Travel Compulsion: Do You Have It?

Some of my friends have caught the travel bug. That is, they are fascinated by the prospect of “being away.”

Compared to staying at home, being away means seeing new sights, meeting new people, and eating new foods. There is the excitement of planning—making an itinerary, buying clothes, selecting guidebooks, and the like—and the logistics of getting there and back via modern transportation systems.

Typically, this flurry of activity doesn’t end but instead increases when they reach their destination, which is itself a series of stays, stops, and ports of call. Indeed, each day is an odyssey of its own sort, a case of venturing outward to encounter something noteworthy and then returning to lodgings to rest and refocus. To travel, at least in this view, is to be always on the move. A companion left behind for the day—perhaps sick or injured—is thought to have missed out.

There is also—and this is key—the reputation that attaches to one who travels. When people ask the traveler what they “are doing” this year, they respond brightly, “This spring, we are going to countries x, y, and z.” There is an expectation that friends and family will wish them well on their journey. They will be "missed.” Their travels should be “safe,” but they should also have a “great time.”

Usually, travelers provide a few texts and photos during the event, just enough to stimulate interest in a wider barrage of stories and pictures at the culmination of their journey. There will be proclamations of “welcome home” and, sometimes, a celebratory dinner. In the end, travelers enhance their standing as people who go places and do things. They incite envy. They are deemed “intrepid.”

By contrast, stay-at-homes tend to seem both less interesting and less energetic. Their vacation plans—let us say, managing the garden, feeding the birds, and painting the shed—merit little regard. Much as travelers commonly refer to the foreigners they meet as “locals”—does anyone else find this term insulting?—so stay-at-homes function in this way for adventurers. Presumably, those people left behind have been doing the same things in the same ways they always do. In any case, their ordinariness is the backdrop to more colorful pursuits.

The places we reside are viewed in the same light. To be sure, they are bedrocks of personal stability, as they provide jobs, friends, schools, medical services, and home addresses. But too much security and routine are dispiriting (one of my friends refers to his hometown as “Borington”). Home communities, or so it seems, are settings to grow old in, to watch the years slip by without proper markings. The more adventurous see their homes as docking stations, jumping-off points for the next set of movements.

A Critic’s Rejoinder

Nothing I’ve written above is the least bit controversial. Most of us enjoy vacation travel and participate actively in its future, present, and past versions. Similarly, we wish our friends and families well when they go off on their own jaunts. We listen patiently, albeit without excessive interest, to their accounts of what they did.

However, philosopher Agnes Callard has argued, in a recent essay for The New Yorker, that vacation travel is more problematic than this. Be clear that Callard isn’t talking about a lengthy car trip to visit one’s parents, a fishing excursion with buddies, or just a lazy week with family at the beach. Rather, she is concerned with more extended—and often much more expensive—trips we take for personal enjoyment. Plug in here a Caribbean cruise, a tour of some European capitals, or a loll-about at some resort in a tropical country.

Although she might have criticized us for these choices regarding our time and money, she doesn’t do that here. Nor does she stress the obvious social class differences expressed by vacations or their environmental impacts. Instead, she asks us to consider what it is we think we are really doing when we travel and why we feel the need to claim that our activity is something other than the committed pursuit of pleasure.

Friends Essential Reads

The Importance of Close Friendships: We Are “Fra-mily”

Why the Best Friendships Feel Eternal

In Callard's view, being a vacation tourist means being in motion. It is a case of going places and doing things, though the doing is usually focused on seeing. Often, we are unsure why we go to the places we do; nevertheless, we go there because this is where the tour guide or book tells us we should. So instructed, we find ourselves perhaps wandering through a famous art museum, confronting some classical ruins, or consuming a high-priced meal at a recommended eatery.

Suffice it to say, we usually know little about these places before we get there. Nor do we learn that much during our encounter. No matter. We get souvenirs and take some photos (smiling is a requirement) that document our presence.

When people ask us later what we did on our trip, we tell them where we went and what we saw. What they are not allowed to do—for this would be the rudest thing ever—is ask us to reflect deeply on any specific sighting (perhaps one of Florence’s two giant statues of David). In part, that is because they don’t want to hear our reflections. But they also know that we (like they) have very little to say on the matter in question.

As Callard sees it, what we really want is validation, the acknowledgment that we went to the right places and saw the right things. Travel has “broadened” us, or so we claim, and, in consequence, we have set ourselves apart from those nontravelers back home.

Travel vs. Tourism

In his noted book The Image, historian Daniel Boorstin devotes a chapter to the above distinction. In Boorstin’s view, people used to “travel.” Doing this typically meant a long and difficult journey. Sleeping quarters, transportation, and food were often spotty. Language differences were a common problem. Health might be imperiled. In any case, travelers had to adjust to the people and places they visited.

Tourism, by contrast, means visiting places that have changed themselves to meet and greet wealthy foreigners. For many Americans, that means parts of the world where the pertinent people speak English, take credit cards, and accept peculiarities like wanting ice in drinks. Once when I was visiting West Africa, a tourism official told me he had the number on Americans: They want spotless bathrooms and air conditioning.

I'd argue pointedly—and this is a theme Callard also stresses—that modern tourists want to have a set of safe, positive experiences, but they don’t want to be changed fundamentally. Boorstin would contend that we don’t want to work too hard for our experiences either. That’s why we desire guidebooks and tourist “packages.” We crave charming hotels that have American amenities. We may tolerate small doses of the irregular—which “personalize” our trip—but we also want to be sure that we are covering the basics.

I’ve discussed Boorstin’s distinction with students through the years. Most accept his broad outlines. However, they also emphasize that his view of travel is old-fashioned and elitist. Modern middle-class people don’t have months to tour the Continent. They have, at best, two or three weeks away from their jobs. They are spending a lot of money. They don’t speak the native language or have deep knowledge of the places they’re going. For a first-timer, tourist packages are fine. After that, one can expand their approach.

Of course, both writers would likely insist that we will never expand our approach because we really don’t want to. We want Americanized versions of native food; our sleeping quarters must have their own bathroom. Why learn snippets of the native language when we’ll just forget them by the time we reach the airport?

Profoundly, what we yearn for is identity enhancement. Manifestly, we are people who can make their way in a “foreign” setting. We can handle the vicissitudes of international travel. We’ve been to “attractions” that most will never see. People back home should know—and we will help them know—that we have gone and conquered and come back unscathed. We have “made memories.” Ever the adventurers, we plan our next maneuvers.