5 ms·

It’s time to rethink the purpose of travel

72 points by imartin2k 8y ago

Proven 8y ago
Make me. > Tourism can destroy environments and drive out local residents. It’s time to rethink the purpose of travel. No. It may be time for author to rethink her travel and mind her own business.
aftbit 8y ago
There are many places in the world where the local economy is driven by tourism. Everyone would love to receive the benefits of tourism without the drawbacks, but that's not really possible. Consider your impact when you travel, but don't let that stop you from seeing the world.
jgh 8y ago
It's a conundrum, isn't it? On one hand travel inspires people to learn about the world and, hopefully, become more open-minded. As the article said it's never been cheaper to travel, so people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to do so are now able to. But as with anything we humans touch, if we aren't careful we inadvertently destroy it. So I wonder if there's a good solution here? The lazy one is to make everything incredibly expensive, but why should the world be limited to the rich (more than it already is, comparatively speaking)?
drukenemo 8y ago
As a regular traveller for leisure and living in a major tourist destination (Amsterdam), I've been thinking and experiencing a lot the issue of over-tourism. However, I disagree with the article's idea that the only solution is to stop traveling voluntarily. Personally, I think pre-approved tourist visas will be the most efficient way of controlling how many people can travel to a country and then regions of a country. So, the solution already exists in part. Understandably, a few cities and areas of a country receive most tourists. You could therefore regulate the amount of visitors in each area by issuing location-depdendent visas. For example: "On the chosen dates you can come to the United States, but cannot visit New York or Florida. You may visit California, Nevada, Georgia etc etc." It's terrifying and limiting, but realistically it's the only pro-active solution I can think of to improve the sustainability of a place, especially for the locals. Flight prices are likely to continue to drop and more people will have means to travel internationally. You cannot count on people's consciousness to address this issue.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  The issue with that, is that the US doesn’t have good ways of controlling internal movements. It can check your visa at the bodega, but once you are in, generally no one will check your visa again.
  - drukenemo 8y ago
    No country has that kind of control level, as far as I know. But you could enforce it for example by preventing hotels/Airbnbs from legally accepting tourists with no visas for their region.
  - habitue 8y ago
    You don't need 100% fool-proof internal movement tracking since it's just intended to reduce the volume of tourists in a particular area. I would think just limiting the number of tourist visas a particular destination airport can accept would be fine. Sure, you can drive from an airport in Tampa to go to Disney World, but it would massively reduce the number of people. (That being said, Disney is probably a bad example since it's not built on a world heritage site you need to limit foot traffic to, it replaced a bunch of orange groves in the middle of nowhere)
- graeme 8y ago
  A better solution might be robust local hotel/airbnb taxes. That may be the best proxy for whether someone is a tourist. That way, if a location is overwhelmed by tourists, it can raise a levy to discourage the flow. The trick would be designing a good system.
- derf_ 8y ago
  Or you could use market dynamics to allocate a scarce resource (i.e., raise the price): https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/359649/tourist-tax-up-to-35-to-be-charged https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/359649/tourist-tax-...
  - gascan 8y ago
    I think people are in general becoming a little disillusioned with using market dynamics to allocate leisure. Nobody minds that only rich people can stay at fancy hotels. But if, hypothetically, only rich people can set foot in New Zealand? That offends people. Yes, scarce resources need allocating. Market dynamics are not the only way, see lottery permits in the NPS.
elipsey 8y ago
I grew up in Alaska in a town of about 30,000. The cruise ships carried ~5000 passengers, and they kept building new docks, so that there would be several at a time docked and anchored, each of which was bigger then our 10 story federal building. Picture a floating sky scraper. The part of town around their piers turns into theme park in the summer. They used to make announcements on their megaphones that I could hear from my house 2 miles away. They dumped sewage and trash in the ocean close to nearby towns sometimes using legal loopholes, but sometimes illegally, and were occasionally fined for this. They also set up company stores downtown, and bussed hundreds of people into small local parks, trails, and beaches. The cruise companies are incorporated in low tax foreign jurisdictions, outside the political reach of the citizens of places they visit. Sometimes the city pushes back a bit. The last time I went home they seemed to have eased off of the megaphones, and I heard a head tax was proposed at some point to help clean up after the tourists and maintain the public parks, but I don’t know if it passed. The city and state are both small enough that the cruise companies can out-lobby locals interests quite handily. They promise jobs, but import labor. They have PR campaigns that brag about their public service efforts, omitting that these are court ordered, etc. It seems to me that the ability to shop for jurisdiction creates great opportunity for legal arbitrage. I have no idea what to do about this, but I think it’s interesting. Maybe there’s a metaphor here… something something Panama papers. :)
- koboll 8y ago
  >I grew up in Alaska in a town of about 30,000. How many of those people would not be living there if not for the revenue brought in by tourism? Reading the article, my immediate thought was: of course the Balinese hate tourists, when the ill effects are so obvious, and the benefits more subtle; easy to take for granted. But where would they be economically if all the tourists just stopped coming? I would bet the resulting recession would make people yearn for what they once despised.
  - elipsey 8y ago
    I would guess most of them. I don't think the population has grown proportionately with the tourist traffic. They used to only dock a couple of smaller ships at time, which had less impact on the town. It's the state capital, and there are also various industries. Also, tourism jobs tend to be temporary/seasonal, and people often come from out of town to do them for a few months and then leave. We get a hundred inches of rain a year, and in the winter it's dark a lot so there is no tourism in the winter. EDIT: Population has grown about 15% since 1990, but dock space has roughly trippled, and per ship passenger capacity has substantially increased. I haven't heard anyone suggest that tourism should be banned, just that it would be nice for it occur at a scale similar to a few decades ago, and to externalize costs less; e.g. refrain from illegal dumping, contribute to the upkeep of public goods that are exploited, and only increase the population of the town by, let's say, %20 on a given day.
peterwwillis 8y ago
"So is it possible to travel anywhere and feel OK about it?" "Ultimately, there’s only one surefire way to avoid contributing to the problems of tourism: don’t go." Hello clickbait, my old friend... I've come to talk with you again... Can you please stop over-generalizing? About the cause and effect of everything? Like the sweat from my balls causing avalanches in Nepal? That's a little far. I think it's time.... to flag this.
- Yetanfou 8y ago
  While I dislike the suggestion of flagging this - just ignoring it is a much better choice, there is enough censorship as it is - I do commend you for this piece of poetry. It neatly fits the metrum and I can almost hear that bald 'Disturbed' singer mumble out these alternative lyrics to the sounds of silence.
newnewpdro 8y ago
Air travel is exceptionally affordable because the fuel is not taxed. [1] We can curb frivolous air travel by fixing this anomoly, which is long overdue considering the global climate situation we find ourselves in. [1] http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00523.pdf http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00523.pdf
- Retric 8y ago
  Automotive fuel is taxed to pay for roads. Aircraft pay fees to use airports but that's independent of distance travel as that does not impact the airports. So, really if we want to tax CO2 we should tax all forms of CO2 equally in addition to current taxes.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    You should tax what you want to prevent in the way that harms the least things you want to continue. So for instance if you can show that car co2 use more drastically helps the most vulnerable amongst us while air co2 is largely a subsidy to rockstars then you can compellingly argue taxing air travel more on a per co2 basis is fine. Note: I don’t know enough to have an opinion.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    Not all forms of CO2 emissions are equal. Aviation emissions at elevation "have a climate impact that is commonly estimated to be 2.7 higher than the same emissions if made at ground-level" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermobility_(travel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermobility_(travel)
    - hueving 8y ago
      That's fine. The point is that adding an airline co2 tax should be met with co2 taxes on all petrol. The last thing you want to incentivize is a 737 worth of people all driving their own cars from LA to SF for the weekend instead of taking the flight.
aphextron 8y ago
When I was a kid I thought the greatest thing in life would be to travel around the world, see interesting things, meet interesting people, and go to interesting places. This in turn would make me a more interesting, worthwhile human being worthy of adoration. Somehow our generation was taught that our experiences define us. That by getting on a plane to London and taking some pictures somehow our lives would be more unique and amazing. So I spent my early 20s traveling and doing just that. Seeing everything there was to see. Doing all the things I ever dreamed of as a 16 year old kid stuck in the midwest. Being a hobo, I guess you could say, and having all of these "experiences" that I was sure would add up to a life of meaning. The result was a profound lack of satisfaction, and a severe existential dread at perhaps never finding any actual purpose. I was lucky to settle down, go back to school, and find a passion in programming and science which drives me toward working on bigger problems than myself, that might help humanity in some way. But I fear that the vast majority of people my age are still stuck in that mindset, having never got it out of their systems. Hoping and praying that this next trip to Bali will finally give them that satisfaction beyond filling 3 minutes in passing cocktail party conversation.
- rco8786 8y ago
  Interesting. We have had very different traveling experiences. Traveling and learning about other people and cultures has completely transformed the way that I think about myself and the world.
  - gascan 8y ago
    Backpacking through the poorest parts of the world is a very different experience than drinking margaritas on a beach. "Travel" is so vague.
  - timr 8y ago
    I recently spent a year living abroad, and while I'd agree that it transformed the way I think about myself, it did so in a way that made me critical about most forms of tourism. Hopping from place to place and seeing tourist sites can be fun and relaxing, but it's ultimately also pretty meaningless. This was drawn in sharp contrast for me because I was living in a famous tourist area (Kyoto), and I routinely saw the vast differences between the way tourists experience the area, and the way locals do. There's a very established tourist route, and it has almost no overlap (other than commercial) with the authentic life of the city. Tourists arrive, see the station, visit a few of the "mass-market" temples and shrines, then they leave. Even the folks who have "authentic experiences" are more-or-less following well-trodden pathways. It's hard, because I now find it difficult to travel to places where I don't have a deeper purpose for being there. Simply seeing something pretty is no longer enough. But I also recognize that this is, almost by definition, impossible for everyone to do. I like travel too, but I'm quite conflicted now. Most forms of mass-market tourism are essentially no different from Disney World, but with worse environmental impact. They're cancerous, and unless tightly regulated, will destroy the very places they promote. At least Disney World was built in a swamp!
trevor-e 8y ago
The article is trying to make the traveler feel guilty when to me the burden falls on local governments of these tourist destinations. If there's an impending ecological disaster isn't it in their best interest to have more regulations, eg by increasing fines/citations, limiting visas, increasing prices, etc? If AirBnB is displacing local residents then ban the service, many cities have started to do so. If the mangroves are being destroyed then disallow tourism to that area. Easier said than done of course since tourism is often driving the economy and everyone wants to make a quick buck.
- ImaCake 8y ago
  Why can't it go both ways? Tourists can make a conscious effort to put their rubbish in the bin and learn how to say "please" and "thanks" locally. I hike frequently, so simply by going to a national park I harm the environment there. But I also pay for park passes which help fund those parks, and I refrain from littering and wandering off the track.
  - trevor-e 8y ago
    I'm sure most people try to put their rubbish in the bin if there are empty bins available. I've found most places are dirty because they don't have the infrastructure built for disposing of trash/recyclables, not that people are trying to be evil.
    - timr 8y ago
      "I've found most places are dirty because they don't have the infrastructure built for disposing of trash/recyclables, not that people are trying to be evil." If the local culture is to carry your trash with you, the "right" thing to do is to adapt yourself to that culture, not the other way around. You're a guest. But yes, you're factually correct: if cities don't do this, far too many tourists will just toss their trash anywhere they please.
      - 8xde0wcNwpslOw 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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tedmiston 8y ago
It seems like many people visit Bali as tourists because of geoarbitrage — dollar for dollar meals and housing are so much cheaper than in the states, and overall it's a nice place to work remotely (except internet) or vacation. It does sound like tourism has the potential to be exploitative. Maybe they can find a way to charge more only to tourists borrowing tricks like "resort fees" from Las Vegas. Or doubling prices and giving only residents discounts somehow.
- ImaCake 8y ago
  I feel like the internet in Bali is actually quite good. South-east asia has world class internet.
  - tedmiston 8y ago
    Haven't been there myself, but I've mostly heard speeds along the lines of "Internet: 8mbps" [1][2]. Maybe it's that we've gotten use to 100+ Mbps in the US, or perhaps Ubud is an outlier? [1]: https://nomadlist.com/ubud-bali-indonesia https://nomadlist.com/ubud-bali-indonesia [2]: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50033/any-fast-internet-good-wifi-in-ubud-bali https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50033/any-fast-in...
Taniwha 8y ago
best quote from the article: "why call it tourist season if we can't shoot them"
philwelch 8y ago
You know, they're not making any more land. The world has gotten significantly richer since 1945, and a result of that is that more and more of the world's population has the ability to travel to the most beautiful and popular places in the world. However, this explosion in wealth hasn't been matched by an explosion in the number of truly beautiful and popular places in the world. The ones we do have just get more crowded.
- jopsen 8y ago
  Maybe, but we do have lots of artificial travel destinations, Las Vegas, Disneyland, etc, comes to mind :)
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  You should see how overrun tourist spots are in China by the growing number of domestic travelers!
- almost_usual 8y ago
  There are plenty of beautiful places in the world, the ones that are overcrowded are popular and convenient.
mihaifm 8y ago
It’s not only low prices that helped tourism gain traction. It’s one of the areas massively impacted by technology in recent years...3G/4G, online maps, AirBnb, aviation safety ...all these allow the average teenager to take a tour across Europe with ease. It’s a trend now that young people take a year off between high school and university, just for travelling. Sounds absurd but some years ago people would think twice about travelling just because of the fear of getting lost.
rdiddly 8y ago
"It's time" to stop saying "it's time" for this or that. I've noticed it, which means being annoyed isn't far off. It's time to come up with a new way of titling your (usually) prescriptive and preachy shit. Nonetheless I still agree with the idea that you really don't need to go. Going and seeing some amazing thing is usually not that amazing. Especially when everyone else on this crowded-ass planet has the same idea. But sometimes you have to go do it, just to figure that out. Travel is the kind of thing where there's almost an inverse relationship between the amount you spend and the level of "meaning" you get out of it. At least in my experience. The trips I took "deluxe" style were pretty bland, while the ones where I had to problem-solve, use my wits, suffer a little, even dodge law enforcement (thinking of freight-hopping trips there) stand out more in memory.
OlivierKessler 8y ago
As if Indonesia ever needed tourism to throw garbages out, even in untouristy areas in Asia it's moutains of garbages everwhere. About the tourists being too many, that's a country's authority to regulate tourism, by enforcing Visa laws for example, Balinese corruption is to blame for what the place has become, not the tourists.
kbos87 8y ago
“Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”
jpatokal 8y ago
One interesting counterexample: Bhutan. Open to all visitors, but they need to pay $200 per day for the privilege. This includes basic/3-star accommodation and meals, you can opt to pay more if you wish and Aman has a string of resorts with $1000/night price tags if you do. Couple this with an authoritarian monarchy that does things like enforce local dress code by law, and you get most of the benefits of tourism without many of the downsides. Of course, it's debatable how well this model would adapt to tourist destinations that aren't obscure mountainous hermit kingdoms...
dzink 8y ago
Depending on your brain structure and circumstances travel can have a different effect on different people. I have some form of 4D memory - I can go back to any place i’ve seen, including my dreams and spend time there any time I want. The sights, the smells, the sounds. As a result I don’t feel a need to travel to the same place twice, but I do miss the people and the food at every place I go. So in a way with every trip, I leave a piece of me behind and I miss it, until no place can ever be perfect for all the precious people it’s missing. Others I know see travel as therapy, as an escape. They photoshop the people out of their photos to keep the place pure and go back to it by looking at albums. They enjoy the experience of being in the warm water of a favorite beach, and would do anything to go back there as often as possible. Travel should not be limited, but there needs to be an international protocol of conservationist behavior that we all abide by whenever leave home. More people have the means to travel every year, and likely a safe thing to do would be to print a protocol brochure/terms of travel if you will, and request agreement from everyone as a part of the ticket purchasing or customs process.

72 points by imartin2k 8y ago

Make me. > Tourism can destroy environments and drive out local residents. It’s time to rethink the purpose of travel. No. It may be time for author to rethink her travel and mind her own business.

aftbit 8y ago

There are many places in the world where the local economy is driven by tourism. Everyone would love to receive the benefits of tourism without the drawbacks, but that's not really possible. Consider your impact when you travel, but don't let that stop you from seeing the world.

jgh 8y ago

It's a conundrum, isn't it? On one hand travel inspires people to learn about the world and, hopefully, become more open-minded. As the article said it's never been cheaper to travel, so people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to do so are now able to. But as with anything we humans touch, if we aren't careful we inadvertently destroy it. So I wonder if there's a good solution here? The lazy one is to make everything incredibly expensive, but why should the world be limited to the rich (more than it already is, comparatively speaking)?

drukenemo 8y ago

As a regular traveller for leisure and living in a major tourist destination (Amsterdam), I've been thinking and experiencing a lot the issue of over-tourism. However, I disagree with the article's idea that the only solution is to stop traveling voluntarily. Personally, I think pre-approved tourist visas will be the most efficient way of controlling how many people can travel to a country and then regions of a country. So, the solution already exists in part. Understandably, a few cities and areas of a country receive most tourists. You could therefore regulate the amount of visitors in each area by issuing location-depdendent visas. For example: "On the chosen dates you can come to the United States, but cannot visit New York or Florida. You may visit California, Nevada, Georgia etc etc." It's terrifying and limiting, but realistically it's the only pro-active solution I can think of to improve the sustainability of a place, especially for the locals. Flight prices are likely to continue to drop and more people will have means to travel internationally. You cannot count on people's consciousness to address this issue.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
The issue with that, is that the US doesn’t have good ways of controlling internal movements. It can check your visa at the bodega, but once you are in, generally no one will check your visa again.
- drukenemo 8y ago
  No country has that kind of control level, as far as I know. But you could enforce it for example by preventing hotels/Airbnbs from legally accepting tourists with no visas for their region.
- habitue 8y ago
  You don't need 100% fool-proof internal movement tracking since it's just intended to reduce the volume of tourists in a particular area. I would think just limiting the number of tourist visas a particular destination airport can accept would be fine. Sure, you can drive from an airport in Tampa to go to Disney World, but it would massively reduce the number of people. (That being said, Disney is probably a bad example since it's not built on a world heritage site you need to limit foot traffic to, it replaced a bunch of orange groves in the middle of nowhere)
graeme 8y ago
A better solution might be robust local hotel/airbnb taxes. That may be the best proxy for whether someone is a tourist. That way, if a location is overwhelmed by tourists, it can raise a levy to discourage the flow. The trick would be designing a good system.
derf_ 8y ago
Or you could use market dynamics to allocate a scarce resource (i.e., raise the price): https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/359649/tourist-tax-up-to-35-to-be-charged https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/359649/tourist-tax-...
- gascan 8y ago
  I think people are in general becoming a little disillusioned with using market dynamics to allocate leisure. Nobody minds that only rich people can stay at fancy hotels. But if, hypothetically, only rich people can set foot in New Zealand? That offends people. Yes, scarce resources need allocating. Market dynamics are not the only way, see lottery permits in the NPS.

elipsey 8y ago

I grew up in Alaska in a town of about 30,000. The cruise ships carried ~5000 passengers, and they kept building new docks, so that there would be several at a time docked and anchored, each of which was bigger then our 10 story federal building. Picture a floating sky scraper. The part of town around their piers turns into theme park in the summer. They used to make announcements on their megaphones that I could hear from my house 2 miles away. They dumped sewage and trash in the ocean close to nearby towns sometimes using legal loopholes, but sometimes illegally, and were occasionally fined for this. They also set up company stores downtown, and bussed hundreds of people into small local parks, trails, and beaches. The cruise companies are incorporated in low tax foreign jurisdictions, outside the political reach of the citizens of places they visit. Sometimes the city pushes back a bit. The last time I went home they seemed to have eased off of the megaphones, and I heard a head tax was proposed at some point to help clean up after the tourists and maintain the public parks, but I don’t know if it passed. The city and state are both small enough that the cruise companies can out-lobby locals interests quite handily. They promise jobs, but import labor. They have PR campaigns that brag about their public service efforts, omitting that these are court ordered, etc. It seems to me that the ability to shop for jurisdiction creates great opportunity for legal arbitrage. I have no idea what to do about this, but I think it’s interesting. Maybe there’s a metaphor here… something something Panama papers. :)

koboll 8y ago
>I grew up in Alaska in a town of about 30,000. How many of those people would not be living there if not for the revenue brought in by tourism? Reading the article, my immediate thought was: of course the Balinese hate tourists, when the ill effects are so obvious, and the benefits more subtle; easy to take for granted. But where would they be economically if all the tourists just stopped coming? I would bet the resulting recession would make people yearn for what they once despised.
- elipsey 8y ago
  I would guess most of them. I don't think the population has grown proportionately with the tourist traffic. They used to only dock a couple of smaller ships at time, which had less impact on the town. It's the state capital, and there are also various industries. Also, tourism jobs tend to be temporary/seasonal, and people often come from out of town to do them for a few months and then leave. We get a hundred inches of rain a year, and in the winter it's dark a lot so there is no tourism in the winter. EDIT: Population has grown about 15% since 1990, but dock space has roughly trippled, and per ship passenger capacity has substantially increased. I haven't heard anyone suggest that tourism should be banned, just that it would be nice for it occur at a scale similar to a few decades ago, and to externalize costs less; e.g. refrain from illegal dumping, contribute to the upkeep of public goods that are exploited, and only increase the population of the town by, let's say, %20 on a given day.

peterwwillis 8y ago

"So is it possible to travel anywhere and feel OK about it?" "Ultimately, there’s only one surefire way to avoid contributing to the problems of tourism: don’t go." Hello clickbait, my old friend... I've come to talk with you again... Can you please stop over-generalizing? About the cause and effect of everything? Like the sweat from my balls causing avalanches in Nepal? That's a little far. I think it's time.... to flag this.

Yetanfou 8y ago
While I dislike the suggestion of flagging this - just ignoring it is a much better choice, there is enough censorship as it is - I do commend you for this piece of poetry. It neatly fits the metrum and I can almost hear that bald 'Disturbed' singer mumble out these alternative lyrics to the sounds of silence.

newnewpdro 8y ago

Air travel is exceptionally affordable because the fuel is not taxed. [1] We can curb frivolous air travel by fixing this anomoly, which is long overdue considering the global climate situation we find ourselves in. [1] http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00523.pdf http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00523.pdf

Retric 8y ago
Automotive fuel is taxed to pay for roads. Aircraft pay fees to use airports but that's independent of distance travel as that does not impact the airports. So, really if we want to tax CO2 we should tax all forms of CO2 equally in addition to current taxes.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  You should tax what you want to prevent in the way that harms the least things you want to continue. So for instance if you can show that car co2 use more drastically helps the most vulnerable amongst us while air co2 is largely a subsidy to rockstars then you can compellingly argue taxing air travel more on a per co2 basis is fine. Note: I don’t know enough to have an opinion.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Not all forms of CO2 emissions are equal. Aviation emissions at elevation "have a climate impact that is commonly estimated to be 2.7 higher than the same emissions if made at ground-level" [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermobility_(travel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermobility_(travel)
  - hueving 8y ago
    That's fine. The point is that adding an airline co2 tax should be met with co2 taxes on all petrol. The last thing you want to incentivize is a 737 worth of people all driving their own cars from LA to SF for the weekend instead of taking the flight.

aphextron 8y ago

When I was a kid I thought the greatest thing in life would be to travel around the world, see interesting things, meet interesting people, and go to interesting places. This in turn would make me a more interesting, worthwhile human being worthy of adoration. Somehow our generation was taught that our experiences define us. That by getting on a plane to London and taking some pictures somehow our lives would be more unique and amazing. So I spent my early 20s traveling and doing just that. Seeing everything there was to see. Doing all the things I ever dreamed of as a 16 year old kid stuck in the midwest. Being a hobo, I guess you could say, and having all of these "experiences" that I was sure would add up to a life of meaning. The result was a profound lack of satisfaction, and a severe existential dread at perhaps never finding any actual purpose. I was lucky to settle down, go back to school, and find a passion in programming and science which drives me toward working on bigger problems than myself, that might help humanity in some way. But I fear that the vast majority of people my age are still stuck in that mindset, having never got it out of their systems. Hoping and praying that this next trip to Bali will finally give them that satisfaction beyond filling 3 minutes in passing cocktail party conversation.

rco8786 8y ago
Interesting. We have had very different traveling experiences. Traveling and learning about other people and cultures has completely transformed the way that I think about myself and the world.
- gascan 8y ago
  Backpacking through the poorest parts of the world is a very different experience than drinking margaritas on a beach. "Travel" is so vague.
- timr 8y ago
  I recently spent a year living abroad, and while I'd agree that it transformed the way I think about myself, it did so in a way that made me critical about most forms of tourism. Hopping from place to place and seeing tourist sites can be fun and relaxing, but it's ultimately also pretty meaningless. This was drawn in sharp contrast for me because I was living in a famous tourist area (Kyoto), and I routinely saw the vast differences between the way tourists experience the area, and the way locals do. There's a very established tourist route, and it has almost no overlap (other than commercial) with the authentic life of the city. Tourists arrive, see the station, visit a few of the "mass-market" temples and shrines, then they leave. Even the folks who have "authentic experiences" are more-or-less following well-trodden pathways. It's hard, because I now find it difficult to travel to places where I don't have a deeper purpose for being there. Simply seeing something pretty is no longer enough. But I also recognize that this is, almost by definition, impossible for everyone to do. I like travel too, but I'm quite conflicted now. Most forms of mass-market tourism are essentially no different from Disney World, but with worse environmental impact. They're cancerous, and unless tightly regulated, will destroy the very places they promote. At least Disney World was built in a swamp!

trevor-e 8y ago

The article is trying to make the traveler feel guilty when to me the burden falls on local governments of these tourist destinations. If there's an impending ecological disaster isn't it in their best interest to have more regulations, eg by increasing fines/citations, limiting visas, increasing prices, etc? If AirBnB is displacing local residents then ban the service, many cities have started to do so. If the mangroves are being destroyed then disallow tourism to that area. Easier said than done of course since tourism is often driving the economy and everyone wants to make a quick buck.

ImaCake 8y ago
Why can't it go both ways? Tourists can make a conscious effort to put their rubbish in the bin and learn how to say "please" and "thanks" locally. I hike frequently, so simply by going to a national park I harm the environment there. But I also pay for park passes which help fund those parks, and I refrain from littering and wandering off the track.
- trevor-e 8y ago
  I'm sure most people try to put their rubbish in the bin if there are empty bins available. I've found most places are dirty because they don't have the infrastructure built for disposing of trash/recyclables, not that people are trying to be evil.
  - timr 8y ago
    "I've found most places are dirty because they don't have the infrastructure built for disposing of trash/recyclables, not that people are trying to be evil." If the local culture is to carry your trash with you, the "right" thing to do is to adapt yourself to that culture, not the other way around. You're a guest. But yes, you're factually correct: if cities don't do this, far too many tourists will just toss their trash anywhere they please.
    - 8xde0wcNwpslOw 8y ago

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tedmiston 8y ago

It seems like many people visit Bali as tourists because of geoarbitrage — dollar for dollar meals and housing are so much cheaper than in the states, and overall it's a nice place to work remotely (except internet) or vacation. It does sound like tourism has the potential to be exploitative. Maybe they can find a way to charge more only to tourists borrowing tricks like "resort fees" from Las Vegas. Or doubling prices and giving only residents discounts somehow.

ImaCake 8y ago
I feel like the internet in Bali is actually quite good. South-east asia has world class internet.
- tedmiston 8y ago
  Haven't been there myself, but I've mostly heard speeds along the lines of "Internet: 8mbps" [1][2]. Maybe it's that we've gotten use to 100+ Mbps in the US, or perhaps Ubud is an outlier? [1]: https://nomadlist.com/ubud-bali-indonesia https://nomadlist.com/ubud-bali-indonesia [2]: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50033/any-fast-internet-good-wifi-in-ubud-bali https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50033/any-fast-in...

Taniwha 8y ago

best quote from the article: "why call it tourist season if we can't shoot them"

philwelch 8y ago

You know, they're not making any more land. The world has gotten significantly richer since 1945, and a result of that is that more and more of the world's population has the ability to travel to the most beautiful and popular places in the world. However, this explosion in wealth hasn't been matched by an explosion in the number of truly beautiful and popular places in the world. The ones we do have just get more crowded.

jopsen 8y ago
Maybe, but we do have lots of artificial travel destinations, Las Vegas, Disneyland, etc, comes to mind :)
WillPostForFood 8y ago
You should see how overrun tourist spots are in China by the growing number of domestic travelers!
almost_usual 8y ago
There are plenty of beautiful places in the world, the ones that are overcrowded are popular and convenient.

mihaifm 8y ago

It’s not only low prices that helped tourism gain traction. It’s one of the areas massively impacted by technology in recent years...3G/4G, online maps, AirBnb, aviation safety ...all these allow the average teenager to take a tour across Europe with ease. It’s a trend now that young people take a year off between high school and university, just for travelling. Sounds absurd but some years ago people would think twice about travelling just because of the fear of getting lost.

rdiddly 8y ago

"It's time" to stop saying "it's time" for this or that. I've noticed it, which means being annoyed isn't far off. It's time to come up with a new way of titling your (usually) prescriptive and preachy shit. Nonetheless I still agree with the idea that you really don't need to go. Going and seeing some amazing thing is usually not that amazing. Especially when everyone else on this crowded-ass planet has the same idea. But sometimes you have to go do it, just to figure that out. Travel is the kind of thing where there's almost an inverse relationship between the amount you spend and the level of "meaning" you get out of it. At least in my experience. The trips I took "deluxe" style were pretty bland, while the ones where I had to problem-solve, use my wits, suffer a little, even dodge law enforcement (thinking of freight-hopping trips there) stand out more in memory.

OlivierKessler 8y ago

As if Indonesia ever needed tourism to throw garbages out, even in untouristy areas in Asia it's moutains of garbages everwhere. About the tourists being too many, that's a country's authority to regulate tourism, by enforcing Visa laws for example, Balinese corruption is to blame for what the place has become, not the tourists.

kbos87 8y ago

“Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

jpatokal 8y ago

One interesting counterexample: Bhutan. Open to all visitors, but they need to pay $200 per day for the privilege. This includes basic/3-star accommodation and meals, you can opt to pay more if you wish and Aman has a string of resorts with $1000/night price tags if you do. Couple this with an authoritarian monarchy that does things like enforce local dress code by law, and you get most of the benefits of tourism without many of the downsides. Of course, it's debatable how well this model would adapt to tourist destinations that aren't obscure mountainous hermit kingdoms...

dzink 8y ago

Depending on your brain structure and circumstances travel can have a different effect on different people. I have some form of 4D memory - I can go back to any place i’ve seen, including my dreams and spend time there any time I want. The sights, the smells, the sounds. As a result I don’t feel a need to travel to the same place twice, but I do miss the people and the food at every place I go. So in a way with every trip, I leave a piece of me behind and I miss it, until no place can ever be perfect for all the precious people it’s missing. Others I know see travel as therapy, as an escape. They photoshop the people out of their photos to keep the place pure and go back to it by looking at albums. They enjoy the experience of being in the warm water of a favorite beach, and would do anything to go back there as often as possible. Travel should not be limited, but there needs to be an international protocol of conservationist behavior that we all abide by whenever leave home. More people have the means to travel every year, and likely a safe thing to do would be to print a protocol brochure/terms of travel if you will, and request agreement from everyone as a part of the ticket purchasing or customs process.