Time for a Vcation

Continuing to mine from the surprising attention given to Second Life by The Miami Herald last week, their Virtual Vacation article gives the scoop on an entire segment of the Second Life economy devoted to providing recreations of real-world vacation spots. What I mean is that it's not just that some plunked down a replica cathedral in some remote corner of the world, but that there are virtual travel agencies, guidebooks (one is published as a real-world book), tours and of course, shopping sprees for tourist swag. This virtual world even suffers from the same congestion during its "tourist seasons" - meaning nighttime in the US and Europe.
For a working family on a budget, you can get a lot of the experiences of travelling, like learning about architecture, cultures and languages. When you teleport to a Brazilian beach, the chat is in Brazilian Portuguese. And guess what? You can use a free translation program to converse with the natives. Some locales try to faithfully represent a real-world spot like a specific cathedral, while others try to recreate entire towns or something as big as the island of Ibiza.
As with other goods and services, the in-game costs are paid in Linden dollars. One real-world hotel chain - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide - hosts an in-world hotel (hurry and use it while it's still free!). Expect to see more "branded" experiences which are likely to employ the people in Second Life who are the experts at putting up buildings. Land will have to be bought also, so more fuel for the Second Life economic engine.
Now, since I like to try and look forward a little, I'm seeing a Second Life cruise ship in the future. Some big company (Royal Caribbean are you listening?) will stepo up and put a "digital dinghy" into the deep waters of 2L. Just think how ideal this would be - no seasickness, you won't put on weight from the buffet food, no sunburn (except virtually that would be fun to see avatars with the "raccoon eyes" from leaving their sunglasses on...) no running aground or engine problems. Just hop on, schmooze with the other travelers, play some virtual shuffleboard and dance all night. If there was an island location that you couldn't teleport to directly, but *had* to take the ship, that could drive more virtual cruising. It's all good for the economy.