Travel Is Not a Political Act

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Twenty years ago, when I left the U.S. on the journey that would turn me into a travel writer, the world was a different place. After the post–Cold War realignment of the 1990s, the dot-com boom and crash of the millennium, and 9/11 and its aftermath, the world had calmed down just enough for things to really start changing. Formerly off-the-grid destinations like Cambodia and Argentina were suddenly chic and accessible, with boutique hotels both homegrown and international, restaurants vying for Michelin stars, and boutiques selling home goods to fancy up flats from Montauk to Paris. The big airlines took note of this and added routes, in part to compete with all the new low-cost airlines that for a handful of euros were bringing visitors to third-tier (but neat!) cities in Finland, Poland, Malaysia, and beyond.

It was an exciting time to be a travel writer. Every week, it seemed, a place I’d never thought of going was suddenly simple to get to, and with a dozen new reasons to go there as well. Pitching editors at places like the New York Times was easy (well, relatively!), both for me and for the dozens of other up-and-coming travel writers with whom I shared space in newspapers, magazines, and websites, not to mention regular drinks and meals at bars and restaurants around Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

I don’t think we ever talked about this directly, but to me it felt like we were collectively doing something new—charting the fresh ways that Americans could discover the world, freed from the expectations and requirements of previous generations. Those earlier waves, in the 1980s and ‘90s, seemed split between backpackers and blue bloods: You were either a semi-impoverished wanderer connecting directly with “the people” or a high-culture aficionado ensconcing yourself in five-star hotels. We were neither of those, nor did we fit into an insipid middle class of package tours. We were intrepid¹, but appreciated a soft bed; we made local friends, but knew which officials and publicists to call for context; and we knew that the most important thing we could do, that any traveler could do, was to get out there into the world and experience it ourselves.

This felt important, too, because at the time relatively few Americans traveled abroad, or even held passports. There were a lot of reasons for that, of course, from the high cost of foreign travel to the vastness of the United States, within whose borders anyone could spend a lifetime exploring. But because we loved the world, because we loved visiting its far-flung corners and making new friends there, we felt a responsibility to show our fellow citizens how it could be done. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were on, America was terrified of Muslims (ignorant of them, too), and it seemed like maybe, if we got more Americans to go overseas, to travel as we did, then things would change here—politically and emotionally—as they were changing economically everywhere else.

Rick Steves, the guidebook czar and travel-TV personality, picked up on this directly 15 years later in his book Travel as a Political Act: How to Leave Your Baggage Behind. Here’s an excerpt from an excerpt:

There’s a lot more of this—a whole book, in fact!—and the sentiments are truly beautiful. They’re also horseshit.

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Let’s Look at the Numbers

In 2004, according to the International Trade Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, approximately 36.5 million Americans traveled overseas². That figure was up by almost 10 million since 1996, the first year for which I found records, so 2004 seems like pretty good growth, if still a little small as a portion of the U.S. population, then at 293 million. That’s more or less 1 in 8 Americans going abroad in 2004.

By 2023, however, the number of Americans traveling abroad had risen to 98.5 million, or 29% of the population. And that’s about a million fewer than in 2019, likely due to lingering effects of the pandemic.

In that time, their destinations have shifted only slightly. Europe has always been the prime region for U.S. visitors, with nearly 45% going there in 2004 versus 40% in 2023. It’s generally followed by the Caribbean, Asia, and South and Central America. In 2004, less than 700,000 went to the Middle East and Africa; in 2023, six times that number visited. So that’s something.

Now, I want to ask you some question: Does the United States today, in 2024, feel like the kind of country where 98.5 million people realized “there are exciting alternatives to the social and community norms” they were used to? A place where a third of U.S. citizens made “a point to be open to new experiences” and sought “options that get you out of your comfort zone”? A land where a significant chunk of the population questioned “truths that we were raised thinking were self-evident and God-given”? Does this feel like a country where we ever give anyone wiggle room?

Surely, there are a few whose adventures altered them in some deep way. But not enough—nowhere near enough.

The truth—which may have been self-evident, but certainly was not to me—is that travel is not and never has been political. It changes only those who want to be changed, and for the rest it’s a vacation, an exercise in hedonism, an Instagram flex, or, at worst, an obligation, something one does with one’s money simply because one is expected to. More horrifying still is the prospect that a large number of that 98.5 million traveled as Rick Steves urged, opening themselves up to new experiences and new perspectives, and then, on returning home, rejected the possibility of any influence, instead resealing themselves into their own ideological bubbles.

Should I have known this? Maybe. When I was actively writing, I always had a goal alongside the obvious goals (convey a sense of place, offer some frugal tips), and that was to show my readers a way of traveling, an approach to new places that, even if they were going somewhere other than the place I was writing about, would serve them well. My dream was to have someone read my story about, say, Cambodia and say to themselves, “Man, this article has me excited to go to Argentina!”

I don’t know if that ever happened, but as I published more and more I began to see that readers mostly wanted two things: to do exactly the things I had written about, and to have me write about the things they had done. This wasn’t just in the comments section. Once, on a flight to Paris, I met a woman, one of a group of Texans, who excitedly showed me a whole passel of New York Times articles about our destination. (One of my stories was among them, though I didn’t let on who I was.) At first I was flattered, but later I was troubled: I was writing to get people to think and travel independently, and this sure didn’t seem like that.

Perhaps this isn’t news to you. It’s certainly not to me—not since 2016. But in a way I’m glad to get this out in the open, to stop pretending that idealistic travel can change the world, or change it in the way we once hoped. Now we can instead turn our attention to more effective methods—the real phenomena we can experience, and write about, and read about, that will forever alter people’s consciousness, and usher in a new, more enlightened age. I’m not sure precisely what that will be, but if you pressed me, if I had to survey everything I’ve experienced and learned about in this world over 50 years of exploration, of random successes and educational errors, I think I could say with relative confidence that we have but one hope left: street food.

Notes

1. I realize I’m saying “we” here a lot without knowing for sure whether we all really felt this way. If you’re a travel writer from that era and want to take issue with this, email me! I’d love to do a follow-up to this with other perspectives.

2. By air. We’re going to assume that accounts for the vast majority of U.S. citizens going abroad. Also, here’s their data in an Excel spreadsheet.

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