Since ancient times, travel has been an integral feature of our way of life, but if in the old days long hikes or trips were associated mainly with commercial purposes, then since the second half of the 19th century tourism has come to the fore. The desire to simply see other countries, meet interesting people from other parts of the globe.
Today, getting impressions from distant and near journeys are considered perhaps the best way to spend your time and money (probably except for investing in education), and the tourism industry has managed to survive even the pandemic with dignity. But is this really so, or is travel actually overrated, and the hype around it is artificially created? People in this viral thread on X (formerly known as Twitter) are trying to find out…
More info: X
Image credits: Chen Mizrach (not the actual photo)
Image credits: abigvle
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The volume and potential of the tourism business around the world is truly impressive in its scope. Thus, according to Statista, over the past seventy years, the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide has steadily grown from year to year, reaching its absolute peak in 2019 with a stunning 1,463.68 million.
The pandemic brought these numbers down to the level of about thirty years ago, but as soon as the COVID-2019 began to decline, tourism picked up again – 969.4 million in 2022 roughly corresponded to 2010 figures. Perhaps only one question remains – are we really eager to travel ourselves, or was this desire instilled in us?
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It is no secret that the last half century in the world has been closely connected with consumption – first of various things and technologies, and in the 21st century – of various content as well. We enjoy consuming content because it gives us certain feelings of novelty that we have become accustomed to.
Can travel be considered a similar type of content? After all, in terms of human perception, what’s the true difference between watching a new video on YouTube or TikTok, another football match any given Sunday, or a new trip somewhere far away? In fact, it’s just a new flow of information to our brain, nothing more…
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Numerous travel blogs, films and TV series about the beauties of other countries and places only fuel our desire to travel. For example, Nina Clapperton, founder of the SheKnowsSEO blog, provides interesting facts and numbers about travel blogging: “Digital travel has grown by double digits annually for the last three years. And travel search terms are up 70% on Google. <…> Travel blogs are an integral part of the inspiration to purchase process for consumers. They are vital in the inspiration phase, the informational phase, and the comparison phase.”
In addition, in 2020, according to data gathered by Nina, there were over 31.7 million users who visited travel blogs in 2020. At the same time, 34% of blog consumers visit them to learn something new or how to do something, and 61% of consumers have purchased a product after reading about it on a blog.
In other words, we may watch a cool, beautiful video about someone’s journey – and, inspired, we buy tickets there. And then, it is far from a fact that the trip will meet our expectations in comparison with the effectively filmed video by professionals – and we might be disappointed, after which we will go to this thread on X and share our opinion about shortcomings of traveling, which is actually out of line with the general trend.
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In fact, forget it. Just forget it. Perhaps the modern world fuels our interest in travel, but at the end of the day, it’s incredibly cool, and new experiences are exactly what we are likely to take with us until the very last days of our lives. And some negative experiences… well, as you know, there are spots on the Sun too. So please feel free to scroll this list made for you by We to the very end, and maybe share your own opinions about traveling in the comments below. As they say, the more people, the more opinions, and we can all agree – this is nothing but wonderful!
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