Intentional Travel: Reducing Harm
When we travel, we often spend ages planning and prepping to “maximize” our trip (see how our capitalist mentality seeps into all aspects of our lives, even something as innocuous as travel?)
From accommodation to activities, we obsess about booking that perfect Airbnb or luxe boutique hotel and packing our days with enriching experiences, whether fun, relaxing, or simply checking the box of been-there-done-that.
But few of us spare a thought for our impact on the people, places, and spaces that we come into contact with when we travel.
As much as we are changed by the places we visit, so are they by us — and it is worthwhile to examine, if even for just a moment, how our actions and perhaps even our mere presence, change the places we find ourselves in.
I remember when I was a child, my family and I went to Thailand. As part of whatever tour package we were on (it was the 90s, and group tour packages were all the rage), we visited what I remember as a “village”.
There were huts, and people dressed in very odd (to me) attire came out to greet us. I vaguely remember being presented with flower garlands? but I may be making things up — the memory of a child is an unreliable narrator.
I do clearly remember that they sat the entire group of us (about 40 Singaporeans, mostly Chinese + my family) on logs around a clearing. As we watched and clapped at appropriate times, they performed a song-and-dance routine, dressed in traditional garb. After that, the “leader” brought us around to the huts. In one hut, I recall seeing a woman crouched on the ground, her back towards us, cooking food over a small wood stove. When we entered the small, cramped space (the adults ducking their heads to avoid bumping into the low thatched roof), she turned around the greet us and chattered away in a foreign language. We all smiled awkwardly.
Other huts had low rattan beds, straw mats spread on the floor, a family seemingly being interrupted in the middle of their meal — everyone we encountered, was impossibly pleasant-natured and smiling.
Even as a child, I remember feeling unsettled.
How weird for people to have random strangers come into their homes!
In the middle of whatever they were doing in life!
And to interrupt everything they were doing to put on a performance for these foreigners who stood by and gaped at them, with little understanding of anything that was presented…
To me, it just seemed bizarre.
Even more mindblowing to me was, as I was leaving, I saw one of the men who had performed the dance — except he was dressed in “regular” street clothes and preparing to leave.
I think I was shocked.
These people didn’t really live here?
They had put on a show of living in this “village” and showcasing their “daily lives” — just for us?
Call me naive but I was a child.
And yet, isn’t this whole concept so weird?
What happened almost 30 years ago in Thailand is still happening everywhere around the world.
In fact, I would say it has only become worse as the tourism and travel industry has exploded in the past few years and more and more people venture outside their homelands to visit foreign (and “exotic”) lands.
Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t travel.
By all means, travel.
See the world.
Interact with people from vastly different backgrounds and cultural contexts.
BUT at the same time, recognize that your presence in these spaces and communities is not without an impact.
What kind of impact do we have when we travel?
Here are some things I’ve observed.
Travel gentrification
This is a big one and it’s happening in many developing nations around the world. Close to home (for me), this has happened in Mexico City, where a significant proportion of homes available for rent have been leased out to tourists/travelers/digital nomads/foreigners with money, to the point where the monthly rent in the Polanco, Roma Norte, and Condesa neighborhoods is often upwards of 20,000 MXN (USD 1,200).
In a country where the median salary is approximately 29,200 MXN (USD 1,695/month), you can see how the presence of travelers is leading to some sort of gentrification and pushing locals out of areas that they may have typically inhabited.
I have also encountered parts of cities that have become almost exclusively dedicated to housing tourists and travelers in prime locations, while locals are either stuck paying exorbitant prices or faced with a much longer commute as they move to more far-flung areas of cities.
Airbnb has been (in my observation) a big driving factor.
What initially started off as a way for people with spare rooms in their homes (kids’ rooms after they’ve moved out, etc.) to make a bit of extra cash, has now evolved into something completely different. Yes, there are still people who rent out the spare bedroom in their homes or their late grandmother’s home, but in popular cities, a new type of Airbnb owner has made an entrance on the scene — the developer.
These are often the superhosts on Airbnb. They have dozens, if not hundreds, of glowing reviews — Airbnb is a significant source of their income.
And because it’s a source of income for them, they treat renting out apartments on Airbnb as a job.
There’s no denying that they offer a great service. But what concerns me is that these developers often buy up properties in popular tourist neighborhoods and push out the local communities that live/have lived there for decades — all in the name of making good money.
I don’t fault these developers for doing this. They saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. This is what capitalism tells us to do.
But as people who are visiting a foreign country or city, we can be more mindful of whom we choose to give our money to — “vote with your dollars” if you will.
How to be more intentional:
My advice here is not to boycott Airbnb. I mean, if you can and can find accommodation that fits your needs without Airbnb, then go for it. But for most of us, Airbnb is a genuine platform to find accommodation that few others can beat.
What we can do is be more mindful of the properties we choose to stay at. I usually opt for hosts who only have one or two properties on Airbnb. This reduces the likelihood that they’re a developer cashing in on a hot tourism industry.
I also prefer to stay in places that have some explanation about why the host is renting out this accommodation on Airbnb.
“This is a beautiful apartment my great aunt left me, and now I’m renting it to guests on Airbnb.”
“My brother uses this amazing studio apartment when he is in town but he travels often for work so we rent it when possible.”
“Our son lives in a different city now so we use it to welcome guests into our home and share with them the culture of XYZ town.”
Just by paying a little bit more attention to the places we opt for, we can reduce the harm we unintentionally/inadvertently cause when we seek to visit new places.
Loss of traditional economies
The pandemic was an eye-opener for me. I traveled to Guatemala in April 2021 and was shocked by how badly impacted some tourist towns were by the global lockdowns and sudden cessation of tourism.
People who had shifted away from their traditional economies to ride the capitalist train to riches suddenly found themselves without any appreciable source of income when the tourists simply stopped arriving.
My host in Lago Atitlan, a wonderful woman named Rosa, shared with us her difficulties. As someone who depends on tourists coming to her community to learn Spanish (she offered a boarding service, with accommodation and meals), she was hit really hard. She confided that some of the students who had previously stayed with me were sending her money to tide her over in this time.
Rosa’s story is not unique.
Like her, many others who depend on tourism were badly affected when the pandemic forced the world into a global lockdown. For places that had subsisted on other traditional economies for years but shifted towards tourism as the demand and presence of tourists grew in recent times, this is a sharp reminder of what we’re potentially “forcing” communities to give up when we flock to their lands with our dollars and euros.
How to be more intentional:
Well, there’s no easy answer to this, is there?
Living in this capitalistic world where making money seems to be the key to survival, it’s no wonder that communities around the world, especially in developing economies, are attracted to the “easy money” that shifting to tourism promises.
But as the pandemic and general trends in the tourism industry show us — places that get thousands of tourists in one year may not see such a vast number the next.
What we can do (as a first step, for now) is pay attention to existing traditional economies in the places we visit. Engage with the locals about what economies existed before tourism took over. If there are opportunities to learn about them, do so. Support people who still work in those traditional industries.
Perhaps even reconsider visiting more insulated communities — tourism is not always a good thing and some communities would fare better on their own without us.
I don’t have a good answer to this particular problem of tourism, but perhaps becoming aware of how we are influencing the lives of others just by our existence is a start.
Disruption of traditional ways of life, language, culture
With more tourists and foreign visitors (and even non-locals who come to live for a time in these communities), there is a huge disruption to the traditional ways of life, languages, and cultures.
When I visited Vilcabamba, a small village situated in a valley in the south of Ecuador with fewer than 5,000 residents, I was surprised to find the older server at the pizzeria spoke English. As did the lady manning the cashier at the grocery store. And the taxi driver who drove me home one night.
Everyone spoke to me in English until I put them at ease with a simple “yo hablo español” and we switched over to Spanish. I’d put the first couple of occurrences down to chance, but eventually, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked them why they spoke English.
Los gringos, they told me — the north North Americans, foreigners.
After an article in a popular magazine among retirees published a piece about Vilcabamba being a haven to retire, people from the US and Canada (as well as some Europeans) flocked to Vilcabamaba to live out their sunset years.
Unfortunately, armed with the conceited self-assuredness that the world will adapt to them, very few of them bothered to learn Spanish. A lady I met who had been living in Vilca for 8 years, could barely say 3 sentences in Spanish.
So, the locals were forced to learn English.
Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. But I foresee the younger generation of children being made to learn English to cater to this expat community, and their children being raised purely on English to give them better opportunities in the community — within three generations, will Spanish be lost to them?
I’ve seen this preference for English (and Spanish or any other language of the colonizers) take hold in many places around the world. Over time, native languages are lost as fewer and fewer people see them as something worth learning and speaking and saving.
Ancestral knowledge is also lost in a similar fashion.
In Mexico (and in indigenous North American tradition), land is often cultivated with the “3 sisters” — corn, beans, and squash. These three plants thrive together and produce a more bountiful harvest than any one of these crops alone. But these traditions are slowly being left behind with a preference for monoculture or single-crop farming, which depletes the lands more quickly and is a less “efficient” use of the land.
I know that’s not technically the fault of people who travel (in the typical sense) but those ideas did arrive with foreigners who brought their knowledge to these lands and prompted shifts away from the traditional ways of life.
What happens when we travel to a place and expect the locals to adapt to us, instead of the other way around?
What traditions, what ways of life and living, do we lose when we arrive in places with our own ideas about how things are and how things should be?
How much are we willing to lose before we realize that it’s all worth saving?
How to be more intentional:
At the most basic level, learn the language of the people.
It’s not that difficult to put in a little effort to learn a little bit, some basic communication. Stop expecting the world to cater to you and have a little respect for the fact that you are the visitor in someone else’s home.
In that same line, learn about the culture, traditions, and customs of the local people and follow them. Be open and curious. Avoid being a holier-than-thou jackass.
Just because you tip in your home country doesn’t mean it’s needed or expected everywhere you travel. Just because you wear your shoes around your house doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take your shoes off when you visit with a family that doesn’t. Just because you think it’s disrespectful to discuss your salary with people you just met doesn’t mean they do.
It costs very little to be a respectful guest.
Travel is great. But in recent years, I’ve become more aware of how much of an impact I have on the local communities where I find myself.
I am changed by them as they are by me.
And as the person who is trespassing (in a manner of speaking) on the homelands of others, it is on me to find ways to minimize my impact and reduce the (unintentional) harm I may cause.
Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.
So the next time you pack your bags to go somewhere amazing and experience something completely new — spare a thought:
What impact will you have on them?
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