down. When you see how calm things are you really get a sense of how a small schedule adjustment can make for a much more enjoyable trip.

Certainly the off season can have downsides and everything isn’t always going to be perfect. The weather could be terrible or other things could go wrong. There are also places which still need to be more highly choreographed like Japan — which is just too damned hot in the summer. With the way travel demand has changed I’m much more open minded about when and where we go. This change of perspective is the travel shift I needed — and isn’t that the point of it all? (MW)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Michael (MW)

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