THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN TRAVELLERS AND TOURISTS
The tourist boom is an established fact of these last decades. From the beginning of tourism as a luxury, as an aristocratic privilege, till these current times of tourism as a mass consumption good, a great deal of water has flowed under the bridge since, and many elements have contributed to its meteoric development. Among them three crucial ones:
· Communications: The means of transport for passengers, especially the planes, shorten distances with a few hours of flight, while airlines concurrence has made prices more and more affordable.
· Languages: Formerly an insidious hindrance, with the internationalization of English as lingua franca within the touristic world, educated visitors may easily make themselves understandable everywhere.
· Information: Due of its availability thanks to internet and web services together with the likability of being supplied in real time, live data is at hand for the tourist when needed.
In the 21st century travel consumers, an unbreakable link of the productive system, are swallowed by a dynamic which control them over at least 350 days of their working year. Society manpower seen as oiled gear assembly, is a specimen whose birth-privilege for ruling his own life has been taken away in the name of progress. It´s in this stage when the industry of tourism blossoms, reacts against so rude an exaction, it outstands so much as to promise the tourist to be given -at least for a couple of days- his free time-management back. In ancient times, what is now the so-called tourist, was reported as a long-term adventurer, an expeditioner who used to leave his town of residence to explore remote exotic continents and seas, aiming to transcend borders and, once back, build epic tales under the form of a chronicle which accounts for unexpected incidents, mishaps, setbacks overcame with bravery and fearlessness: here we have the traveler. Tourism, hoisted by its own industry, carries the mission of relieving the stress of modern mankind tyrannized by its work routine, by relationships, religions, political beliefs, and so on.
Old tourism packages, of adventure, alternative tourism, spiritual or ethnic, responsible travel, all-inclusive packages, ecological, gastronomic, business tourism or cycle outing offers, and so many others, provide varied stress-relieving solutions in tune, in theory, with relaxation, all of which aiming at the psychophysics welfare of customers (patients?). Indeed, tourism should encourage visitors to connect themselves with living objects and sensitive spaces, with the globe, with new people, with geography, with topography, with the nature of the selected destination. Please allow me nonetheless to disagree with this kind of recreation&relaxation packages whose goal is to transport us from one bubble to another: we leave the 350 days job bubble, and in vacation during the 15 days’ leave (granted by our employer) we are transferred to a more refined bubble, the touristic one, where we visitors are contained as a result of travel arrangements. Consequently, visitors creep into the world of 24/7 consumption of whatever stuff we may bump into, as though we were in need of a prefabricated recipe to encapsulate our joy according to a suffocating agenda. We the- encapsulated-tourist will come back home more tired than we were at the beginning of the trip, apart from the fact of having lost our free leisure-time-management.
It´s not my intention to make suggestions nor to incite upheavals, but to raise questions: I only present a tourism trend that in case it remains unchanged and no superior alternatives appear, who knows where the embryonic spirit of the ancient traveler will divert to. It´s a trend which, beyond any lamentations, is frequently supported by therapists and psychoanalysts. Any bright-minded sociologist could speculate that tour operators and psychoanalysts work in partnership. The sad fact that ultra-modern tourists often act as patients of travel agencies (if I don´t get a holiday I will kill myself=tourism as a containment bubble), denounces a pending sensitization campaign to heal the ills. If tourism will render the catalyst for the spiritual benefit of its faithful devotes, fostering the experience of novelty, if tourism doesn´t push its customers to resume the lost spirit of adventurers, we need to focus on an upgrade of the above-mentioned trend. I am referring to tourism as a responsible entity, offering innovative perspectives in so a way that they can free its clients instead of containing them, I am referring to a kind of tourism that re-creates a state similar to that of ancient travelers, when the clash to the unexpected and to the unknown was commonplace; when the planning ended up being merely the starting point of the trip subject to daily updates.
If it happens that the touristic industry would free its clients during their vacations, the tourist will be a traveler again, and the touristic industry will get its former name back: promoter and creator of journeys. Or holistic tourism.
