Objective Proficiency p 42. How Millennials Are Reinventing the Rite of Passage Break. Extra Reading

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/metoo-travel-18-30-holidays

As a twenty-six-year-old middle-class woman from West London, I've experienced more than my fair share of "rite of passage" 18-30 holidays. There was Zante in 2008, Magaluf in 2009 and, after a short hiatus - when festivals abroad became the big thing with our age group - several summers in Ibiza. But while the destinations changed, one thing seemed to remain the same. Being groped by a stranger was par for the course. Physical agency was of such little importance that even being picked up by some "joker" - usually to be thrown in the pool, but sometimes right in the middle of the street - was something to become accustomed to. Whichever party island my girl group and I found ourselves on, personal space simply did not exist. By the time we were eighteen and being mauled by fellow tourists in foam parties at Magaluf mega-club BCM, the wide-eyed shock we'd felt the year before had quickly dissolved into indifference. We would never have complained to staff about a horribly handsy guy in a bar. You just dealt with it, signalling to friends via facial expressions to come and save you. Harassment was perfectly ordinary.

But that was in a world before Weinstein. Since the seismic shock of the #MeToo movement has rippled through every major industry, and what constitutes acceptable sexual conduct has become a matter of public debate, I've found myself wondering how, if at all, this particular part of the travel trade might be impacted. The abuse of maids and housekeepers has been well-documented (so much so that the Las Vegas union representing more than 14,00 hotel workers has asked for panic buttons to be installed in hotels), but little has been made of the 18-30 arena. In my experience, on these holidays, not only was overly sexualised behaviour such as near-pornographic games and flashing in clubs standard, drunken "boys will be boys" behaviour (often perpetrated by women too) which would now viewed as criminal was normalised by an "anything goes culture". But in an era where individuals have been empowered to take ownership over their own bodies, calling out those who transgress physical boundaries, will the lewd behaviour associated with 18-30 holidays have to go? And if so, where does responsibility begin and end? Is the onus on the travel companies and venue proprietors, or is it with young people themselves?

My nineteen-year-old brother, a first-year Nottingham university student who went on his own "rite of passage" holiday to Ayia Napa last summer, is skeptical that #MeToo will change the attitudes millennial tourists. "Most of the young guys who go on holiday to Napa couldn't care less what's going on online," he says. "Holidays are about escapism. It's an alternative bubble away from normal life. People might be worried about their conduct in the workplace, but I doubt that's going to translate into their trips abroad". Prior to our conversation, he was unaware that the undoing of high-profile figures like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and James Franco had even trickled down to impact "ordinary", non-famous men at all, supporting the idea that the impact of all this has been more significant in some demographics than others.

And it's not just young men who think this way. One British woman I interviewed for this piece, who, having travelled to Zante as a rep in 1987 before falling for a local man, now owns a bar on the infamous Laganas strip, agreed. "We see aggression, fighting and hassling of the opposite sex," she told me. "While we don't tolerate this from our customers, you hear a lot of 'in Zante anything goes', and with this in mind I doubt [tourist's] behaviour will change too much. They are just here for a good time regardless and have little respect for anyone or anything". Yet some women do seem slightly more hopeful, especially those who are younger. Hayley Richell, a twenty-year-old former Travel and Tourism student says that she does think the cultural mood will have some positive impact, most notably because "women are more aware of what's acceptable and what's not and of standing up for themselves".

The Thomas Cook representative I spoke to, Steve, who started out as a rep in 2004 and is now an area manager for parts of Europe, also saw the current climate as reason for tourists - and businesses - to adapt. Thomas Cook's "Club 18-30" is the most well known provider of party holidays in Britain, with a savvy social media strategy that has succeeded in tapping into the millennial mood by using hashtags like #legendaryholidays and showcasing real time content from Club 18-30 resorts and events on YouTube. Steve echoed Richell's sentiment, saying that the #MeToo movement "is causing everybody to check their behaviour". He believes that, while the #MeToo movement was unleashed after the summer season in 2017, meaning that we have yet to see the direct impact on the industry, "this year, people will have a renewed sense of what's acceptable and what isn't… and of ownership of their bodies". And this won't just be on an individual level. Thomas Cook will make it "part of our upcoming [staff] training to be even more vigilant", he says. "While we have always trained staff [on issues around sexual conduct], now we'll take it even further, because we owe it to our customers to be part of the step change that's happening everywhere else".

Perhaps the most pertinent thing that Steve raised was, in fact, that the decline of a super-sexualised culture is something the 18-30 holiday industry felt coming long before Ronan Farrow's fateful piece was published. He says that while he's aware of the brand image that party holidays tend to have, "the reality is that we've moved away from a lot of that quite some time ago". "The stuff that young people find entertaining has definitely changed," argues Steve. "For us as a company, it's not enough anymore just to bring young people away and ply them with booze… There's a huge festival culture now, with so many overseas festivals, and people are incorporating that into their holidays". He told me how "some of our biggest selling excursions and resorts are when we have big-name DJs coming over and putting on shows, or when there's a chain of events over two or three days in some resorts where we have artists or media celebrities [attending]".

It's not just Thomas Cook that has noticed a shift in the appetite for sexual hedonism. The other major tour operator, TUI, agreed that "we've seen changes in how young people holiday in recent years, with a rise in the importance of wellbeing and fitness facilities alongside great nightlife". The idea that the 18-30 holiday has moved on from games based on how many sex positions a pair can simulate in a minute, or copious amounts of whipped cream, is also supported by small business owners. Graham Hartt, who launched the VVIP Yacht Party in Zante back in 2012 as "a direct rebuttal of the lewd games played on booze cruises", with the company motto "no games allowed", details how this business model has "been a runaway success and is now the most requested and booked ticket in Zante, putting other booze cruises out of business". "We focus on quality music and alcohol" and "we've marketed the classy aspect quite effectively," Hartt says. In his view, the most significant contributing factor to the change in what young holiday makers look for has to be social media. Millenials are painfully aware that their behaviour could theoretically be broadcast live around the world, with Hartt observing how "girls in particular are much more savvy about appearing on film in a compromising position". The cultural currency in littering your friends' feeds with photos of your Insta-perfect holiday also cannot be underestimated. Image is everything. No one wants to be the drunk guy groping a girl in a club who becomes a meme. Steve from Thomas Cook reflects this sentiment, saying that the social revolution has "definitely played a part in toning down people's behaviour and changing their attitudes".
It seems that where the men in powerful positions brought down by the #MeToo movement thought they were immune from ever being outed, those who have grown up online know all too well that distasteful conduct could easily come back to haunt them. Whether it's just social media or a whole host of factors that have contributed to people becoming "woker" in recent years, millennials have been more mindful of their conduct than previous generations since well before we realised quite how many sexual predators were in our midst. As easy as it is to view Weinstein as a watershed moment, honest analysis of the context makes it clear that #MeToo is a symptom, and not the cause, of our current culture shift. The Weinstein story simply could not have broken five years ago. For a multitude of reasons, the mood was ripe for the ensuing movement to take off.

Jake Jones, a twenty-four-year-old digital edit producer who has worked doing various roles for shows that document the 18-30 holiday in all its glory like "Ibiza Weekender", told me how this evolution is also evident in the TV watched by young people. "Overly vulgar, predatory, and crude language is definitely phasing out, as are brief sexual encounters like the sex position games", Jones says. "The whole genre and [the] language used are moving towards forming genuine and affectionate relationships - this is what rates much higher. Look at Camilla and Jamie from the most recent Love Island, hugely popular without any sleaze. And this was pre-Weinstein". For Jones, "Weinstein is not the cause of the change but a marker of it", and I can't help but agree.