Now that I've got two kids and a high-pressure job, tourism is how I expose myself and my kids to other cultures and experiences. It is possible to do it right by keeping an open mind and not being "those people". I'll relate one anecdote.
A couple of years ago we went to Panama and stayed in Panama City for a week before heading to the coast. While in the city we read about Amazon jungle tours. Not wanting to end up on a bus with a bunch of people, one night I headed out to a nearby square and started chatting up people with the limited but decent Spanish I've managed to learn over the past few years. I met a friendly restauranteur, explained that we wanted to head up to the jungle, and asked if he knew anyone who could take us.
Next morning we all crammed into a pickup truck driven by an incredibly vivacious and chatty Panamanian woman (the restauranteur's cousin) and roared off to the jungle. The trip included memorable moments such as the part where a long, remote bridge was shut down to car traffic, forcing us to leave the truck by the side of the road and hike across in brutal heat. On arriving at the other side, seeing how exhausted my kids were, she told us to wait under a tree and took off. Twenty minutes later she rolled up in a minivan, which she had borrowed from a fellow Panamanian (a total stranger) who had agreed to lend it to us, free of charge, for the afternoon. She explained that she had a guardian angel that helped her arrange such things.
We were tourists, 100%. But my whole family learned a lot from the experience.
When you do it it's "tourism" when I do it it's "travelling". When you're visiting a place for a shorter period of time primarily for leisure, you're a tourist. Sure you can tourist in more or less intrusive ways, but just accept the label and move on.
the Ramones could no longer rent an apartment in Brooklyn. Struggling painters could most certainly not afford to live in Paris these days...
None of which has anything to do with tourism.
On the contrary. Tourism is a major driving force behind the large scale conversion of long term rentals into hotels via Airbnb.
Which part do you oppose the most? The queuing, the photo taking, or the finding of the changing of the guards an amusing spectacle worth seeing once in your life. If there's no queue and I don't take any pictures, is it still "touristy"?
The bottom line is that most "touristy" stuff became touristy because it was a kind of cool/unique/fun/interesting thing to see/do. I agree that if there's a long queue you have to balance how much time you want to spend against the value of the thing you'll see.
The one where you lift property prices so high that nobody can live in the city centres anymore.
Dictionary definition of a tourist: "One who travels for pleasure.".
This local goes the same places the tourists do because the UK is beautiful and the foreign tourists I meet have good taste ;)
In comparison, I also move to a new country every ~2.5 years on average because I get bored of the place I live in after a while, and that does nothing to reduce the enjoyment I get from traveling to new places.
I did that, and it didn't "enlighten" me much. I think it may be because I was already very aware, thanks to Internet and the media industry, of an American culture, which is very different from my own, so I already had a good basis for comparison.
> Tourism is a farce. I guess it gives you the social status points of going through a challenge, without actually facing any difficulties or learning anything.
I never do tourism stuff (not out of snobbishness, I am just not that interested), but my aunt does, and to her, it's just a best use of her 10 days a year of vacation that she gets. She's working 6 days a week for less than a minimum wage, so the last thing she wants is a "challenge" really - I'm impressed that she does not go get lay on a beach somewhere and just regenerate, but prefers being bussed around Europe.
> Struggling painters could most certainly not afford to live in Paris these days, Montmartre or otherwise.
Why is it important for painters to live in Paris? You can paint anywhere and there's plenty of affordable places in the world.
Please, please, please don't use this phrase. I don't want to be an instagram fueled "traveler" who ends up begging[^1].
[^1]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4400790/Rise-Wester...
If you want to travel, have the funds. Why on Earth would I support someone else's trip when I could save that money for my own?!
Of the ten pictures, five of them were busking (and of the five, two to three were pretty damn half-assed).
What is destroying the ability of kids to live in London and Paris is a lot more complex, but has a lot more to do with plutocracy and the rise of moneyed anti democratic forces than tourism.
And as every aging punk rocker knows, the Ramones were from Queens.
It would be great for many locations if half of the visitors would simply stay at home.
But,
> Be a traveler, not a tourist!
Please don't make this worse by putting this idea into more heads. Personally I read up on the most popular TV shows and advise everyone to just stay home while I go do (something else).
The way you describe "traveling" is actually tourism, just long-form. Read a book if you need to "expand your horizon," or I don't know, follow someone on Twitter.
Like, do you think wealthy expats aren't part of the issue? Sure, AirBnB has accelerated the process, but expat-driven price inflation and gentrification were displacing poor people for years before AirBnB exploded.
But it is definitely not the same to move to another city in your own country or go somewhere else where social norms and language are fundamentally different.
Not less importantly, it gives you empathy for "the other". It makes you understand how similar we all are at the core and, paradoxically, how diverse our behaviors and viewpoints can be. And it makes it harder and harder to believe that you, specifically, were born in the place with the correct behaviors and the correct viewpoint.
Tourism is a farce. I guess it gives you the social status points of going through a challenge, without actually facing any difficulties or learning anything. You can have your photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, or that cute Buddhist Temple, or whatever. Maybe use that super expensive camera you bought as a toy (god forbid you use it to do something different, something that hasn't been done before by one million people just that week).
Tourism itself is a paradox: its gaze destroys the very thing it wants to look at. The Ramones could no longer rent an apartment in Brooklyn. Struggling painters could most certainly not afford to live in Paris these days, Montmartre or otherwise. Punk Rock in London? Only if you have a banking job on the side... The old ladies who sang fado from windows in old Lisbon neighborhoods had to move to the suburbs, because Madonna arrived with her entourage and every rich kid wants a piece of that "genuine" action on their Instragram.
Be a traveler, not a tourist!