2022: The Year of Traveling Meaningfully
by Robert McGarvey
This is the year to make a vow, this is the year to travel meaningfully.
That means no more stupid check the box trips (“I’m going to the Azores because I’ve never been”), no more trips driven by envy (“everybody’s been to Kenya so I gotta go”). no more trips taken just to fill time in a vacation season where it seems everybody else is traveling.
Do note: this primarily applies to leisure travel. A lot of the business travel I have taken and will take is, er, meaning deficient. Somebody thinks I should be in Chicago and, well, there’s no pressing conflicts in my calendar so, sure, I will go. Nowadays I will grumble, I will try to invoke alternatives (“will a Zoom call suffice”), but when the order is given I will pack and go.
Leisure travel on the other hand is largely within my control and so this year my travel will be meaningful.
What’s that mean?
I’m riffing on an idea put forth by Wolfgang Georg Arlt in a recent Phocuswire piece where he stated a provocative thesis: “Quality, satisfaction and benefits for all stakeholders involved need to become the guideposts for the tourism development in the 2020s.
“The world developed economically at an ever-growing speed in last 30 years without a parallel growth of political institutions managing globalization – the climate catastrophe, rise of despotism and the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands have been the result.”
Too much meaningless travel has been a large contributor to the eco mess we now find ourselves in.
Let’s be honest: overtourism vanished in 2020-2022 but that was a Covid pause, it most certainly wasn’t indicative of a fundamental shift in traveler attitudes. If anything, more of us today are speeding off to Mykonos and Santorini, Vatican City, Paris, and the rest of the travel hotspots.
Locals may grumble, from Florence to Japan about too many tourists, but money is talking louder than common decency and rational planning. This summer will see tsunamis of overtourism – there just is no doubt about it. And the natterers among us will resume their grumbles about too many tourists mindlessly traveling but that won’t change a thing.
It’s time for individual, personal action. It’s time to dig heels in the ground and insist on meaningful travel and that is travel with a purpose (beyond sheer hedonism) and travel that plainly benefits multiple stakeholders. Per Arlt, “‘Meaningful Tourism’ [is] a paradigm that is based on a return to quality, satisfaction and benefits for all stakeholders involved, namely the guests, the host communities, the employees of service providers, the companies, the government and the environment, with quality and satisfaction measured by the stakeholders themselves.”
And it’s not just where we travel, but how we travel and what we do when we get there.
So much leisure travel is and always has been all about me. What do i want to do? How do I feel about that?
In my new mindset I am trying to see my travel through multiple lenses – including the locals and the businesses I will interact with along the way.
The only leisure travel I have planned for this year is a three week trip in the fall to the Iberian Peninsula, to walk a second Camino de Santiago route (the so called Portuguese Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela in Spain). This walk will include many nights in small, independent hotels, meals in small, local restaurants and countless coffees along the way bought at small shops.
Pre-trip there will a multi night stay in Lisbon, where I have never been, and post trip there will be a multi night stay in Madrid (if nothing else to again tour the Prado).
(In fall 2021 I did a similar trip, walking a different Camino route only in Spain.)
Just one trans Atlantic roundtrip is involved in this fall’s holiday, the trip is after the peak Camino season (summer) and many small businesses, primarily owned and operated by locals will benefit.
The Camino also is per se a “meaningful” trip because it blends history, architecture, culture, the outdoors, exercise and spirituality into a single package.
Do all trips have to be that heavily laden with obvious meaning? Nope. Meaning is to a large extent in the traveler’s eye. We know what we do that is harmful to the planet and its people and we know what we do that isn’t.
Just do more of the beneficial, less of the harmful, and that is a trip well taken.
Camino walk sounds, oh so meaningful. I go abroad to sing, touch in with the locals, and of course, get a taste of the culture. There is much more life over there, history, beauty, art . We are living in a bubble of hate and fear. A little language and singing open the door for me to relating. Went with a guide to the Dolomites. We talked and talked, I sang and sang Italian songs. When we parted he said, “It’s like I took an old friend to show him the mountains.” Primo!
Am off to Prague-Vienna-Salzburg-Munich in October. This is where my ancestors came from. I know many German songs. Hope to try my voice at Vienna Staatsoper. You can get standing room there for 3 euro. Four of my favorite sopranos sing there. Vienna my city of dreams.
Regards, Kristopher
So long as you will have time in Madrid, it would be difficult to argue with a visit to the Museo del Prado, but I would like to suggest an additional art-ogling stop if your schedule permits, the Casa-Museo Sorolla, if you have not seen it, or perhaps even if you are familiar with it, as it has been worth repeated visits over now several decades. It was the residence and studio of J. Sorolla, willed to the Spanish state after her death by his widow. He was, during his lifetime, one of the most highly regarded, sought-after painters in the western world, so he was able to afford to build a lovely house in a leafy section of Madrid, with a wall enclosing a beautiful garden. Many of his paintings are housed there as part of the permanent collection, and visiting shows often bring others, either of his own work his contemporary artists’ works. It has the signal advantage that you can have a very good visit in the space of 2-3 hours,. which would not serve for even a small fraction of the holdings in the Prado. So, no need to debate with yourself after a visit whether to go get a meal or drag your way to bed after an exhausting tour through the endless galleries of a larger establishment.