This week on Unpacked, host Aislyn Greene chats with journalist and author of The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel, Paige McClanahan, about what it takes to have transformative travel experiences— for yourself and for the places you visit. Their conversation runs the gamut on current travel issues— from last-chance tourism to visit disappearing reefs and glaciers to anti-tourism protests in Barcelona— so that you can use your vacation to contribute to a better, more connected world.
Transcript
Aislyn: I’m Aislyn Greene and welcome back to season three of Unpacked, the podcast that unpacks one tricky topic in travel each week. And this week we’re exploring how tourism has shaped the world for better . . . and for worse. I spoke with Paige McClanahan, author of a new book titled The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel.
Paige is an American journalist based in France. She’s also the host of The Better Travel Podcast. And for several years, she lived in a tiny tourist town in the French Alps. Watching the day-to-day in a tourist hot spot helped her see both the positives and the negatives of tourism, all of which was early inspiration for the book. For The New Tourist, Paige reported in popular destinations around the world, including Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Hawai‘i. But it is not preachy or in any way anti-travel.
As the book reveals how the travel industry has shaped how we view the world, it spotlights painful truths, yes. But it also delivers a message of hope that the right kind of tourism and the right kind of tourist can be a powerful force for good. There is also a surprise guest toward the end of this episode—my very loud, attention-hungry cat, Bubs—so apologies in advance. And now onto Paige.
Paige, welcome to Unpacked. I’m really happy to have you here to unpack your fantastic new book, which I feel like should be essential reading for the modern traveler. So I wanted to know what inspired you to write this.
Paige: Well, first of all, thank you so much, Aislyn. “Essential reading for the modern traveler.” Wow. Um, that’s high praise. So thank you for that. What inspired me to write this? You know, I’ve been a journalist for a long time and for many years, you know, I started off focusing on economic and political issues and global development and I was doing travel writing, but it was kind of on the side. It was something that I did for fun.
And, you know, I wrote features for the Washington Post and for magazines in the United States and the U.K. But it was really in 2018, when I moved with my family to a little village in the French Alps, when I started to see, you know, when I became a resident of a tourist destination for myself, and I started to see all of the wonderful ways in which tourism kind of gave life to this little village in, you know, a very remote corner of the mountains, but also as a resident, I lived with some of the, you know, downsides, some of the negative effects of tourism in such a small rural place.
So it was that move that really gave me this perspective that, you know, inspired my journalism from there. I thought, Tourism is such a huge force, such a massive force, and what’s happening in this little village is happening in countless places all over the world. I mean, today there’s almost no corner of the world that tourism hasn’t touched.
And in 2024, we’re going to have 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals this year. So tourism touches so many aspects of our lives. And the more I started to look into this, just the more fascinated I became by this huge phenomenon of tourism and all of its impacts: social, environmental, economic, of course, but also political impacts of tourism.
And so I started to explore these questions in my journalism for the New York Times and I quickly sort of came up against the, the limits of the, the word count in a newspaper article, and was inspired to write a book that would allow me to explore these questions in greater depth. And it would also allow me to really paint a sort of a human picture of these tourist destinations.
I really wanted to have the chance to spend a lot of time with people who live in some of the world’s most iconic tourist destinations, like Hawaii and Amsterdam and Barcelona, to help my reader really get a sense of what life is like there for people who live there year-round.
Aislyn: Yeah. Absolutely. I live in Sausalito, California, and this is also a tourist destination. And it was interesting to read your book with that framing in mind because there’s just certain things that I’ve kind of done or not done naturally when we’re in high tourist season, where it’s like, you don’t go downtown on the weekends. Like it’s just kind of a nightmare.
But one of the things that I really appreciated in your book was that you examined the word “tourist” and this idea that most of us dislike thinking of ourselves as a “tourist,” preferring instead to think of ourselves as like these high-minded “travelers.”
But why do you think it’s so important to remember that we are indeed, a tourist when we’re out in the world?
Paige: Exactly. I mean, I think the word “tourism” carries a lot of stigma, the word “tourist” can carry a lot of stigma. And I just don’t think that that’s necessarily helpful, um, you know, to have a negative association with the word.
So when we think about the challenges of tourism or the problems that tourism can cause, if we think of tourists as other people, if we think of tourism as something that other people do, then we as people who are privileged enough to have the chance to visit other countries when we go on vacation, we won’t feel implicated in the problems that tourism can cause.
You know, that’s like, if we dissociate ourselves from tourism, then we dissociate ourselves from the problems of tourism, which means we disempower ourselves from contributing to the solutions that we can bring to tourism. And you know, we, we take away the agency that we have to make tourism a more constructive force in the world.
So I think that actually, it might feel a little bit uncomfortable to call yourself a tourist. I mean, I certainly—you know I don’t…like I’ve been a tourist for a long time and it’s something that, you know, you do have to kind of think about a little bit or make an explicit choice to to do—but I think that really by owning tourism wholeheartedly in all its positive and negative implications, that’s really the first step toward making sure that tourism can contribute in a more constructive way to you know, our societies and to us as individuals as well.
Aislyn: Absolutely. It is something that, you know, I think we’ve done at Afar where it’s like we’re travelers and the word “tourist” has been something that maybe we’ve stayed away from, and so I want to bring that back into how we write about stories and the word choices that we make.
Paige: It’s a tough one because, and I’ll just give a little window into some behind-the-scenes discussions around the book because, you know, there were some voices in my publisher who were concerned about this word “tourist” and having the word “tourist” in the title on the cover of the book, right? Is this going to turn people off? Like, is this going, you know, people aren’t going to want to buy it.
So, you know, we ended up with what I think is a title and subtitle combination that works really well and is very true to the contents of the book. But it is tough, you know, and as, as somebody like you, who’s working in the world of, you know, communication and communicating about travel, like, how do you engage people in a constructive discussion on this topic without turning them off? Because if you turn people off, then you’re not even going to have a conversation with them.
So, just to say I can empathize with the delicacy of those decisions, but yeah, we have to really think carefully about how we can invite people to have this discussion with us.
Aislyn: Yeah. And I think that in our roles as travel writers, as travel editors, we do wield a lot of power. And so it’s important to be cognizant of that and to think these things through very carefully. You know, even if ultimately we decide, well, “traveler” is the word that we prefer, just not distancing ourselves from “tourist.”
Paige: Yeah. Understanding that the, you know, the traveling, the exploring, the adventuring, you know, it all happens—it’s all tourism, right? It’s all happening within the scope of tourism and we’re not disowning tourism, I think is the message that I most want to get across.
Aislyn: And who is the “new tourist” and how do you think of it as different from the “old tourist?”
Paige: Well, I think of it as a spectrum, right? There’s no sort of final destination. We’re all somewhere on the spectrum. We slide sort of back and forth. We’re all kind of aiming for, for one side, right? But just to say, you know, I’ve been an old tourist, sure. Oh my gosh. Yes. Absolutely. Like we all have. Have I been something higher minded than that? Absolutely. Yes, I have as well. So just to say, first of all, like, I don’t want to sort of like, you know, wag my finger at anybody here.
But generally speaking, the old tourist is, I think of, as like a pure consumer who is also ignorant of their impacts on the place that they’re visiting.
So it’s somebody who comes to a place, they see it, it’s there to serve them, you know, “I paid my money, I’m here to get my money’s worth.” And they probably see themselves as superior to the people or the place they’re visiting. They also kind of close themselves off to having any sort of real human exchange, with the residents of the place they’re visiting. And yet they kind of may be willfully blind to the impacts of their presence on the place.
In contrast, the new tourist is somebody who really takes the time to educate themselves about the impacts of their presence on the place and then uses that information to make informed decisions to ensure that their visit will contribute as much as possible to the positive, you know, constructive aspects of tourism in that place and will minimize any negative aspects of their, their presence in, you know, this tourist destination.
The new tourist is also somebody who really opens their hearts and minds and travels with a huge amount of curiosity and humility and seeks out real human connections with the people in the places they’re visiting. The new tourist is somebody also who’s willing to put themselves out of their comfort zone because when we make ourselves uncomfortable, that’s really when we give ourselves the greatest opportunities to grow and come home with a changed perspective, which of course is one of the most beautiful gifts that travel can offer us.
Aislyn: In one of the chapters, and I was surprised by this, but you explored the baby boomer generation and the guide books they produced. And the way that they really fundamentally changed how we now move about the world. So, A, I was curious to know if you were surprised by that story. And B, I was wondering why you focused on guidebooks and then specifically the Wheelers who founded the Lonely Planet series.
Paige: In the first chapter of the book, I kind of wanted to do something to bring readers into the present moment in travel. And I wanted to have some way to kind of tell the recent history of tourism, because, you know, I wanted to help people understand just how cataclysmic this shift in international travel has been.
If we’re looking back to the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s to today, it’s been huge. So how do you tell in like a chapter—I think that’s the longest chapter of the book—how do you tell that story in a chapter? And it’s like “OK, well you need some main characters, right? You need a narrative arc, you need some tension.”
So I’m like, who are my main characters? And I’m looking around, so I’m like, how do I tell this story? And I was like, Lonely Planet is, you know, like I would argue, the most influential travel brand of the 20th century. It had a huge impact on how we travel, how we see the world, and it, like, it both sort of narrated and laid the blueprint for the further expansion of travel.
You know, in the 1990s, early 2000s, et cetera. So I thought, “OK, this is an interesting story.” And of course, I was born in 1982. Like in the late ’90s, early 2000s, what was I doing? I was traveling the world with my blue-spined Lonely Planet guidebook, you know? So I had a personal kind of stake in this.
I was, I used to just like, I loved guidebooks. My actual, my very first gig as a travel writer was working on a guidebook. Like, it wasn’t a Lonely Planet guide, but it was The Bradt Guide to Sierra Leone. I lived in Sierra Leone for a couple of years. While I was there, I prepared the second edition of The Bradt Guide to Sierra Leone.
So I had this kind of fascination with guidebooks and once I started to dig into that history, it was just, it became ever more fascinating. I mean, I interviewed Mark Ellingham, the founder of the Rough Guides, who told me being in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, he was like, “Paige, this was like frontline journalism. Like, you don’t understand.”
Like we’re talking about an Anglophone audience here, right? But like, you know, these, these travel guides hadn’t been written, they were really just writing the blueprint for the travelers who would come after them.
And when I started to think about that and dig more into the history, I just became so fascinated. And also there’s this lovely, sort of side note that I make about the Fodor’s Guides and how they were, they had CIA agents, like, you know, kind of undercover CIA agents working as travel guide writers in Europe, you know, during the Cold War.
Aislyn: Blew my mind.
Paige: I was looking around and sort of like, you know, it’s like maybe has some like magazine done like a really long deep dive on this, you know, has some has this story been told and I was like, I couldn’t find a place in popular like nonacademic, really popular media where this story had been told in a way, a kind of cogent way.
And I thought like, “OK, well, maybe this is my chance to contribute something to sort of retelling this history.” And because all of these actors pretty much, uh, with a couple of exceptions are still alive and I was able to, you know, interview Tony Wheeler a couple of times, Rick Steves, Mark Ellingham, like I said, like these guys really gave me a such a rich version of this history. I felt really privileged to be able to share it. And I hope so in a way that’s really captivating for my readers, too.
Aislyn: It was. It was a great way to dive into the book, because I do feel like that was a story that had not been told. All of these names that I so associate with travel, like they’re just kind of burned into my brain and feel like they’ve been there forever, [they] have not been there forever, and all kind of came about at the same, you know, it’s all part of the same generation.
Paige: Yeah, I mean these guys, they were all like really a product of their generation, right? Just like, I mean, we all are to some extent.
Aislyn: Well, then you transitioned from that into kind of social media as the modern form of travel writing, which I appreciated that kind of specificity, and how influential it is. So I was wondering how did writing this book change the way that you use social media and what tips would you share for travelers who have more power and influence than we think?
Paige: Thank you. Yeah, I mean that’s my big takeaway is that even little old me who’s not much of anybody on social media, let’s be honest. I have more influence than I think I do over the people who follow me because I know a lot of them personally and surveys have shown we’re more influenced by posts from people we know like, you know, your cousins, friends from high school or whatever. These people’s posts will impact you more strongly than the post of a sort of some celebrity travel influencer. So actually, you know my big takeaway in the research that I did for that chapter is actually I need to be more thoughtful. And I thought about so many different ways to approach that chapter because I wanted to encourage people to be more thoughtful in their social media posts.
There were so many examples, like I could have picked some egregious example that I found on Instagram of somebody doing it. And I was like, you know what, but if I do that, A, that’s not my style. Like, I don’t want to take somebody down. That’s not nice. B, that’s not going to encourage my reader to engage in self-reflection.
They’re just going to be sitting there next to me being like, “Oh my God, can you believe that,” you know? So I’m like, let me use myself. Let me be the change I want to see in the world, right? Let me go out and make myself a little bit vulnerable and share something that I posted on social media long before, this is like four or five months before I started doing the research for chapter two of the book. I posted this thing on Instagram and so in researching that chapter, I was like, “Oh God, yeah, that thing. That wasn’t the best really, was it?”
And so I was like, let me use myself as the example to kind of knock down a little bit, but in doing so, I hope I might invite my reader to, to do the same thing with a sort of a spirit of generosity toward our younger selves, you know.
Aislyn: Yes. And that you don’t necessarily have to, like, write a novel, it can be, relatively simple to maybe deepen what you post or add a little more nuance or not just fall into the trap of posting the like, you know, all the wonderful photos that your guide took of you and without any kind of narrative.
Paige: Exactly, and I’ve had some really interesting conversations with, you know, travel influencers who I think are doing things in a more constructive way and who are, you know, being very thoughtful and considerate in their posts. And really the theme that keeps coming up is just, you know, decentering yourself, which is the opposite of what I did in my little Instagram reel, which is still on my Instagram page.
If anyone’s curious, I haven’t taken it down. I’m like, I’ll leave it there so people can see. But decentering yourself, and just really remembering that, you know, wherever you’re posting about, this is somebody’s home. Like, imagine if this, you know, you had a friend who is from this place who’s going to see this post on your social media feed.
Like, would you change anything in the caption? Would you change any of the pictures? Like this is somebody’s home you’re writing about. Don’t forget that.
Aislyn: Well, you talk a lot about, you know, of course, the things that we can do as individual travelers, but I appreciated that you held this nuanced perspective on the many different factors that go into influencing whether tourism has kind of a net positive or net negative on a place.
And one of them is government regulation and what happens when that doesn’t take place and the private sector controls the narrative. But why do you think governments were so slow to kind of come to this idea that they have to regulate tourism to make it beneficial?
Paige: Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of the, the positive trends that I’m seeing now is that a lot of governments are really waking up to this and people are being more proactive and thinking about it. And you know, anti-tourism headlines that we see, you know, as difficult as it might be to read those headlines, I think that they are inspiring—they’re delivering a message to local leaders in a lot of places that tourism is something that’s worth paying attention to.
And tourism is just something that it’s easy to gloss over and think like, oh, that’s just kind of for fun. It’s not something we need to spend too much time thinking about. And, you know, I write a lot about Barcelona in the book, and that’s, you know, a place where they saw tourism as really a source of economic growth as a lot of places do and they pushed really hard for tourism starting from, you know, the Summer Olympics of 1992 right through 2015 with the election of Ada Colau as the city’s mayor.
The government of Barcelona was going, like, full tilt on tourism and they didn’t create the kind of taxes and regulations and physical infrastructure that they needed to be able to welcome all of those tourists in a way that wouldn’t have a damaging effect on the quality of life of their residents. And now they’re paying the price.
So I hope that other governments are watching the news now and are being more proactive as they’re marketing themselves to tourists because of course for every story about Barcelona or Venice or Amsterdam, there are dozens of unwritten stories about the places that are working really hard to get more tourists right now And I hope that those places are being proactive to prevent the future sort of—any future headlines from other places.
Aislyn: Absolutely. I mean, we just saw the recent headlines about protesters spraying tourists with water in Barcelona, you know, because they’re so kind of fed up with what’s going on. And there’s the new mayor who is, as I understand it, more pro-tourism.
Paige: So when I was visiting, um, Barcelona for the book, Ada Colau was mayor. She was voted out last year and the new mayor initially took a more pro-tourism— as Mar Santamaria Varas, who I interview for the book, you know, she was explaining to me, you know he took initially a much more pro-tourism growth stance. However, since we’ve seen the headlines about these anti-tourism protests in Barcelona, he has come out with some very strong measures, including, you know, banning Airbnb in the city, which, you know, even Ada Colau, she put a huge focus on taking on Airbnb and other short-term, you know, vacation rentals. Even she didn’t go as far as this mayor has just proposed going. So I think that you know, these protesters like, you know, they got a lot of media attention. It seems to be having the desired effect.
Aislyn: Yeah, I mean that’s good, we hope.
Paige: Well, I mean, you know, I think that the most important lesson I think to pull from this, from the, the experience of Barcelona, is that we need to see in every tourist destination a really close collaboration between residents and government in terms of how tourism functions.
And in the best places, you know, the government is listening really closely to resident hopes and concerns about tourism and is responding really quickly. And I think that’s what they didn’t have in Barcelona for a long time, but hopefully they’re, they’re getting closer to that now.
Aislyn: Well, you used the example of Kerala, which you did an episode about, and we’ll link to, but that was such a fantastic example of that partnership and bringing tourism back from kind of a terrible place and turning it into something that’s more of a net positive.
Paige: Exactly. I mean, I think, yeah, Kerala was a wonderful example, and I was glad to be able to include it in the book, because it was an example of where the local government really, or the state government in that case, really responded proactively to anti-tourism protests, just like, you know, you see anti-tourism protests in Barcelona, there were anti-tourism protests in Kerala, like 2007, 2008, and the government responded, and followed up and you know, this state which has a population, I think, about the size of California. So this is not, you know, a minor state, you know, in India. They created a responsible tourism mission and they hired one of the lead protesters to run it, Rupesh Kumar, who I was lucky enough to spend, um, a lot of time with when I was in Kerala in 2022.
So yeah, this is an example of a way that a government can respond in a manner that can end up being really constructive.
Aislyn: Well, speaking of Airbnb and the Airbnb problem, you know, it used to be that that was kind of a way to travel like a local. And so it’s so interesting to me how quickly that has changed. I was wondering, if you think that we should avoid Airbnb entirely, or if you have tips on how to identify when it’s being rolled out properly in a place. Like how do you figure out if it’s an Airbnb that is helping or hurting?
Paige: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that question. And I mean, and I would say, never is a word to avoid just in general. And so I would say, you know, approach Airbnb. It can offer a wonderful service, right? And I would just say like anything, approach it with caution, do your homework, and also consider the alternatives.
Studies have found, and there’s an excellent academic who has done a lot of work on this, his name is Dr. Daniel Gutentag at the University of Charleston, who has done a lot of work on this, a lot of research on this. He told me: Try to avoid the professional operators. Try to rent, if you’re doing Airbnb or another kind of vacation rental, make sure it’s from an individual who owns that place and who is renting out. Ideally, they live there most of the time and they’re going away for a couple of weeks and you’re occupying it when they’re, you know, when they’re on vacation.
Also make sure that, you know, do your research on, if you want to come to like Paris, where I’m sitting right now, take some time to do your research on the city’s regulations on Airbnb: Do they require a registration number? It should be posted on the site, on the page for the place you’re looking to book.
But also it is, if you’re coming to a major European city, like look for a little boutique hotels or other ways that you can support local incomes through your stay. So yeah, I think Airbnb offers a wonderful service that a lot of people really benefit from, but it’s just something that should be approached with, with caution like everything else that’s travel-related.
Aislyn: Absolutely, looking for people who have a stake in the place, versus someone who’s just like the churn-and-burn profit. You know, they don’t care what happens. And that kind of links up with, you know, you talked a lot about Hawai‘i, and we actually did a big feature on Hawai‘i and tourism a few years ago that brings in some of these tensions.
And one of the quotes that I really enjoyed from John De Fries, he said that “the industry has to understand that the natural world has a capacity. And that is the way of thinking that we have to change, that you can’t just be constantly more, more, more, consume, consume.” So do you think that we are heading that direction in general in travel?
Paige: I felt so lucky to have the chance to spend a lot of time with John De Fries, who, when I was there, he has since stepped down. But when I was in Hawai‘i in 2022, he was the head of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, the first Native Hawaiian to be appointed to head the state’s tourism agency.
And yeah, he had this point about carrying capacity. And I think more and more places are going to be experiencing that, but I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing. If places are becoming aware of their current capacity and imposing limits to make sure that that is not overpassed, that’s not surpassed, then that’s good.
And that will ultimately serve the place, um, and ensure that it will be there for future generations. Right? And I think that tourism touches every corner of our planet, right? There are so many places for us to go. I think that people tend to sort of crowd into the places that are famous or known for this, that, or the other reason.
And if places are able to, in some cases it’s, you know, technically challenging to do this, but if places are able to impose hard limits on visitors to respect the carrying capacity of that place, then, you know, that might encourage people to go explore other areas that are, that are less overcrowded and can sustain more visitors.
But yeah, the notion of carrying capacity, you know, we can apply it whether in an urban area or rural area or wilderness area. It’s a term that tends to kind of scare people in the world of travel and tourism, I think, but it is a helpful lens through which to consider some of the challenges that we’re dealing with.
Aislyn: I also wonder, I’ve just kind of thought about this idly, if it will also help people to maybe appreciate it more or go a little deeper into that experience versus the Justin Bieber canyon experience that you cited in Iceland, where it’s like people are in, they take their photo, and they’re out. But if you had a ticket or you could only go and you really had to like lobby to get in there, would you care more?
Paige: I think it’s a really fascinating point you make and that how much we value things really depends to a great extent on how accessible they are to us, right?
And if we start to limit accessibility, it’s a signal to us, isn’t it, that this is a high-value canyon you’re about to experience, this is a high-value experience you’re about to have. Make sure that you treat it with the respect it deserves. So, no, I think that could be a really positive outcome of, the sort of the flip side, the negative side of imposing limits on a place.
Aislyn: Mm hmm. Well, you talk a lot about the environmental impacts of travel, so could you define this idea of last-chance or doom tourism?
Paige: Yeah, last-chance tourism is this idea that as climate change is threatening many tourist destinations, notably glaciers, coral reefs, like, you know, natural landscapes that are disappearing because of climate change. The idea with last-chance tourism is that the kind of, the very ephemeral nature of these places, the fact that they’re disappearing, actually makes them more appealing to some tourists.
You know, there are people out there who say, “Oh my gosh, this glacier is going to be gone in, you know, 10, 20, 30, however many years. I need to go see it, quick before it goes.” And so of course this is a very controversial, complicated topic. Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing?
I mean, my answer to that question tends to be, “Yes.” Like, “Let’s dig into it.” You know, like, who am I to say good or bad, like, but let’s dig into it and understand it so that we can make informed decisions ourselves. So in that part of the book, I spent a lot of time in the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in the French Alps, which sits just above Chamonix.
And it, which is very close, you know, it’s like an hour and a bit drive from where I lived in the French Alps for five years. So I knew this place well, and I had been going there for years, and I looked at some of the work that researchers have done on visitors and visitor behavior there, and it’s really attention, I mean, you, you know, reasonable people disagree on this point: Can a visit to a disappearing glacier inspire people to be more environmentally friendly in their behavior? Or are they just coming to take the picture, get the selfie, and then go back and say, OK, box ticked and the answer of course is yes. You know, both of those experiences happen every day at the Mer de Glace. So like my question is: OK, well, what determines whether you get the box-ticking exercise or you get the person who comes away profoundly moved and thinking like, Holy Christ, OK. I need to take the train next weekend. And so, you know, whatever.
And so it really comes down to, you know, the emotional response that people have to the landscape and the education that they’re offered. And so I also spent time with a mountain guide, Brad Carlson, wonderful guy, who’s now French American, working as a mountain guide in the Alps, and he helped me understand how, like he, as a guide really tries to encourage people to have a more kind of integrated experience with the landscape and not just coming for the picture but help them to sort of understand the landscape in a more profound way and then also help them to have the courage to sort of see how they fit into that landscape as a human being.
You know, looking at last-chance tourism broadly, I see this as an invitation to deepen our experiences in the natural world. You know, when we visit sort of glaciers or coral reefs as tourists, like let’s really try to have an emotionally rich and a really well-informed visit. And I think that’s how we can make the most of those kinds of experiences.
Aislyn: The media narrative around problematic tourism in recent years has really focused and I think, and often placed the blame on the travelers who are behaving badly and not that we should excuse them, but you know you talk about this kind of—sorry, my cat came—about this kind of government regulation and how many of these tours are doing exactly what local leaders have invited them to do and there was the example of that I Amsterdam video that essentially promoted terrible behavior and then they seem surprised by the fact that, local residents were so upset when travelers came and behaved exactly in that way.
So in that way, it seems like we can step back a little bit as travelers and say, Hey, OK, you know, what’s your responsibility as a destination? But is there anything that we can do to help support regulation and encourage governments to be more responsible?
Paige: Yeah, for sure. We have a responsibility when we’re tourists, when we’re away from home. In that case, it’s not our job to come with the answers, right? But it’s our job to be curious and to, you know, try to have conversations with local people about how tourism is working or not working.
I mean, you mentioned the I Amsterdam video. I came across that because, this lovely, lovely gentleman who I had the pleasure of interviewing when I was in Amsterdam, Leonard Robich, he told me about that and he’s been a resident of the red light district, I think since the 1990s.
And I just had this long conversation with him where I was like, “What’s going on here?” Like, you know, “Tell me what this is like for you.” And he was like, “You know, tourists have been in the red light district for generations. You know, sex workers have been in the red light district for centuries.” Like when did the problem start? He’s like, the problem started in 2013. Like why did the problem start? And then he’s like: Look on YouTube. And he was like, he’s like, “Write this down. Look this up on YouTube.”
I’m like, “Yes, sir.” You know? And so went and looked it up on YouTube and I was like, “Oh my gosh, Leonard, thank you. Thank you for the tip, Leonard.” So as tourists, we can have a conversation with the bar, like go to the red light district and have a conversation with the, you know, 25-year-old behind the bar, if it’s not too crowded.
But when we’re at home, because tourism touches so many parts of the world, a lot of us live in tourist destinations now, right? Because so many places welcome tourists. So when we’re at home, we can take on the responsibility of advocating for the place where we live, and its residents and saying, and if you see something that’s not working well, or you see a possibility to do something better, write a letter to your local representative, like go to that town hall meeting, you know, speak up about it and be the change you want to see in the world, right? And change starts at home. There you go. All my aphorisms here.
But like, do your part as a resident of a tourist destination to the extent that tourism is happening in your, in your home and, um, and encourage your local leaders to take this, to take this seriously.
Aislyn: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really, it’s so important. And then there are, I’m so sorry, I’m going to pick up my cat.
Paige: Oh, I have a black cat as well.
Aislyn: Do you really? He’s an old guy, but yeah, every once in a while, he just needs to be part of this thing. So, I guess he’s really inspired by your book as well. So there are these things that we can do and one of them that you, so you quoted a story, um, that ran in The New Yorker called The Case Against Travel.
And this philosopher, um, Agnes Callard, she talks about travelers as “unchanged changers.” So what does that mean and how can we best avoid being those types of travelers out in the world?
Paige: Yeah. I mean, I, I really appreciated her essay and I really appreciated her definition of tourists as “unchanged changers.” Because I really recognized, like, when I read that, I was like, yeah, she, she figured it out. Like she got it. That’s what’s wrong with tourism. And honestly that was my starting point for thinking about what exactly is a new tourist, because of course there are so many “unchanged changers.”
So basically, I see her essay as like a very long definition of an old tourist, right? So the unchanged person, like they’re unchanged because they’re closing off their hearts and minds. They’re just kind of following the list that they’ve seen online or in the guidebook.
Um, they have their minds closed and they’re changing the place and they’re not sort of aware of the implications of, you know, of their presence in the place. So I’m like, OK, well, how do we start with that and transform it into something more constructive? So I think of the new tourist as a changed and enlightened changer.
Like we’re always going to have an impact on the places we visit. It’s impossible. Like, it would be impossible to visit a place without changing it. Right? Um, but we can change it in a way that’s positive often by just spending in a way that will support the local economy. I mean, this is why places want tourists in the first place, right? Like we can contribute, we can contribute in positive ways as tourists, but we need to educate ourselves. So a changed and enlightened changer. So you’re enlightened, you’re aware of your impacts, and you’re doing your best to make smart decisions. And you’re changed, you really implicate yourself, you open yourself up, you get out of your comfort zone. You come with a view to having your mind changed on something, um, you, you come with a view to making real human connections. You’re not seeing yourself as superior to the people of the place. You’re, you’re right there, like having that conversation with Leonard, just taking it in like, “What is life like for you? Like, I really want to know.”
And you know, you see yourself as a citizen ambassador, right? So I think. You know, Agnes Callard really made a huge and important contribution to this discussion by defining what we don’t want to be, right? And my response to that is like, “Absolutely, thank you. Nobody wants to be that. And it’s possible to be something else. Like, let’s think about what that something else looks like and how we can all get there together.”
Aislyn: Use this as a blueprint for what we don’t want anymore, and where do we go from here?
Paige: Exactly. Yeah.
Aislyn: Do you have any other tips for being a new tourist in the world?
Paige: Oh, I mean, one concrete tip that I like to offer people is, um, cause it’s like, “Oh my gosh, where do I start?” You know, I would say, even if you’re going to a place that you’ve maybe visited before, or you feel, maybe you speak the language, like you feel relatively at ease getting around. Like, let’s say you’re going, you’re an American going to London or something.
I mean, how easy would it be to spend a few days, a week, I don’t know, in London, you’re just going off of Trip Advisor or like the restaurant ratings you see on Google Maps, whatever, like that would be super easy.
I would say next time you go to London, hire a local tour guide for a day and there’s some really fascinating tours that you can take. Unseen Tours, you know, you can take a tour led by a homeless person in London and you’ll see a completely different side of the city. So my one concrete tip that I’d like to give that applies in lots of situations is hire a local tour guide because A: You’re contributing to the income of someone who lives in that place. Um, and B: You’re, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to develop a real one-on-one human connection with somebody.
Um, and especially if you’re just traveling by yourself or if you’re in a small group and you spend several hours with somebody, like you can really get to know them. You can have that kind of conversation. “What was your childhood like here?” Or “What are the challenges of this, that, or the other thing here now?” Whether tourism or otherwise. You give yourself the chance to have those kinds of conversations,which can be hard—it can be hard to just like walk up to somebody in a pub in London and start asking them about their life.
Aislyn: Yeah, yeah.
Paige: But with a local tour guide you can have that. And you know, I went to Morocco with my kids, um in April and we hired a tour guide and at the end of our week he invited us to his family’s home for dinner and we had dinner and like he was the only one who spoke English or French. But his wife was there, his wife’s sister was there, like three of the kids, and I was there with my daughters, we’re having dinner all around the table. They see the Quran in the corner, they’re asking questions, and it was such a rich, rich experience. It was all because of Muhammad, our local tour guide. So hire a local tour guide and, um, and have fun.
Aislyn: I love it. That’s a great tip. And you, there was, who was your tour guide in Saudi Arabia?
Paige: Fatima.
Aislyn: That was a really interesting. Yeah.
Paige: She is a firecracker. Oh man, we’re still in touch. She’s great.
Aislyn: You share some of the perspectives that you encountered there about what people think of the United States, like you shared your fears going to this destination. And then there were these people who shared their fears about what it was like to go to the United States versus what they thought it was going to be. And that was just a really neat kind of coupling, those two.
Paige: When I had that interaction, it was like this guy, so Fatima’s like, the battery of her pickup truck died and she was about to take me to the airport and we’re like, “Oh my God, what, what are we going to do?” And it’s like, up runs this young man who’s like, just sort of like knight in shining white robe, you know, it was like, “I’ll give you a jump, no problem.”
He spoke beautiful English. And when he, you know, discovered that I was American, he was so eager to tell me about his trip to the United States, and he just had this huge smile on his face, and he was like, “You know, I was scared to go,” because of, you know, what he’d read about gun crime and violence in the United States, and he was like, but he was amazed that when he went on his trip to New York—New York City and Orlando.
He was like, “I felt so safe the entire time.” Like he was telling me this, “Like, can you believe it?” You know? And he was like, “In the United States, it was nothing like what you see on the news or social media.” And I was like, “Oh my God.” I got the chills that ran down my spine when I heard that. And I was like, “Oh, that’s going in the book.”
I felt so profound because I had been so scared to come to Saudi Arabia as I write in the book. And then I met, like I met so many incredibly hospitable, welcoming people, and I felt, honestly, I felt so safe the entire time. I’m just spitting back his words. I felt so safe the entire time.
And that’s not to say anything about Saudi Arabia’s politics or its human rights record, which is atrocious, you know, but the human interactions I had touched me profoundly in Saudi Arabia. At its best, tourism can really help us see our common humanity, despite the fact that we worship a different god, or wear different clothes, or we live on the opposite side of a border.
You know, tourism at its best can be a hugely powerful connector of human beings.
Aislyn: I mean it is the reason to maybe work through all the issues, the environmental, the social, the whatever to make it work so that we can continue to have that.
Paige: Absolutely. You know, I mean, if we think about what are the crises that humanity is going to face in the coming years and decades, right? Like an even worse pandemic, uh, you know, runaway AI, catastrophic climate change, like all of these challenges will require us to work with and empathize with people who come from vastly different backgrounds from our own, right?
Like never in the history of humanity has it been more important for us to be able to work with people who come from other parts of the world. So if we all stay at home, if we all lock ourselves at home and never travel, like this is not going to prepare us for the challenges of the future of the human race.
Like honestly, we need to travel, and we need to do so in the right way, and we need to do so in a way that is compatible with a sustainable planet Earth. So these are all huge challenges, but they’re all the challenges of the moment and the challenges that we need to rise to, really, to make travel and tourism sustainable and productive.
Aislyn: Well, your book should be a key part of that conversation. So thank you so much, Paige. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Paige: Thank you so much, Aislyn. Thank you for the thoughtful questions.
Aislyn: And that was Paige McClanahan. Thank you so much, Paige. In the show notes, we will of course, link to her book, her podcast, and her website, paigemcclanahan.com. We’ll also link to the episode on Kerala that she reported for us and the episode on Unseen Tours in London that we shared in season two. Next week, we’ll be back with a deep dive into the origins of Afar with our founders Greg Sullivan and Joe Diaz to celebrate Afar’s 15-year anniversary.
Joe: You know how it is. It’s one of those—like you’re sitting on a beach having beers and smoking some ganja and you think you’ve got the world’s best idea. And then you wake up the next morning, generally, and you’re like, “Oh my God, that was the dumbest thing we could have ever come up with.” But when we got up the next one, we’re like, eh, it’s still not a bad idea. And let’s, you know, let’s kind of flesh this out.
Ready for more unpacking? Visit afar.com, and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter. The magazine is @afarmedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories. Subscribing makes this easy! You can find Unpacked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And be sure to rate and review the show. It helps other travelers find it. We also want to hear from you: Is there a travel dilemma, trend, or topic you’d like us to explore? Drop us a line at afar.com/feedback or email us at unpacked@afar.com.
This has been Unpacked, a production of AFAR Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Music composition by Chris Colin.
And remember: The world is complicated. We’re here to help you unpack it.
