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Travel is the Millennial version of "keeping up with the Jones". People like to poke at Boomers for their obsession with lots of toys and possessions, but Millennials / Gen Z have their own obsession with checking off the experience and places been bucket list, and it's every bit as unbalanced.
1. Travel funnels experiences. The classic argument for travel is that it broadens people's experiences in life, but does it really? There's some truly adventurous folks who go far away and really wonder off the beaten path - but by and large, when people go beyond the weekend 2 hr drive range, they stick to "best of" lists. Although there's something exotic to far away locations, travelers are really just experiencing all the same sights and experiences as everyone else traveling. National Parks are the prime example. People are willing to take risks trying something out of their box when they are in their own area and it's a quick drive home; they don't take those same risks with their intricately planned long distance travel itinerary. Taking these risks is where we get novelty and new experiences, it doesn't have to just be a change of scenery.
We each have our own special "side of the pond" on this planet earth with the radius around where we live. Let's explore the uniqueness of our own section of the world instead of swimming over to check out all the other shores. Don't like your location? Move! People now are the most unshackled from employment that they've ever been.
2. Do we need more experiences? I truly question if anyone these days is actually understimulated? It seems to be the opposite, where people are stressed, anxious, and overcommitted. Millennials have already had way more experiences in their lifetime already than what humans throughout history have had, how many more experiences does a person need?
What it does seem that we need more of is social connection and relationships. But travel gets in the way of building those. 3 days minimum for each flight - time to research and book, time in transit, and time to recover / do laundry etc when you're back. That's 3 days you are not out socializing. Sure people socialize on trips, but long term relationships are formed with people that we see recurringly, most often people geographically closeby. How many of the van life people are going to be in touch with those they met on their journeys in 12 years? How many social connections did they let wither or never form by not being in a position to see people on a continual basis?
There is this FOMO to travel while young, but why? There's plenty of time to travel after the kids aren't little anymore; people live a long time after retirement. What is the more pressing timeline is getting in a relationship and conceiving those kids.
3. Locals don't really want tourists. Sure the people visiting are enjoying their experiences, but are the locals enjoying your presence? I don't have to post links here, you see it on your news feed weekly: "People in Maui were brought up to resent tourists", "Italian official calls tourists 'vandals' after bad behavior", "Record traffic and lines getting into Zion"... It's obvious here in Taos, when I mention to a shop owner that I'm a local, all of a sudden they open up and really start chatting, instead of the usual casual banter to visitors. True, tourists bring money, but it's simply a chore / job catering to them, unless it's in a location sparsely visited, which sadly is not where most people go.
Not all exchanges have to have this guest / servant type of behavior. Take art - buying or experiencing a piece of art allows you to inwardly travel to the creativity of another individual, meanwhile sending them $$$ to propel their creative journey forward.
4. It's wasteful. Recent estimate I saw was 8-10% of all emissions result from travel and vacation. That's huge. If Millennials & Gen Z were actually concerned about climate change and resources, they'd think twice before booking the flight. Instead we just hear a bunch of talk about how that's someone else's job to work towards fixing that issue.
Obviously I'm not saying to never get on a plane again, just that we need to tone travel down. Take time to relax. Enjoy our own mind via hobbies and introspection - and the minds of others through conversation and artistic expression. There's only so many locations on earth, but there's endless experiences in your mind and through the mind of others. Exploring up that vein will lead to a more balanced and satisfied life.
I appreciate your long and thoughtful discourse, but my immediate reaction is:
1. Yes, travel is broadening.
2. Yes, new experiences are good - if they're the "broadening" sort.
3. Locals may imagine they don't "want" tourists, but most sensible people, if they give it some thought, understand the benefits of tourist money, and would ultimately prefer the money.
4. You're absolutely right about the environmental problem, but I suspect it would be better overall if you could get most of America to give up their cars, for instance. And, I have to say, in my experience, most people don't travel that much to begin with.
GOOD Travel: I think I learned the most about a foreign country when I spent 3 weeks in Bremerhaven, West Germany in 1983 on Army business. I got to see what, IMO, a real civilization looked like where one could walk to an eatery/beer stube within a couple blocks, take a bus or train almost everywhere, and they had standards where the word "cafe" was well defined and adhered to. Education and healthcare were birthrights, and workers were respected and well paid. Beer/wine glasses had markings to assure you got 0.2L in your wine glass or 0.5L of beer, beer which was GOOD because it was made IAW purity laws. On one of my bus trips, the driver stopped the bus, put it in park, and got off the bus to help a young mother load her baby carriage. THAT is civilization. Here, it's heaven help you because no one else will. I also got to see a very good high standard of living since we had 300,000 military personnel there at the time pumping billions into the W. German economy during the Reagan defense buildup. Such is empire.
POOR travel: Took a couple of cruises in the Caribbean in the late 1980s. Bucket list, even though only 40 years old then. The old saying about such cruises in that they're for the newly wed or the nearly dead. The cruise industry refers to Carnival Cruise lines as the K-Mart of the Caribbean because they mostly offer low cost cruises on big alcohol party boats. People can get drunk and get lucky at their local taproom, no need to pay for a cruise AND run up a fat bar tab. I got to see some nice scenery and clear, clean water. But I did not really care for being dumped ashore in local "markets" set up to absorb money from cruise-goers who just had to go home with an item from the straw market in Nassau. I got a kick out of seeing other "savvy shoppers" stroll through airports showing off a 4-pack of 1.75L tax-free bottles of their favorite hooch as if they were the great white hunter flashing a big game trophy. They spend thousands for a cruise and this is what they have to show for it? These days one can get good food in most major cities, rock climbing walls, swimming, casinos, shows, shopping, golf, etc, all without leaving home, needing a passport or standing in line while U.S. Customs' drug sniffing dogs smell your luggage. No one ever got NoroVirus at their local brewpub.
I'm 75 and recall grade school in the 1950s where they showed us "filmstrips" of natural wonders like the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Yosemite National Park, the Redwoods, the Great Plains, etc. There was precious little on our 3 black & white TV channels so a lot of my generation hit the road to see most of these wonders. It's all different now, there are exquisite shows on TV, billions of great photo's on-line, and videos by do-it-yourselfers on YouTube to see much of what's out there. I used to go on "conventions" to different cities with my railroad history pals and stand by the tracks doing some train watching; no more, just call up youtube.
I don't care if I ever fly again, the experience sucks due to deregulation in the 1980 timeframe which has given us a race to the bottom; fares may be low but the experience is cattle-car dreadful. I remember flying in the 1970s; when a UAL flight was full everyone got a free glass of champagne and the food was good, yes it was so good, I once asked for and got seconds of lasagna on one UAL flight, with stainless steel utensils, not plastic sporks. Everywhere is crowded today, many people are nasty, airlines gouge you for everything, trash is everywhere and prices are high. I'm content to stay the hell home and enjoy a fine bottle of wine for less than $15 -- and I don't have to snake my way through the TSA security rope-walk.
To each their own. The young do need to get out and see places, especially well-civilized Europe. Like Bill Gates said 15 years ago: "See Europe now, in 15 years it will be a museum." As nice as Europe is, I don't want one of the package tours as I've no desire to tour a bunch of musty old cathedrals. Besides, Europe is crowded this year, the locals don't want us milling around their eateries, just like we here in the Phoenix area don't care for how crowded some venues get when the winter snowbirds come flocking in from the frozen north.
YMMV
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 08-21-2023 at 11:24 AM..
The experiences of travel are good to look back on when you become a geezer and the rocking chair has a death grip on you. I smile when I look at the picture of my late wife sitting on a camel in Morocco. I also smile when I see the picture of her holding a Koala in Australia.
I think Millenials watched their parents and grandparents wait until retirement to travel and said, "forget that. I am traveling before I get old".
I took two motorcycle tours of the USA before I was 40 years old. Each tour took over 2 months time. At 65 years old, I could never do that today -- either risk the injury or tough out all the conditions necessary.
That was the most travel I have ever done in my life and those two chunks of temporary early retirement have given me 25 years of memories. It is a daily ocurrence when I see a place on TV and I can honestly say, "yep, I have been there or seen that from the bike."
I have never regretted it for a moment. I think Millenials feel the same. Buy less and do more. I still bought a lot, so there is that. They are probably on the right track. How much do you really need to buy?
He was a very nice man. Well-liked in the community. But he didn't travel...at all. From our hometown of Pamyra, NY, he might go up to Rochester, 21 miles away, on VERY RARE occasions. Or down to Newark, about 10 miles away for some limited shopping. That was about it. He hadn't been in the military or anything like that.
One year, after I moved to teach in the D.C. area, I said, "Uncle Ted, why don't you come down for a visit for about a week some time. I'll take you down to the Capitol and the Supreme Court. Take you to see Arlington Cemetery and the monuments. I'll even come up and pick you up and then take you back home (a distance of 333 miles)." He replied, "They got trees down there?" I said, "Of course". "They got creeks and hills?" "Sure". "Does it rain sometimes down there?" "Well, yeah". "Okay, no need for me to go down there". And okay...he was satisfied with his small town life (to the extreme).
But he also thought he was very knowledgeable about "life". As I grew up, we were in the age of integration, and he thought he knew all about "Negroes". Of course, we were an all-white town. And I am 99% sure he had never had a single conversation with a single Black person in his whole life. Now, I never heard him say anything racist. But I sure heard him say some dumb things. Like, "Well, they can't be doing too bad. They all drive Cadillacs". He could tell you all about why the Vietnam war was good or bad...but I'll bet you $500 he couldn't have pointed to Vietnam on a map, or even gotten to withing 1,000 miles of it. He could probably tell you why some particular religion was good or bad, but didn't go to church himself, and had never met a Buddhist or a Muslim or a member of any non-christian religion (with the exception of the local dentist and the local eye doctor, both Jewish).
In other words...he was a hick. Not a bad hick. But a hick. Who thought he knew a lot about the world around him because he watched Walter Cronkite.
You might say, "So what?"
Well, a person that insulated from the world cannot be a bit empathetic toward people not like themselves...and there's a whole world out there of people not like themsevles. You can't have an intelligent opinion about policies regarding race if you don't know any Black or Latino people because your view is based on false narratives. You can't have an intelligent approach about why California or Texas politics is good or bad if you haven't experienced anything personally about California or Texas. And the bigger problem is that people who are so sheltered in their lives often don't even know how 'dumb' they are about 'stuff'.
As I have said from time to time in places on this forum to individuals who don't have any basis for the opinions they are stating: you need to get out more. (And that's the royal 'you').
I think Millenials watched their parents and grandparents wait until retirement to travel and said, "forget that. I am traveling before I get old".
I took two motorcycle tours of the USA before I was 40 years old. Each tour took over 2 months time. At 65 years old, I could never do that today -- either risk the injury or tough out all the conditions necessary.
That was the most travel I have ever done in my life and those two chunks of temporary early retirement have given me 25 years of memories. It is a daily ocurrence when I see a place on TV and I can honestly say, "yep, I have been there or seen that from the bike."
I have never regretted it for a moment. I think Millenials feel the same. Buy less and do more. I still bought a lot, so there is that. They are probably on the right track. How much do you really need to buy?
Yeah, maybe that's where part of it stemmed from - this when I retire mindset that used to be around. Experiences should be sprinkled throughout life. Go too far in the other direction though seeing it young and there won't be anything new to see when one's retired and has time.
And you saw a lot on both trips, but you were efficient doing them all in a big circuit rather than back and forth and back and forth in small segments that people end up doing when they don't have the time block to do it fully. Similarly I look back on my travels, my Germany / France trip with the fam, my 3 weeks hiking in CO mountains during covid etc, they were all mind expanding. But our travels are what I'd consider moderate.
What I'm seeing with a lot of my millenial friends is an international trip or 2 every year, taking a whole year off to travel around, selling the house and buying the van to scoot around indefinitely, quests to see every national park, every state... things like that. A whole level beyond. I don't know anyone my age who hasn't been to at least several different states and very few who haven't been international. I think people in the never left home bucket are by and large 70+ years old these days.
Some travel broadens our experiences and shows us how big the world is. But does being on a plane every month make us that much more educated? I'd argue no, especially given how much cultural variety one can get if they just go out and about in their own metro. And it only takes a couple plane trips to negate the environmental benefit from not owning a car.
Travel is the Millennial version of "keeping up with the Jones". People like to poke at Boomers for their obsession with lots of toys and possessions, but Millennials / Gen Z have their own obsession with checking off the experience and places been bucket list, and it's every bit as unbalanced.
I think traveling is good to a certain extent. It is natural for humans to be curious about the world they live in.
We want to see new attractions, explore natural wonders, discover cultures we've never seen and maybe learn to speak some words from different languages. These are all good things.
But I agree that, after you have done some traveling, a lot of places start to look pretty similar, even if they are continents apart. There is a lot of repetition - airports, office buildings, cars, roads, houses, stores, restaurants, mountains, beaches, and tons and tons of people everywhere.
The novelty and excitement of traveling can wear off. Personally, I have hobbies that I enjoy more than traveling.
Millenials and GenZs are not the only ones obsessed with travel. Many of the older people I knew in Florida were always coming or going from international trips or trips to see grandkids. They have much more disposable income than younger people and travel fits their needs.
When I didn't have any money I dreamed of traveling to many places seen on TV, islands and national parks and overseas countries were so fascinating. When I could afford to travel it did not disappoint. Of course people want to see the world, it's exciting to get out of your little space and see what's out there.
We're done with big traveling now, happy to drive 2 hours for a getaway and happy to go back home.
But people who want to travel should do it, glad I did it, we live on an amazing planet.
Point 3 is only partly true. For all the locals who resent tourists there are many others who depend on them for their income. Some countries get 10% of their income from tourism. Our government is very happy that China is now allowing group tours back to Australia, and this country is not as dependent on tourism as many.
Everyone I know who is retired travels, but we have always done so. We get more paid leave when working than the US. A friend’s son is off overseas for the third time this year. He is 44, a senior police officer and has been working 24 years. He has over a year’s accumulated paid leave and often employers require some to be taken.
Yes, the flights are supposedly not good for the environment and it seems we will have to deal with them being a lot more expensive when the fuel is more green.
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