We visited Dubai, one enormous gold-plated building site

As the digital calendars switched from 1999 to 2000, there was widespread fear that anything automated was going to go haywire. People were warning each other not to fly on new year's eve in case the plane dropped out of the sky at the stroke of midnight. We were all preparing to go back to pencil, paper, horse and cart. Thankfully however, the zealous brigade of millennium soldiers were wrong. The clocks turned over, the year 2000 arrived and computers everywhere hummed and blipped away same as before. And far from returning us to quadruped modes of transport, the noughties gave us wings – in the form of record low-fare flights and the clever invention of online booking.


In January 2000, Ryanair launched ryanair.com, and within three months the site was taking over 50,000 bookings a week; the following year Aer Lingus launched aerlingus.com and the DIY holiday was born. For the first time Irish travellers could compare prices and book their own flights online, while also availing of special rates for car hire and hotel accommodation through the airline sites. Certain savvy Irish travel agents realised they needed to jump on the online bandwagon to stay ahead of the game. Atlas Travel launched gohop.ie which is going stronger than ever today, while other agents got left behind. Ryanair was in the news for a number of reasons: it launched the lowest ever return fare of £19.99 on the Dublin-London route and it nabbed the sponsor slot for the Sky News weather reports, thus beaming the brashly branded airline into thousands of hotel rooms all over Europe.


Then 9/11 happened and for the next six months or so, air travel was hit hard. Oil prices skyrocketed and the threat of further terrorist attacks left people afraid to fly.


The mini-break is born


2002, however, saw people eager to travel again. For the first time, the Irish traveller had a huge choice of direct, scheduled (as opposed to charter) flights to European hotspots. Ryanair continued to expand its low-fare routes into Europe and Aer Lingus launched new scheduled flights to Malaga, Nice, Barcelona, Vienna, Milan, Alicante, Faro, Lisbon, Jersey and Palma (Majorca) to add to its existing popular scheduled routes of Madrid, Amsterdam, Rome, Paris, Munich and Frankfurt. It also launched a new route into Prague – the first of many destinations to come in eastern Europe. The low-fares air war was on and the customer was the big winner. There was never a better time to be young, free and city-break savvy. Suddenly no new relationship was complete without a romantic mini-break, à la Bridget Jones. There were amazing deals to be had by booking online, enabling Irish travellers to fly to chic, cosmopolitan European cities for a song and so have more euro in their pocket to treat themselves to a bit of swanky accommodation.


Along with this new breed of young, travel-savvy hotel guests came a glut of uber-trendy boutique hotels, and a shelf-load of expensively-produced hotel guide-books. Herbert Ypma's Hip Hotels series came first and foremost, followed by the super-slick Mr & Mrs Smith guides to hotels in UK, Ireland and Europe and the StyleCity series. Travel guides, like Lonely Planet and Frommer's before them, had been text-heavy and functional but with Ympa and the rest came a move towards glossy, picture-led tomes. More suitable for passing around at dinner parties for a game of 'where to next?' than for taking with you on your travels.


Spa-tastic


With all this jet-setting and hotel-hopping, the humble traveller was bound to be feeling worn out. With this the 'well-being' break was born. The magic word was: 'spa'. Any five-star hotel worth its salt suddenly had to have an array of tropical mist showers, relaxation rooms and at least five different Balinese body wraps on offer to keep up. These 'destination spas' were impressive abroad but even better at home. The Park Hotel Kenmare set the bar when it launched its state-of-the-art SAMAS spa in 2003 (which cost more than €4m to build). All the big hotels followed suit, spending millions on super-luxury spa facilities – Aghadoe Heights is still winning awards for its stunning Aveda spa. Lots of long-established hotels like Kelly's of Rosslare and Dunbrody House spent a small fortune on contemporary spa extensions, while purpose-built spa resorts, like Monart, took the trend to its zenith, as spa-with-hotel-extension. But offering holistic head rubs was not enough; the pressure was on for hotels to come up with ever-more extravagant 'well-being menus' offering everything from outdoor yoga to Jamaican jackfruit smoothies, inner colon cleansing and Tantric spiritual realignment. We saw, and sampled, it all.


Second home bonanza


Regular flights to Malaga, Alicante and Valencia were now more reasonable than ever, and the newly monied Irish descended en masse to the south of Spain, buying up apartments and houses as if they were Monopoly pieces. There was such an established Irish crew out there that Angela Phelan (the late Irish Independent social diarist) launched the magazine iStyle (Irish style) Marbella, specifically for this golf-loving, suntanned set. And while well-heeled parents were investing in second homes in Marbella, the Algarve or the south of France, more than a few Celtic cubs took the opportunity to invest in buy-to-let schemes in eastern European cities such as Krakow and Budapest.


Weddings abroad


The mid-noughties saw more and more Irish people choosing to get married abroad. In days gone by, hosting a wedding abroad would have been the epitome of extravagance but now a whole host of sun-soaked, glamorous destinations were affordable and accessible. And paradoxically, it was cheaper in many cases to have your wedding abroad. You could keep the guest list smaller, opt for a less formal reception, roll wedding and honeymoon into one, and avail of much more reasonable wine, drinks and wedding fare.


On the back of this a host of specialised Irish wedding abroad websites were launched such as www.irishweddingsabroad.ie, www.italianweddings.ie and www.heffernansweddingsabroad.ie. There was also a surge in the number of people travelling for hen and stag weekends – with London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Budapest being some of the most popular destinations for affordable, fun locations to let loose.


Dubai, my dear, I'm off to play golf


2006 was a huge year for Irish domestic tourism as we hosted the 36th Ryder Cup.


There was some concern that we Irish, famed for the warmth of our céad míle fáilte, were losing sight of the fáilte in the midst of all that céad míle – ka-ching, ka-ching. But we played a blinder and the world's media were well impressed.


However, it was most definitely with céad mile in mind, that the Irish made a bee-line for the Middle East, namely Dubai. In September of that year, Aer Lingus launched a direct route from Dublin to the glittering emirate. Dubai was such a bizarre place, visiting it was like hanging out in one enormous gold-plated building site. The developers made no bones about it: it was a purpose-built playground for grown-ups. With its World Islands, seven-star hotels, underwater restaurants, ski-slopes in shopping malls, immaculate golf courses, endless shopping and tempting winter sun, Dubai was a big hit. Two brief years later, though, the inflated 'Buy Dubai' property bubble burst and Aer Lingus cancelled its Dubai route.


The doom and gloom


The 'who wants to be a billionaire' bubble had to burst sometime and it did in 2008 when Lehman Brothers went under and we officially went into recession. With banks going bust, houses in negative equity, people losing their jobs and Nama the only topic of discussion, 2008/2009 were grim years financially. Needless to say, travel took a real hit. Volatile fuel costs, poor market conditions and a sharp decline in long-haul travel saw Aer Lingus terminate its direct service to LA, Washington and San Franscisco. Hotels, restaurateurs and retailers across the board hit hard times, the only hint of silver lining in a storm-black cloud for the Irish traveller was that a record drop in the value of the dollar, to 63 (euro) cent in mid-2008, meant that shopping trips to New York were better value than ever.


Air travel in general lost a lot of its sheen as airport security measures became more and more demanding and additional charges were introduced for excess baggage, sports equipment, pre-booked seats and pretty much everything in between. And so the 'staycation' became big news and romantics whisked their lovers off to Kerry instead of Krakow. Financial belt-tightening meant people were more imaginative with their travel plans and explored house swapping and villa sharing and went back to camping and self-catering. Travelling by ferry became more popular as you could pack as much gear as you liked into the car for €99 return to France with the added advantage of less travel-carbon guilt. There was also a general move away from 'frivolous' travel as more people sought out meaningful modes of adventure such as building houses in Cape Town, trekking through endangered rainforests or taking time out to travel and learn a new skill such as cooking in France.