Word of Mouth is the Ultimate Luxury
Real World Conversations Beats the Internet (and AI)
You’re traveling with your family in the Pacific Northwest, and know Seattle and Vancouver have great Asian cuisine. Luckily your kids really like sushi, and maybe one a bit too obsessed with boba tea. So how do you find a great sushi restaurant?
Like a good, smart, informed traveler, you look up Google Maps and enter a focused search on top-rated sushi places. And then…
…analysis paralysis sets in. “Which of these 4.4 - 4.6 starred places should we go to?” The first world problem of too many choices.
This was the exact situation I was in with my family when traveling to Vancouver. Researching and finding “data” online for travel planning is something I enjoy, but it can go too far. We were on our way on the Amtrak Cascades train from Seattle, and were getting ready to arrive at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station. A young woman who was returning home happened to strike up a conversation with my wife. She was from overseas and was working and living in Vancouver, and coming back from Seattle visiting her significant other, apparently because she did not have a visa to work in the US yet.
It came out between them that we were looking for a great sushi place for us. The woman as a resident obviously had local knowledge of the city and restaurants. She recommended Miku, an upscale sushi restaurant on the central waterfront in downtown Vancouver. So we decided to go there on our last day before heading back across the border.
Photo via TripAdvisor
We had a fabulous experience at Miku. Sometimes I’m skeptical of restaurants in main tourist areas, often overpriced, not great food, and the main selling points are a view and perhaps “see and be seen”. This was anything but. It was hands down the best sushi my family has ever had, and even my wife who is not a big sushi fan enjoyed it. We are vegetarians and there was still no shortage of fantastic, unique options. They were so good they didn’t really need soy sauce or wasabi. Dessert (pictured above) topped it off. Finally, our server (British I believe) was incredibly attentive and engaging. Overall it was one of the highlights of our trip (stay tuned for a multi-part trip report!).
Could we have found or discovered Miku on our own? Possibly, as it did show up on Google Maps and searches. Would we have had just as great of an experience? Most likely, yes. Could we have had a good sushi experience at another restaurant from my Google search? Maybe, but perhaps not as spectacular. But having that serendipitous, personal word-of-mouth as a starting point makes it feel just a little more special, like an awesome dessert at the end of an already-great meal.
The lesson for me at least? Let conversations happen, and let them quietly guide your travels. They’ll make your trip even richer without spending an extra second or penny. You don’t even have to really “plan” anything then. Perhaps something to think about as AI embeds itself deeper into travel planning online. Maybe just as travel is meant for us to see new physical places and people “IRL”, we should allow those very things to guide us more when traveling.