Don’t Give Up on Tourism. Just Do It Better.
In 1956, the poet Elizabeth Bishop worried about the imprudence and absurdity of going abroad. “Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?” she writes in her poem “Questions of Travel.” “Is it right to be watching strangers in a play / in this strangest of theatres? / What childishness is it that while there’s a breath of life / in our bodies, we are determined to rush / to see the sun the other way around?”
Decades later, the phrasing of these questions, and the fretful frame of mind behind them, seems to perfectly sum up a new attitude toward international travel: one of moral unease. Every summer, a litany of headlines appears about tourists behaving badly: or , for example. Even the ordinary business of tourism leaves much to be desired: The crowds at the Louvre make seeing the such a brief and unsatisfying experience; foot traffic, noise, and trash slowly degrade sites famous for their natural beauty or historical significance. In the Canary Islands, the Greek island of Paros, and Oaxaca, Mexico, residents of popular destinations have protested against throngs of visitors. For many travelers, it can seem somehow , now, to
