Once, while strolling in the English countryside I came upon a detectorist – a man using a metal detector to find objects buried in the soil. He greeted me and I reciprocated by asking if he’d found anything interesting. His face lit up as he showed me his find of the day: a medieval ampulla. I had no idea what he meant until he explained that ampullae are miniature vessels once worn by pilgrims and used to collect holy water from shrines. In short, he had unearthed the medieval equivalent of a holiday souvenir.
Contemporary tourism is a descendant of the pilgrimage, and perhaps also a distant relative of the age of discovery – a time when explorers literally put places on the map. Today’s holidays, however, are typically aimed more at recreation and relaxation than religion, and our explorations tend to follow paths worn threadbare by the shuffling, comfortable-shoe-wearing feet of mass tourism.
The phenomenon of large groups travelling for recreation is still relatively young. Many credit its invention to Thomas Cook, a British entrepreneur who, in the 1840s, began offering the fee-paying public rail tours around the UK. Cook’s earliest excursions were outings for members of the temperance movement, a sociopolitical group that stood against the ills of alcohol, a group to which Cook himself belonged. It’s ironic that a temperance advocate would unwittingly be instrumental in popularising an activity – tourism – that is often criticised for bringing out the most loutish, disrespectful and intemperate behaviours imaginable.
Even as far back as the 1920s there are reports of American tourists causing widespread upset in Paris as they took advantage of the weak franc and the availability of alcohol which, at that time, was banned in the US due to prohibition.
To be fair, tourist misbehaviour is the exception and the vast majority of tourists are at least wary of, if not gracious and respectful towards, their hosts.
The other big issue with mass tourism is just how big it has become. St Moritz, once a sleepy alpine pilgrimage site, now has more than 13,000 units to accommodate tourists, while the year-round resident population is just 5,600. Like many other pretty places, it is now referred to as a resort town.
The number of adults taking foreign holidays went from 9 million in 1950 to 32 million in 2000. With burgeoning middle classes in India and China, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation projects that global tourism will almost reach 2 billion trips a year by 2030.
The obvious upside of tourism is the revenue it generates. Statistics from 2012 put mass tourism’s contribution to the global economy at $7.6 trillion (Dh27.9tn) per year, suggesting that it accounts for one in every 11 jobs on the planet. The challenge is how to maximise the benefits of mass tourism while minimising the harm it can cause. Many countries are beginning to give tourism a serious rethink.
On a personal level, we can be sensitive to local norms, comply with laws, and respect our hosts and their environment. But how do we maximise personal benefits? That’s a trickier one.
A recent study undertaken at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands attempted to measure a holiday’s effect on happiness. The study, focusing on 974 Dutch holidaymakers, found that the largest happiness boost actually came from planning the trip. This is something psychologists call “anticipatory hedonia”: the happiness we feel when imagining future pleasure. Often, it seems, our imagined holiday is even better than the real thing.
Perhaps, then, a useful tip for maximising personal benefit would be to plan holidays as far in advance as possible so as to prolong the anticipatory pleasure. This would also allow us plenty of time to learn a little about the language, laws and social norms of the intended destination.
Dr Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University
On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas
