Are You Travelling for the Right Reasons?

I was listening to a podcast where the hosts were discussing the impact of social media on travel and one of them said something along the lines of, “You have to ask yourself if you’re travelling for the right reasons.”

Immediately, my face scrunched up in disgust. What are the right reasons to travel? Who gets to decide what those right reasons are?

And, more importantly, who cares? Who cares if someone (who isn’t you) is or isn’t travelling for these lofty “right” reasons?

Needless to say, I had a lot of rebuttals that I was silently voicing to the podcast hosts in my headphones. But since that’s not how podcasts work, I thought I’d unpack the topic here on my travel blog.

The wrong reasons to travel

Before we get into the right reasons to travel, I think we can all agree there are some pretty clear wrong reasons to travel. If you’re travelling to commit a crime or to do something undeniably immoral, those would be bad reasons to book a trip.

And then we have the grey areas. What if you’re travelling to an area that’s suffering from overtourism? What if you’re taking part in an animal encounter? What if there’s a negative environmental impact from your trip?

I think arguments can be made either way for some of these grey areas – hence, why they’re in the grey.

There are obviously varying degrees of “wrong” to these types of travel and depending on who you are, you might have a bigger issue with some of these things than someone else.

Why do we get so upset when people don’t travel like we do?

Besides someone travelling to do something immoral, illegal or in your personal grey area, why do we care how people travel?

If they’re not hurting themselves, the environment or others, why does it matter to us why they’re travelling?

You might say it doesn’t matter or it shouldn’t matter – and you’d probably be right. And yet so many of us (myself included) will judge people’s travel, make fun of it or give pushy suggestions all in the name of helping them to travel better.

I think some of this comes down to how our brains operate. We all like to think we’re smart travellers making smart travel choices. So if someone travels differently than we do and has the gall to look like they’re enjoying themselves, that messes with our brains.

Our lizard brains say, “Our way is the right way to travel. They must be doing something wrong. Let’s point it out or let them know so we can feel better about the decisions we made.”

Of course, it’s usually not that sinister or even that conscious. Sometimes we give that travel tip or suggestion from a good place, because we genuinely want people to have as great a time as we did.

But our lizard brains are designed to protect our egos. That’s why someone travelling for a reason you don’t get bugs you, even though you know it shouldn’t.

Let’s imagine for a second a traveller who is completely different than you.

Maybe they travel exclusively to take beautiful photos. They’re a hobby photographer and spend most of their day behind the lens whereas you think everyone should put their phones/cameras away and enjoy the moment.

Maybe they’re a foodie and they spend weeks researching restaurants and making reservations. They exclusively eat at fine dining establishments, while you prefer street food, and instead of seeing the sights between meals, they go back to their hotel to rest.

Maybe they travel to party. They love techno music and stay up all night dancing, sleeping through days of sightseeing. Maybe they travel to relax and spend their whole trip at the spa, never leaving their hotel.

None of those things are inherently evil. And yet, I bet something in those traveller descriptions bugged you.

Why are we letting someone else’s trip and reasons for travelling bother us? Let’s blame our lizard brains!

Is bucket list travel right or wrong?

A common statement you might hear belittling a popular travel choice would be, “I bet you’re only going to that place because everyone else is.”

To which I would answer, “So what?”

Popular locations are popular for a reason. Millions of people have seen or experienced a thing and really liked it, which inspires millions more to see or do that thing.

If you’re someone who reads reviews, think of a popular location as a place that’s gotten millions of five star reviews for hundreds of years. Sounds like a winner to me! Why would you not want to go there?

A variation on this statement is, “Well, you only want to go there because it’s all over Instagram/TikTok/the next social media platform.”

To which again I must answer, “So what???”

Why is a place inherently better or worse because I learned about it on social media? Why is finding out about something on my phone not as good as learning about it in a classroom or reading about it in a magazine?

The podcast that inspired this episode brought up Paris as an example. They asked, “Do you only want to go to Paris because you see it all over social media or because you’ve been dreaming about Paris since you were a kid?”

Once again, this gets a disgusted face scrunch from me. Why is my trip to Paris less valid because I saw a nice photo on Instagram vs having posters of the Eiffel Tower on my wall as a child?

This also speaks a lot to privilege. Maybe someone didn’t grow up hearing about Paris because their family never travelled. They didn’t dream of Paris as a kid because it felt so out of reach.

Many popular places are more accessible and can be more affordable. If you’ve never travelled before, don’t speak a foreign language or have mobility issues, it’s a lot easier for you to go to a popular place like Paris than a tiny island off of Fiji.

Lastly, it’s often the people who have been to these popular bucket list places who poo-poo the people who still want to go to them.

It’s a lot easier to say Venice is overrated and you shouldn’t go because it’s overtouristed when you’ve already been to Venice.

Do I think Venice is overrated and overtouristed? I do. But I also had the privilege of coming to that conclusion for myself when I visited Venice in 2019. So who I am to say that other people can’t also find out for themselves?

Are you allowed to travel for social media?

These days, you don’t have to look hard to find a travel influencer on social media posing in a beautiful outfit in front of a gorgeous backdrop.

And you don’t have to look much farther than that to find all the comments snickering about how this person probably woke up at dawn and spent three hours posing with their big hat and tripod just to get the shot.

Let’s leave behind some of the negatives of social media influencers for a moment, like promoting overtourism or ruining environments.

If you saw someone posing in front of their tripod in a non-overtouristed area and they weren’t hurting the environment, would you still roll your eyes?

I think if we’re being honest, a lot of us would say yes!

This touches on the whole influencer role in our society, which I don’t think this blog is able to handle. But looking at it just from the travel side of things, if you saw an influencer in the wild and nothing they were doing was hurting you/others, why would you still be bothered?

This is when I think the whole concept of travelling for the “right reasons” really starts to rear its ugly head. People will say things like, “They came all the way to this monument and didn’t even read about it/take a tour/visit the museum. All they did was take photos!”

First, you don’t know that. What if they were at the monument yesterday and did read all the plaques, go on the guided tour and spend hours at the museum? Or what if they were planning to do that later? Would their photo shoot still bug you?

Secondly – and most importantly – even if they didn’t do all of that stuff, who cares?

Once again, our lizard brains are acting up and trying to get us to put our own trip lens on someone else. It shouldn’t bother us that people want to travel differently than we do, and yet it does.

And for all of the negative things that social media has fostered, it’s also done a lot of good in the travel world.

Social media introduces people to new places. If you thought Paris was crowded now, just imagine if we didn’t have social media showing us other options. Then everyone would only go to Paris!

People who never thought they would leave their hometowns are inspired to book trips thanks to social media. We’ve all heard an inspiring story of a person discovering solo travel and living their best life.

People meet friends on social media. I’ve met up with friends in London, France and Vancouver all thanks to our travel talks on Twitter!

So yes, there are obvious downsides to social media and influencer culture, but there are upsides too.

What about fast travel vs slow travel?

This is another debate where travelling the “right” way comes up a lot: fast travel vs slow travel.

I had so many opinions on this one that I had to write a whole post about it, but the bottom line is: one speed of travel is not better or more correct than the other.

A lot of people will argue that slow travel is better. It’s better on the environment and your wallet, allows you to appreciate a place more and is just more enjoyable with its slower pace.

Slow travel is also associated with a loftier reason to travel. You can humble brag that you’re travelling in order to visit family-run vineyards in Tuscany and sip wine back at your villa each night, rather than racing from sight to sight in Rome.

But there’s a lot of privilege in slow travel. Not everyone can afford to take off weeks or months from work to stay in a sleepy town in Italy.

If someone has been saving up for years to take their one and only trip to Italy, I’m not going to begrudge them for wanting to see, do and (most importantly) eat as much as they can!

Of course, there can be a lot of privilege in fast travel too. If fast travel means jumping on a plane every other day and staying in five star hotels, that’s not an option for everyone.

Where does responsible travel fit in all this?

At the end of the day, I’d like to hope we all want to be responsible travellers who take care of ourselves, each other and the places we’re visiting. Especially as a travel blogger, I never want to encourage bad behaviour.

But I think we need to take a look at our definition of responsible travel. Like most things, it’s not so black and white.

Yes, carbon emissions from airplanes are bad. But seeing the world and being exposed to new cultures and ideas is good.

Yes, overtourism is bad. But there are places in the world that rely on tourism to support their economy.

Things we associate with responsible travel, like shopping local or learning about a place’s culture, are also things that can require an immense amount of privilege. Not everyone can afford to shop local. Not everyone has access or time to research local culture.

So while I think some reasons for travel can be “wrong” according to the broad definition of responsible travel, as always, there’s a lot of nuance in the less broad definition.

How responsible does responsible travel need to be? Who decides what is or isn’t responsible? Who gets a pass for travelling irresponsibly?

So why do I still feel bad if I’m not travelling for the “right” reasons?

Despite logically understanding that there is no such thing as overarching right reasons to travel, I still find myself struggling with this.

As I’ve talked about, I still find myself being bothered by people who travel for the “wrong” reasons, which we’ve learned just means differently than how you choose to travel.

But I also find that I judge myself when I don’t think I’m living up to these grandiose reasons to travel the world.

A part of that is FOMO. In a world where you could constantly be seeing and doing things, it’s hard to accept that you’re going to miss out.

And a part of that is the comparison game. Being in the travel blogging and social media spheres, I’m always stacking myself up against other bloggers and travellers.

Did they see something that I didn’t? Did they have a genuine local interaction that I missed? Did they explore more, learn more and do more than I did?

There’s also this unspoken rule in the travel blogging world that you have to travel for some deeper, more impressive reason.

I remember doing an interview with a fellow blogger when we lived in Prague. She kept asking why we moved to Prague, trying to get me to come up with some deep reason along the lines of cultural immersion or finding ourselves.

The truth? We wanted to travel Europe. Prague was a pretty, convenient and affordable place to do that from.

I don’t always – heck, I don’t even often – travel to meet new people, travel to push myself way out of my comfort zone or travel to deeply immerse myself in some foreign culture.

Sometimes I travel to see a thing that looked cool online. Sometimes I travel to relax in front of a nice view. Sometimes I travel because I heard the gelato was really good.

And while those might sound like shallow reasons to travel, I’m learning to be more confident and more honest about why I travel and what I need out of a trip.

Wrapping up: Travel for the right reasons…for you

Turns out, the hosts of the podcast who inspired this blog post might actually have been onto something. They said, “You have to ask yourself if you’re travelling for the right reasons.”

When I first heard this, my brain stuck on the “right reasons” part. As I’ve argued in this post, who is to say what reasons are the right ones and why does it matter if it’s not our trip?

But if I change the emphasis, I think their statement is actually correct. “You have to ask YOURSELF if YOU are travelling for the right reasons.”

You’re not asking others if they are travelling for the right reasons. You’re asking yourself. And they’re the right reasons according to you!

When we stop judging other people’s reasons for travel, it becomes a lot easier to get confident in our own.

For me, I want to be able to share my perspective and what I’ve learned from my travels. But there needs to be a distinction between making the right choice for myself and not forcing my travel style on everyone.

I want to become more comfortable in accepting my own reasons for travel and understanding that those reasons can and will evolve. Depending on the trip or where I’m at in my life, I might be travelling for different things.

By extending that grace to myself, it’s a lot easier to extend it to others. If I allow myself to take a trip just for fun or just to relax or just because I heard about a place online, why can’t other people?

Can I look at the girl in the floppy hat posing in front of her tripod and think, “Good for her! She’s having fun and doing what she wanted to do here” instead of, “Another influencer strikes again!”

And by focusing more on myself, why I’m travelling and what I want out of my travels, hopefully I won’t even notice the next influencer with a camera.

(Unless they’re blocking my shot, of course!)

I’d love to know: What do you think about travelling for the right reasons?