For centuries, travel has been the symbol of privilege, adventure, and discovery. From Marco Polo’s exploration journeys to today’s digital nomads roaming the globe, crossing borders has often been equated with freedom and curiosity. However, with the age of globalization, over-tourism, and global warming, the ethics of travel need to be questioned.
The idyllic locations in tourist brochures usually hide inconvenient realities—displaced residents, ecological damage, and cultural commodification. While tourists tend to travel in search of connection, adventure, or personal development, their activities tend to leave behind unintended consequences.
In 2017, Venice hosted 36 million tourists—an overwhelming figure given that there are only around 50,000 inhabitants left in the historic center of the city. While gondola excursions and canals might define the city’s beauty, the sheer wave of vacationers has made Venice a theme park rather than a lived-in city. Rent prices are now out of sight, supermarkets are souvenir shops, and Venetians are forced to live on the mainland. The same has occurred in Barcelona, where once-family neighborhoods are now short-term rentals targeting Airbnb tourists.
Governments have attempted to mitigate these issues. Venice began charging a tourist tax in 2019 to slow the flow of over-the-top day-trippers, and Machu Picchu now limits daily tourists to 4,000 to protect its fragile ruins. But regulations alone cannot undo decades of unregulated tourism. The main problem is that the majority of travelers prioritize their own experience over destination sustainability. Few consider how their pursuit of the perfect Insta image drives the gradual loss of cultural and environmental authenticity.
The modern traveler often seeks more than sightseeing; they crave experiences that feel real. The rise of “authentic tourism” has led to the commercialization of indigenous and rural communities in ways that often exploit rather than empower them.
One striking example is the Karen Long Neck Tribe of Thailand, where women wear brass rings around their necks as a cultural tradition. What was once a representation of heritage and identity has now been reduced to a staged spectacle, where the women are remunerated to pose for photographs with tourists, who treat them as objects and not subjects.
The majority of the women have little or no choice in the scenario, as tourism is their only available option for economic survival. In reality, their culture is commodified and frozen in time—not because they wish to do so, but because it is what is sellable to outsiders. Tourism, rather than preserving tradition, has been reshaped to meet the demands of foreign expectations.
Similarly, in Bolivia’s Uyuni Salt Flats, visitors began taking “poverty tourism” tours to nearby villages, where they experienced the “real lives” of indigenous peoples. Such trips normally involve tourists going into homes, photographing children without permission, and poverty as a photographic backdrop. Rather than empowering such communities, this type of tourism only widens the economic divide between visitors and the locals, commodifying human lives as curiosities.
Another ethical concern arising from voluntourism, whereby people visit poor regions for short-term volunteer work projects, has become a multi-billion dollar industry. While projects purport to provide relief to poor communities, far too many end up doing more harm than good.
One of the worst cases is the orphanage tourism industry in Cambodia. Many well-intentioned tourists volunteer at orphanages believing that they are helping out. In reality, up to 80% of these children are not orphans but have been removed from their families and placed in institutions to receive foreign aid. The frequent switches of short-term volunteers interfere with child development and encourage attachment disorders, as children bond with visitors who have to depart.
The same issue occurs in short-term construction projects, where inexperienced volunteers build schools and houses in places that are already full of skilled local laborers. The unexpected consequence? Locals lose work, and the finished structures are of poor quality. Some of the buildings have even been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times just to accommodate the ongoing stream of international volunteers who desire to “help.”
The fundamental problem with voluntourism is that it prioritizes the volunteer’s experience over the needs of the local people. Volunteers are rarely properly trained, but their desire to feel useful takes precedence over the practical reality that their work is usually unnecessary or even counterproductive.
While others prefer cultural immersion, others are drawn to sites of tragedy and devastation. Dark tourism, or traveling to sites of death, war, and disaster, has contributed to controversy over whether such tourism is an act of remembrance or voyeuristic exploitation.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, where over 1.1 million people were murdered during the Holocaust, receives over 2 million visitors per year. While many come with a genuine intent to understand history, others disrespect the solemnity of the site by taking selfies, laughing, or posing for photos as an aesthetic background. Similarly at Chernobyl, where tour companies now market the nuclear disaster zone as a thrilling post-apocalyptic adventure, complete with eerie abandoned buildings and radiation gear for dramatic Instagram photos.
This raises difficult questions on the ethics of tourism to places connected with human tragedy. Does tourism help protect memory and edify the public in the past, or does it trivialize and commercialize trauma? The answer depends on how one engages with these sites—whether with respect, intention, and a desire to learn or merely as a passive consumer of history-as-entertainment.
The ethical issues of travel extend beyond the social to the environmental. The aviation industry alone generates over 2% of the CO₂ emissions globally, and with the advent of low-cost airlines, air travel has never been cheaper or more regular than it is now.
In response, movements like “flight shame” (flygskam) in Sweden encourage travelers to reduce their reliance on air travel in favor of trains, buses, or other lower-emission options. Some European countries have already started taking responsible actions. In 2021, France banned domestic short-haul flights where train routes were available, prioritizing sustainability over convenience.
Beyond aviation, natural ecosystems have also suffered due to unregulated tourism. The world’s most stunning ecosystem, the Great Barrier Reef, has experienced widespread coral bleaching due to global warming, pollution, and boat tourism damage. In Mount Everest’s base camps, tonnes of waste and plastic debris accumulate each year as climbers leave behind the remains of their expeditions.
In the wake of such destruction, sustainable travel requires that one minimizes their carbon footprint, patronizes environmentally friendly, local enterprises, and selects destinations that are capable of hosting tourists sustainably.
The act of travel need not be one of passive consumption but one of sustainable interaction with the world. Ethical tourism does not imply giving up the urge to discover and explore; rather, it involves being aware of the impact of one’s presence, making informed choices of destinations, and ensuring that tourism enriches and does not exploit.
The world is not just a backdrop for personal adventure—it’s a realm in which every decision made as a guest has lasting consequences. As we look to the future of travel, one fact remains clear: responsible travel is not merely a choiceㅡit is an obligation.
By: Chanwoo Jung
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