Travel Obsession

At some point in recent history, travel stopped feeling optional and started feeling like something you’re supposed to do. The rise of social media has dramatically changed how and why we travel. A 2019 study found that 40% of millennials choose travel destinations based on “Instagrammability” rather than cost or cultural experience¹. While technology has proliferated travel information and made the world more accessible, it has also shifted our motivations in subtle ways.

Paradise Lost: The Double-Edged Sword of Tourism #

Travel can still crack open your perspective in a way not much else does. Yet there’s an interesting paradox in modern travel culture where the performance of the experience sometimes overshadows the experience itself. Venice, for example, receives over 30 million tourists annually despite having just 50,000 residents²—transforming a once-thriving city into what some locals describe as a “living museum.”

The backlash against overtourism has taken dramatic forms elsewhere. Maya Bay in Thailand—made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio’s film “The Beach”—was completely closed to tourists for over three years (2018-2022) after receiving up to 5,000 visitors daily on its small 250-meter stretch of sand. The closure allowed coral reefs to recover and marine life to return, with Thailand’s National Parks Department implementing strict visitor caps upon reopening⁴.

In Lisbon, residents have begun actively fighting back against the tourism industry that has transformed their city. The influx of short-term rentals has caused housing prices to skyrocket by over 65% since 2012⁵, pushing locals out of neighborhoods they’ve inhabited for generations. In 2023, protesters took to the streets with signs reading “Tourists go home, locals can’t afford homes,” while community groups successfully lobbied for restrictions on new Airbnb licenses in historic districts. Similar movements have emerged in Mallorca, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, where residents increasingly view mass tourism as a threat to their cultural identity and economic stability rather than a boon.

Meanwhile, in the Alpine village of Hallstatt, Austria (population 800), which reportedly receives over a million tourists annually after allegedly inspiring Disney’s Frozen, officials erected physical barriers to block photography viewpoints and installed fences to prevent tourists from photographing residents’ homes and entering private property⁷. When a town starts putting up barriers just so people will stop treating it like a backdrop, something has gone badly off the rails.

The environmental impact of travel deserves consideration too. A single round-trip flight from New York to London generates roughly 986 kg of CO2 per passenger⁸—more than the average person in many developing countries produces in an entire year. I’m not arguing for some purity test here. I just think it’s worth being a little more honest about which trips matter and which ones are habit.

Experience vs. Exhibition #

I’m reminded of an old Reddit post where someone asked, “How do you know when you’ve become a man?” The top answer was simply: “Climb a mountain. Tell no one.” That stuck with me because it gets at how easy it is to turn an experience into a performance the second other people are watching.

The “Instagram vs. reality” phenomenon at popular destinations reveals another dimension of travel culture. Places like Bali’s Gates of Heaven, where tourists queue for hours to take photos with mirrors creating the illusion of reflection pools, demonstrate how our desire for the perfect shot can replace authentic experience. Meanwhile, destinations like Barcelona and Kyoto have implemented tourism restrictions to protect local quality of life⁹.

Finding Wonder in the Everyday #

These days, I’ve found unexpected joy in exploring my immediate surroundings—discovering hidden parks, quiet coffee shops, and neighborhood stories that tourists rarely see. There’s a certain richness in developing deep knowledge of one place rather than shallow familiarity with many. The Japanese concept of mono no aware—the pathos of things—teaches appreciation for the beauty in impermanence and can be practiced anywhere.

Lately I’ve been more interested in how I move through a place than how far away it is. Some of the better days have been close to home, paying attention instead of trying to collect proof that I went somewhere.