There are quite a lot of flashpackers around nowadays.

Most people don’t have a clue what flashpacker means.

Backpackers have been quite common since the sixties. The term flashpacker comes from the same roots as backpacker – flash (ostentatious) + (back) packer. A flashpacker is an adventurous traveller who has the adventurous outlook on life the backpackers have yet they don’t want to travel it rough on a small budget. They can be called business class backpackers.

Backpackers travel light and live frugally in cheap places. They don’t carry expensive electronic equipment like iPods, PDAs, or laptops because of fears that they will be stolen and because of weight concerns. Backpackers typically go on longer trips, as they like to travel with no fixed schedules, desire to be independent and visit far off exotic places unspoilt by mass tourism. Flashpacking grew out of these same desires.

People who have probably done much backpacking in their younger days never lose the attitude but want material comforts, as they grow older. Flashpackers are usually people in their thirties and forties with high-income jobs. They are typically on extended holidays, sabbaticals, or mid-career switch gaps and they don’t like package tours in mass tourist destinations.

Flashpackers hate carrying backpacks though you might see some flashpackers carrying the same backpacks as backpackers. Instead of “slumming it out” in budget accommodation like cheap dormitories, they would spend nights in comfortable hotel rooms and dine in good restaurants. Another characteristic, which differentiates them from backpackers, is that flashpackers always choose to remain connected with their friends or contacts through digital devices they carry with them. Digital equipment has become very compact nowadays, and supporting services like mobile Internet are found in more and more places.

Would you see a flashpacker on an 18-hour bus ride to save fifty dollars? No, “it is too backpacker” they would say and fly. Budget airlines with low price air tickets have made flying easier and cheaper. A backpacker would go on the bus ride to experience life as the “locals,” but quite often the only locals they would meet were other backpackers. For a flashpacker, style is more important and an 18-hour bus ride is out of the question.

Many businesses in the tourism industry have noticed this trend and have upgraded their services to serve the tech-savvy flashpackers better. In many places, even cheaper accommodation would offer services like WLAN Internet connection.

Backpacking is an attitude. It is more about education and growth as a person than about covering distances and seeing sights. A sense of community is very central to backpacking. Backpackers exchange information and learn from each other. This exchange of experience can happen in shared dormitories, communal kitchens in budget accommodations, while trying to buy train, bus, or plane tickets. Such information gets codified in guidebooks like the backpacker’s Bible, the Lonely Planet, which publishes guides to almost every country and has online communities and forums for information exchange.

Flashpacking, like backpacking have not been without controversy either. As backpacking evolved out of the hippie movement in the West, the behaviour of backpackers has been severely criticised in many traditional non-Western countries. Many locals feels that backpackers are more interested in chilling-out, using drugs and exhibiting looser sexual morals than actually learning about the places and cultures they were in. Backpackers typically live in the same areas and many of them are easily recognised easily by their attire. The perspective of backpackers has been criticised to consist of minimal interaction with locals, which gave them a very limited view of life and culture where they visited. On blogs by backpackers, you would notice that they have read about the same interesting things on guidebooks. Then off they go to visit the same waterfalls, do the same walking trail, experience the same “local” culture festivals and say very similar things about the place.

Some people criticize flashpackers that all they do is baby-sit their electronic gadgets in different parts of the world, and that they have no time, energy, or inclination to actually make contact with anyone outside their digital communities. It remains to be seen if growing number of flashpackers from different parts of the world changes this perspective.