Travel with Words: An Innovative Vision on Travelling

Modern travelers wish to explore the world at their own pace, following their own expectations and cultural interests. The travel industry should adapt to this new market environment. A large part of cultural travels is based on history and historical events, and books are a near endless repository of such facts. Moreover, novels are a friendlier gateway to culture than handbooks or reference books. And readers often grow the necessity to see, feel, and taste the imaginary world they are reading about in their own language. By leveraging on books and on modern information and communication technologies, we envision a new way to define travels based on the "Cultural Travel Clouds". This paper discusses this vision.