Backpackers are the true wired generation who like to stay in touch with home whilst globetrotting and are more interested in the latest gadgets rather than jetting off to find themselves according to a study released today by Yahoo! Mail. 
Setting off round the world is no longer about getting away from it all and leaving the rat race behind, as 69% of young British travellers claim they use email regularly to touch base with people back home. The study, undertaken to support the Yahoo! Mail’s Internet Café of the Year Awards, shows that far from leaving the constraints of technology behind, the modern-day traveller likes to be contactable and ‘connected’ wherever they are in the world:

42% set up a new internet email account before leaving

86% admit they won’t leave home without their mobile

20 kilos of luggage and 36mb of virtual storage
Gadgets and gizmos are fast replacing the traditional contents of the traveller rucksack. 13% take a laptop away with them and 20% of travellers under 25 even included latest must-have, the iPod or MP3 player, as a travelling necessity. 

Email has become a fundamental part of people’s everyday life and now it’s clear it’s also a travelling essential as 20% of travellers send an email within the first day of arriving at a destination. More emails are sent home to friends (42%) than family (35%) and 9% of travellers really can’t let go by emailing work to keep abreast of projects.

What do travellers email home about?

Just to be in touch                                                       49%

To let people know where they are in case of an emergency     20%


To keep up to speed on gossip                                       17%


To keep up with work issues                                           9%

To make people back home jealous                                   5%

yahoo.co.uk/internetcafes
Yahoo! Mail Internet Café Awards

To satisfy the techno-traveller, Yahoo! Mail has partnered up with Rough Guides and STA Travel on the launch of its first global Internet Café Awards in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the very first Internet Café, Café Cyberia, which opened its doors in London in 1994. 

Eva Pascoe, co-founder of Café Cyberia and one of the judges for the Internet Cafe awards explains: ‘“Internet cafes have come a long way in the last 10 years since I was involved I setting up Café Cyberia. Travellers can now email their friends for the price of a cup of coffee regardless of where they are in the world for and that is a wonderful achievement.”

Jon Wayth from Yahoo! Mail comments: “Travelling is no longer about totally removing yourself from home, friends and family, as the wired generation is more keen to email home and surf the web regardless of being up a mountain or in the middle of a desert. Email and the estimated 20,000 internet cafes around the globe has made this communication phenomenon possible.”
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