Chapter 10 - So why do people travel?

Abstract

These two statements, separated by almost 2,000 years, demonstrate two ways of looking at travel. One sees it as a response to conditions at home, with the final destination of little importance. The other views it as motivated by the lure of the new and the different. Pliny's letter goes on to note that many people are more familiar with the attractions of distant places than with those of their home, an observation that is as true today as it was then. This chapter will suggest that both contentions are valid, but that they are indispensable to one another. For it will argue that the need to escape from ‘ordinary’ life is not just a product of the twentieth century and that, while types and means of tourism are historically and culturally determined, the urge to travel is not. In other words, this chapter will argue that it is the combination of the opportunity to travel, greatly expanded during the twentieth century, with the innate desire to explore and seek new experiences which has created the unstoppable juggernaut of tourism. It will then discuss the wholly unremarkable - yet often ignored - proposition that people engage in tourism because they enjoy it (c.f. drugs) and will suggest that tourism has given more people more happiness than almost anything else. In exploring the importance of tourism to tourists, particular attention will be paid to the post-1989 experiences of Eastern Europeans, as political restrictions on travel were lifted.