- 24 July 2009
- 3:32pm
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Other
Zombie Travel
markbroadheadLonely Planet author
For what shall it profit travellers, if they visit the whole world without experiencing it fully?
The Lonely Planet community has always been about Independent Travel. Our success is being able to empower curious people to get to the heart of a place, whether by getting around on public transport, getting beyond the tourist traps, supporting local businesses, or relating to the wonderful and the everyday in every destination. But a lot of travellers are unaware of the benefits of Independent Travel, and instead support Zombie Travel.
What is Zombie Travel?
It’s a part of the larger Zombieconomy. Harvard Business Review describes the Zombieconomy as being ‘built on McMansions, Hummers, and $5 lattes’. In other words, it is the products and lifestyles that don’t add value to our lives. In fact, they take away value. They destroy our standard of living, the environment, and minority cultures, and distract us from adding real value to our lives.
So Zombie Travel is the vacation spent all day, every day on the beach getting skin cancer, instead of learning even a little about the local culture and history; it is drinking at Irish pubs in France instead of finding a family run brasserie or cafe; it is staying only at cloned five-star international hotel chains, instead of trying a locally owned guesthouse; it is going on an air-conditioned coach tour of a city, rather than creating your own walking tour.
My Bangkok hotel, above a 7-Eleven: Cheap, clean, and walking distance to loads of sights.
In short, Zombie Travel is typically luxury without value.
- Of what value is staying at expensive hotel for all of your vacation when travellers spend 95% their waking hours outside experiencing a foreign culture? A clean bed and bathroom are more than enough.
- Of what value is a suntan, if all it leaves to tell one’s grandchildren about a place is that ‘I had to get up early to claim a beach chair’? I like to relax on a beach with the best of the sun worshippers, but I’ve found more peace learning about Ra in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo than on a Thai beach.
- Of what value is a standard tour of a city, if it is a substitute for the ambulatory ambience of a personal connection?
We all like to spoil ourselves now and again. And we are more inclined to spoil ourselves when we are on vacation. However, spoiling ourselves too much can ruin the primary reason for travelling: experiencing the real texture of a place. Save your money and help preserve the planet for future generations by not travelling Zombie-style.
Phú Quốc, Vietnam: Don’t forget to visit a fish-sauce factory while you are here.
[...] Planet, Zombie Travel: For what shall it profit travellers, if they visit the whole world without experiencing it [...]
“Of what value is staying at expensive hotel for all of your vacation when travellers spend 95% their waking hours outside experiencing a foreign culture?”
This shows, IMO, a serious fallacy. Vacationing is not Travelling is not Going Somewhere. I just came back from 10 days in Iceland with my girlfriend. We travelled, but it was no vacation. Our friends went to a resort in Jamaica. They went somewhere and vacationed, but by no means did they Travel.
Let’s face it: you’re talking about people who are reading travel agent brochures and resort pamphlets, not LP books. It seems like you’re frowning on vacationers for vacationing. That’s hardly fair.
“Zombie Travel is typically luxury without value.”
To a traveller, perhaps. You shouldn’t begrudge someone their vacation; just don’t label it as Travel or Having Seen a Country. Perhaps your goal is immersion and the “true experience” of a place. But what you’ve just done is place a value judgement on a group of people, which, I’m sorry, comes across as snobby. Am I a proto-zombie for having chosen a hotel over a guesthouse? Or a guesthouse over a tent? I rented a car instead of taking a bus tour… but I didn’t bike it or hitchhike: do I get thumbs up, or am I gnawing on brains?
Not everyone has the xenophilic bend to run off with a passport and a change of underwear and see the world. I totally get the value of Independent Travel, but there’s value in getting to shut off your brain. Just don’t call that Travel. It’s just “going somewhere.”
Forgot to say great post! Can’t wait to seeing the next post!
There are degrees of Zombie Travel. I didn’t say you can’t relax, that you have to spend every waking moment engaging with the culture, or that you can’t spoil yourself with luxuries. I say if you do go for a relaxing holiday, then get off the beach to see some local culture, you may be surprised how relaxing that will be; get out of a cloned hotel for some of your holiday; don’t spend every night at a fake Irish pubs.
Please engage with my article in a sincere way.
p.s. I like the paradox of you thinking that I am snobby for criticising luxury.
Actually, Mark, I believe that systemsgeek did sincerely engage with your post.
The distinctions between “going somewhere” and “vacationing” and “travel” are pretty subjective constructs. In an intellectually stimulating environment, the brain needs time to shut off and reboot. Often, a change of scenery is simply a legitimate way of altering physical stimulation in order to reengage intellectually.
I wonder how many creative ideas have come from the relaxing times on the beach. Thoreau might have something to say on the matter.
What I meant was he didn’t read my article properly. He argues against a point that I don’t make. Sure, his friends who went to Jamaica are probably zombies, but I admitted that lying on a beach is perfectly acceptable as long as it is not all you do. Likewise, staying a cloned hotel in Iceland isn’t the best experience of the local culture, but he got out and experience the country with a rental car.
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