It's Time to Rethink These Overused Travel Tropes

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve discussed a destination without receiving that familiar two-word response to people who’ve spent any time in the travel space:

“Bucket list.” They’ll say.

This famous shorthand for a contrived list of things to accomplish before dying (which is rather redundant) isn’t limited to travelers, but it seems to be pervasive in our industry. Travel marketers and communicators use it to describe their more extraordinary products; travelers use it to lend emphasis to their desires.

It’s also one of the travel tropes I think needs to be retired—it’s ghoulish, it’s cliché, and it leads to canonization of popular travel destinations which in turn drives overtourism. I’d almost go so far as to say the “listification” of travel itself should be retired. To be sure, there’s a psychological allure to checking an item off a list to many, but travel isn’t at its most fulfilling when it’s reduced purely to the transactional.

So bucket lists are out, and mindful travel goals are in—just don’t list them. Here are some other travel tropes that can be positively evolved.

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Stop “Mooning” Every Vacation

At its outset, a honeymoon merely described a newlywed period of euphoria carried over from the wedding. In the early 19th century, the term was co-opted into the bridal trip that a newlywed couple took to visit friends and relations who weren’t able to attend their wedding. By the end of the century, it had become a celebratory leisure travel tradition.

In the 2010s, it seems, travel marketers have attempted to capture the allure (and cash) the honeymoon promises by expanding the concept. Every travel experience, it seems, is now a “-moon”; Friend Moon, Mini Moon, Baby Moon, COVID Moon, Solo Moon, etc.

Honestly, do we need to justify every vacation as a special occasion? Not particularly—and the added stress of hoping “special occasion” travel goes off entirely without a hitch isn’t helpful either.

Embrace Tourism Instead of “Traveling Like a Local”

A popular travel trope seems to reject the very notion of being a tourist, and it’s understandable. It’s difficult to feel immersed in a destination that’s swamped with other visitors. That’s given rise to a trend of traveling “like a local” in search of more authentic experiences in a destination.

Therein, however, lies the problem. In search of authenticity, visitors choosing to “go local” ironically reach the pinnacle of inauthenticity by masquerading as locals when they’re not. Their dependence on economies of brevity (consumers better tolerate higher prices for a brief period [like a vacation]) are also disruptive: apartment housing popular with visitors can displace locals needing housing, grocery stores seeking tourist dollars displace staples with premium foods demanded by holidaymakers, bars & restaurants price higher for tourist pricing sensitivities rather than local ones.

Those byproducts of tourism are difficult to counteract, but the best way tourists can be good citizens in the communities they visit is to respect the programs governments and tourist boards representative of local populations have implemented. That means staying in correctly zoned and licensed guest accommodations with proper oversight, and not seeking out “secret” or “locals only” spots. It's a hard pill to swallow, but sometimes places aren't marketed to tourists because they're not for them. Living in someone else's vacation isn't fun, and permanent residents of popular tourist destinations have a right to maintain their own spaces.

Ultimately, there’s nothing inauthentic in being a tourist. Travelers can gain an understanding of people they encounter without feeling compelled to mimicry—making for more authentic interactions during their travels.

Commit to Regenerative Travel Instead of “Off the Beaten Path”

I often like to joke that the phrase “off the beaten path” is itself a path so well-beaten in travel writing it’s been annihilated.

It’s another obsession with the tourism industry—lending gravity to experiences by describing them as extraordinary or exclusive. But sometimes the paths laid down for visitors are strategically well-beaten, for reasons of safety, sustainability, or conservation.

Visitors often flock to the Dutch town of Marken, just north of Amsterdam, to sightsee in the small, picturesque village almost entirely comprised of well-preserved historic wooden houses. At their front gates, most of the houses have “keep out” signs, as some visitors seem to feel appropriate tourism includes creeping into and through private yards, and peeping into the homes as though they were part of a theme park attraction—off the beaten path, certainly, but disruptively so.

Many smaller communities don’t have the infrastructure to handle significant increases in tourism. Pristine natural spaces would be battered unrecognizable without boundaries on visitor access. Regeneratively visiting destinations (that is, contributing more to them by visiting than the resources one takes away from them by visiting) starts with staying on the paths laid down by local constituencies to preserve their communities, and preserve the sentiments of the local community toward their visitor industry writ large.

Reconsider “Voluntourism”

I’ve always found the notion of spending a few thousand dollars on airfare to a remote location to “help” populations living on less than a dollar a day rather strange. The money spent on the airfare alone could go so much farther toward allaying problems in communities that are often the objective of voluntourism programs.

There’s the well-trampled example of the school in Tanzania that was so poorly built by voluntourists it was taken down and reconstructed overnight to spare their blushes. None of them were professional bricklayers, but the local workers who fixed their work—for free—were, and could have been paid for their work from the group’s travel fund.

Thankfully, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a lot of humanitarian work to remote platforms, and improvements in efficacy have been well-noted.

Moving forward, we can—again—be the best travel citizens by staying in our lanes. We’re not locals, we’re not seasoned humanitarian aid workers, we’re not blinded by immortalizing every vacation as a special trans figurative rebirth, or obsessed with the checking of lists.

We’re just travelers.