Tourists still favour postcards over email and Facebook

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Stamp of approval: Tourists still favour postcards over email and Facebook for sending greetings

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A smartphone and a digital camera might be essential items for our summer holidays but it seems our 21st century gadgets haven’t quite eclipsed the humble postcard.

Athough the text message is now the most popular way of communicating with people back at home, the postcard pips email when it comes to sending greetings to loved ones, according to a new survey.

Postcards also beat phone calls and social media sites for sending wish-you-were-here style messages.


The poll of by 1,563 Britons by Lonely Planet Traveller magazine also found that, in the last three decades of the 20th century, postcards were the most popular form of contact, with around 50 per cent of those on trips sending them.

Phone calls were then the second most-frequent communication tool.

Writing letters home, favoured by 7 per cent of travellers in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, is now almost non-existent, with only 1 per cent putting pen to paper these days.

The survey showed that today the digital camera is favoured as a travel essential by 60 per cent, followed by currency (52 per cent) and sun cream (40 per cent).

Books (33 per cent) are more popular with travellers than mobile phones (26 per cent).

While 25 per cent used travellers cheques in the last decades of the 20th century, just 7 per cent carry them now.

When it came to trips of a lifetime, witnessing the Northern Lights is the experience Britons would most like to have.

Other must-see events include exploring Sicily, seeing dawn at Yellowstone Park in the USA, seeing the sunrise at the Great Wall of China, and visiting penguins in the Antarctic.

Lonely Planet Traveller editor Peter Grunert said: "It is good to see that the postcard is still favoured. It's a nice visual memento from a trip and far more thoughtful than a tweet or a status update."