Digital communication and social media let us stay in instant touch when we travel, but snail-mailed postcards are still uniting travellers.
It was a sweltering morning on the Thai island of Koh Chang and I was sitting at a cafe, sweating over a small, rectangular piece of cardboard. My eyes had zeroed in on it, shelved on a dusty postcard rack in the corner, while walking past, juggling a plastic container of sticky rice and diced mango. I’d been searching for days for one to send to my best friend in North Carolina – our custom for more than 10 years, since her family moved away when we were in secondary school.
I’d plucked my favourite image from the rack, a shot of the white-sand beach where I was staying, paid for the card and a stamp, scrawled a message in purple marker, then slipped it into the red postbox stationed outside on the island’s main street. In less than five minutes, and for around ฿50 (£1.13), I had continued our beloved tradition; linking us across continents and time.
A vintage kind of love
My friend and I are part of an increasingly rare breed. The instant nature of digital communication, including the ability to send a “wish you were here” text or upload a carousel of photos to social media, has relegated snail-mailed postcards to a bit character in the theatre of travel. Call it a sign of the times: the US Post Office is currently $15bn in debt and has lost more than $9bn in 2025 alone. First-class post, which includes letters and postcards, has declined by 50% in the last 15 years in the US and is expected to decline an additional 29% in the next decade. In 2024, Americans sent roughly 325 million stamped cards and postcards, a staggering decline from the more than 2.7 billion sent in 2000. In Denmark, the country’s state-run postal service PostNord announced earlier this year that it would end letter deliveries by the end of 2025. Citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since 2000, the country has started removing its iconic red post boxes, ending a 400-year-old legacy.
To many, postcard-sending has become a relic of a bygone era. But while this retro travel tradition may be endangered, it is still quietly doing what it has always done best: uniting loved ones. Calls to save postcards have been spreading across social media channels like TikTok and Instagram, where the hashtag #postcard calls up 6.5 million posts announcing swaps and tips for card decorating. It’s clear that travellers, from baby boomers to millennials to Gen Z, are still using them as a way to engage with their loved ones in a more purposeful way.
