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We’ve recently looked into the topic of ‘old-fashioned tourism’ and ‘travelers’. The common conclusion was that tourists are looking for superficial experiences and rest, both elements they can find by staying at chain hotels and visiting tourist attractions. In contrast, the traveler wants to experience the local’s culture before hand in the sense that he/she wants to have a real connection to the peoples of the host country.
The issue that came to my mind is whether there is a ‘better’ tourism. Can we really objectively say that a ‘traveler’ is better than a ‘tourist’? If so, for what reasons could we say so?

First, let’s look at the motives that encourage each type of travel. For tourists, the main motive is resting, being on vacation and also visiting ‘exotic and strange’ places. In other words, they want to take a brake and wonder at foreign cultural attractions like monuments, ruins, customs and beliefs. On the other hand, a traveler wants to connect, wants to go beyond just discovering a new culture, he really wants to immerse in the host’s life. The motives behind that could be mere curiosity or a need of having some perspective, something to compare and contrast our own culture. For example, in living with the Masai in sub-saharan Africa, one could see that our own culture has lost the sense of collective pride and glory that is still embedded into the Massai culture.
My personal opinion is that there is not necessarily a better type of travel. Travelling in and of itself is an industry that is constantly being criticized for it’s often negative impacts. Whether one travels to bond with new cultures or to discover different landscapes and architecture, tourism still has the potential for both great good and great wrongs. I believe that the question of weighing ‘travelers’ and ‘tourists’ really comes down to how willing the foreigner is to protect and to avoid harm to the local’s lives. A tourist that just wants to travel for the sake of seeing wonderful landscapes in New Zealand can have more positive impacts than a traveler that would want to live amongst the locals. If the first is conscious of his impact on local environment and culture, he can do much more good than one that would want to live amongst the locals without first taking into consideration how different their life is and how disruptive that ‘travelers’ presence can be.

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