4 out of 5 stars
The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.
Be a traveller, not a tourist, is a phrase that is often attributed to the late Anthony Bourdain. But is there a difference between a traveller and a tourist, though? Some people think that there is, and surprise, surprise, others don’t… Though I do like Paul Theroux’s definition: Tourists don’t know where they have been, travellers don’t know where they are going.
Daniel Maurer considered himself a traveller, following in the footsteps of Bourdain, but it slowly dawned on him that maybe he was just a tourist.
Travel for almost everyone stopped during the pandemic. It took a while, but the world slowly opened up again, and Maurer became, not by choice, a digital nomad.
He ends up in Mexico and tries to find an authentic town to live in that isn’t overrun with tourists (sic). In this modern world, just the mention of a place can see massive crowds of people flocking to visit. This can have an enormous detrimental effect on the are and the people when this happens.
He is only moderately scathing on travel influencers and the lack of transparency that they have with regard to their sponsors. He is even less enamoured by AI assistants, seeing them as boring, predictable and often error-prone.
Being a travel nomad puts him in the gig economy. Yes, living is much cheaper in Mexico than in the States, but getting paid work meant that he had to lower his prices.
Moving on to Argentina, he finds that having dollars in his pocket means that he can live like a king. However, he soon learns to keep quiet about this as Argentinians are suffering from the effects of high inflation. As the economy there slowly implodes, he decides that he would be better off in Spain, the home country of his mother.
It is another country that is suffering from a massive hike in tourists and all of the accompanying problems that they bring with them. This is a phenomenon that is happening all around the world at the moment as locals struggle to cope with increasing self-entitled tourists. Instagrammable sites are super popular and these are now getting restrictions on the number of visitors that can attend.
The arrival of lots of digital nomads means that the local economies have changed completely. Rents and other expenses rise dramatically, locking out locals from the homes that they need. We have seen this effect in Cornwall and other places in the UK. Countries that were once offering golden visas are quietly dropping them. Plus, there is a concerted effort in Europe to restrict the number of short-term rental properties available.
During the time that he spends in Barcelona, he comes to see for himself how the tourists or guiri, and they are known there, are becoming less and less welcome. The city is beginning to restrict how many shops selling tourist tat are allowed. In July 2024, there was a huge protest against tourism; visitors were squirted with water pistols and attractions were cordoned off with fake police tape.
‘The idea of ‘I’m not like the others’ is very egocentric,’ Pardo said. ‘I think it isn’t possible nowadays to come to Barcelona and not be a tourist. If you come, you must accept it: you are just another piece of the mass. And it’s not each person, it’s the mass that is killing the city.
Cruise ships are also becoming a target for locals’ ire. The island of Ibitha can get three huge ships a day, and these can bring 10,00 disembarking from the ships. 10,000! This huge influx of people, coupled with the fact that the ships pollute a lot, are not particularly green and sustainable. Some countries are now starting to limit the number of ships docking and are insisting that low-sulphur fuels are used to combat pollution.
Other places are pushing back on anti-social behaviour too, restricting drink sales for example. In a twist of irony that you couldn’t make up, the anti-tourism protests have become a tourist attraction in their own right.
Like in other countries, migration is becoming a political hot potato, and this is causing some countries to lurch towards right-wing parties. Strangely, though, the predominantly right-wing capitalist system demands that low-paid workers exist to maximise company profits and executive pay. Utterly mad system when you think about it.
Maurer visits Expo 2025 to see what the future of travel offers from a corporate point of view and would it would look like. Having read his description of the event, I think it sounds horrendous… Whilst tech and apps could offer assistance in finding lovely places to visit, it struck me most as being a way to fleece consumers from increasingly larger sums of money.
One good this was that countries are now offering regenerative tourism. You help in some way or other, and you are granted benefits in kind. Key to it is that you are helping the area that you are staying in, rather than money disappearing into the corporate coffers.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell – Edward Abbey
How do we answer that Maurer poses at the end of the book:
Can we learn to move as thoughtfully as we can, as carefully as we can?
I thought that this was a really interesting book. Through numerous examples, he asks some very thought-provoking questions about the nature of travel and tourism and it made me think about just how it is affecting people and places that are becoming inundated with thousands of people on a regular basis.
I do feel, though, that he didn’t fully answer the question that he posed in the book; so, what do we do about travel? Not that this is a fault, he wants you to think about the consequences of what you do and where you go and the choices that you make. We have to make sensible and sustainable decisions going forward.
If you like to travel, then this book would be a great place to start before you book that next flight or holiday.
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