The death of the souvenir and the rise of duty free: Why we’re for less tat and far more tonic this year

There was a time when the travel souvenir was a talisman, a ceramic boast you’d been somewhere and survived.

A chipped ashtray from Athens. A sombrero the size of a garish, inflatable kiddie pool. A fridge magnet with ambitions beyond its station. These objects once said, “I travel.” Today, all they really convey is, “I panicked in departures.”

See, the modern souvenir is nothing more than a hostage situation. You don’t want it. You certainly don’t need it. You only bought it because you feared the moral judgement of returning empty-handed. “What did you bring us?” they’d enquire as though the correct answer — “some pretty funny and memorable stories” — was a punishable offence.

And so it is you handed over $50 for a keyring that said Gibraltar in Comic Sans and then spent the next decade moving it from drawer to drawer to the back of an underutilised corner cupboard like a cursed object.

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Let’s be honest here — souvenirs have become nothing other than landfill with a boarding pass. Tacky, mass-produced, emotionally inert.

They don’t remind you of the trip so much as the moment you realised your (far) boarding gate was closing and you’d done nothing to mark the occasion other than sweat.

Meanwhile, the data — those cold, joyless accountants of our desires — suggests we’re already drifting away from the tat.

According to some PR-driven release I recently received, fewer travellers are buying traditional souvenirs.

I don’t recall which bank / insurer / travel agent / travel bureau / travel card / rental car company / crypto outfit sent it, so its associated marketing worth is presented here as nil — though credit for the subject line that not only scored an open but then sent me stumbling down this path of miniature statues and thimbles (seriously – thimbles!!), MerLion lighters (which bleat the Singaporean national anthem) and artisanal Portuguese fridge magnets (made in China).

Let’s stop pretending the souvenir matters and just give booze from the airport. Proper booze. Bottled, sealed, and ready to be ceremonially opened at home while you bore your friends with stories about the taxi queues and Rotterdam nightclubs they’ll never see the inside of.

Alcohol is the perfect memento. It’s honest. It doesn’t pretend to be art. It doesn’t need dusting. It doesn’t (save for some rather decent drops) follow you across three house moves like an accusatory owl carved from some foreign wood (that you really should have declared on this country’s impossibly outdated paper passenger cards).

The souvenir has had its time. Like bootcut jeans and smoking indoors. We survived those goodbyes. We’ll survive this one too. Let us return home lighter, wiser, and slightly fuzzy, bearing gifts that disappear with dignity.

And before someone clutches their pearls and asks what, exactly, we’re meant to gift the children — relax. Children don’t want souvenirs either. They want money and your time. In that order.

And if that’s not cutting it then know they want snacks they’re not allowed at home, and might I suggest a Toblerone bar the size of a cricket bat? The kids will be thrilled. And then the chocolate bat will be gone. And that’s about the correct duration for joy.

The souvenir, like a child’s attention span, was never meant to last forever. Time to let it go.