CHAPTER 2

THE CASE FOR (RESPONSIBLE) TRAVEL

THERE ARE MANY good arguments against tourism, starting from its negative environmental impact, irresponsible practices, cultural insensitivity, and abuse of locals. Airline travel is estimated to contribute 2 percent of greenhouse emissions.¹ In the Mediterranean region, where fresh water is a major issue, tourists at times use double the amount of water as locals. The World Wildlife Fund reported in June 2018 that tourists visiting the Mediterranean during the summer produce a 40 percent increase in plastic entering the sea.²

These arguments make a good case against irresponsible travel and should encourage us to take a serious look at the practices of the travel industry. However, we also should be aware of the positive impact that travel can have. Many economies depend significantly on travel; the travel industry generates 1 in every 10 jobs around the world, for instance.³ It also accounts for 10 percent of the world’s global activity.⁴ And as this book will explore, travel can have social benefits—if done correctly.

That said, the travel industry has a long road ahead to become sustainable. Stories from around the world testify to the problems. Venetians report that their city is so overcrowded with tourists, most local businesses (butchers, florists, bakeries, Murano glass manufacturers) have shuttered because they can’t afford the rent. Locals don’t even see the money—the tour buses take their loads of tourists to big souvenir outlets on the edge of town, which sell fake Murano glass made in China. Many cruise ship companies are causing significant problems in their travel destinations. Belize has become overrun with cruise ship passengers, who spend an average of $44 per day on land and stay only one day (as opposed to land passengers, who spend $96 per day and stay seven days), and locals report that the ships are causing damage to wildlife and coral reefs. In Cozumel, local tour operators pay up to 50 percent of their profit for advertising on certain cruise ships.⁵

Although more governments and travel operators have started tackling major issues like tourist overcrowding, the environmental impact of tourism, and income inequalities, problems still abound. So is there a solution in sight?

Why Do We Travel?

Hasso Spode, who heads the historical archive on tourism at the Free University of Berlin, differentiates between the old and new ways of traveling. Until recently, travel, according to Spode, always incorporated a mission. “The pilgrims, for example, wanted to find salvation; the conquistadors wanted to conquer.” Tourism today, however, often doesn’t include a mission and is purely for leisure.⁶

But not all who journey abroad go on tours without a purpose. We should distinguish between tourists—who travel “just for fun”—and travelers, who seek an educational and cultural experience on their trips.

Educational travel is an ancient kind of journey that remains alive today. I grew up hearing the old Islamic saying “Seek education even if in China”—and China is really far from the Middle East.

Travel today doesn’t have to be without purpose. In reality, the only way for travel to be responsible and justifiable is when it has a purpose. This doesn’t mean that travelers can’t have fun, enjoy the beach, and do some sightseeing. It means that this shouldn’t be the only purpose for our travels.

I never see myself as just a tourist. I am a traveler who uses my trips as an opportunity to learn and connect to the world. I decided to become involved in the travel industry because I saw its potential for major social change. If we can change the way people travel, we can change the world.

Travel is the world’s biggest exchange program, and it has the potential to similarly be its biggest educational program. During my first trip to Lebanon in 2015, I hired a driver to take me to Byblos, one of the oldest seaports in the world. Josef, the driver, was a Lebanese man with short white hair and a youthful glow that beamed from behind the wrinkles on his face.

He was witty and had a talent for sharing stories. He liked to talk, and I had many questions about his well-kept 1960 red Mercedes. He told me that he had owned the car since it was made. He boasted that he had never had to change the engine. He said that he took care of the car as if she were part of his family.

He then began describing his journeys to and from Germany, back when he bought the car in 1960. He said that, back then, you could travel from Lebanon to Germany, buy a car, and drive it back to Lebanon. He drove through Europe, Turkey, and Syria. He could even drive his car to Jerusalem for the weekend without a problem. This would be impossible today because borders have changed, and many countries wouldn’t allow Josef to travel through them. Josef painted a vastly different portrait of the Middle East than what I was used to. He inspired me to dream that perhaps one day this could happen again, and I could travel to Germany and drive back to Jerusalem with a new BMW.

A person’s life can be shaped by travel experiences. So why not make travel educational and inspirational? Travel educates us and challenges us, but it also dares us to dream, to imagine a better future. There is so much hope, kindness, and goodness in the world, which can be discovered through travel. For me, that’s why I started a travel company and became an advocate for reforming the travel industry. I’ve tried to push it toward adopting a sustainable framework, which takes into account the travelers, the locals, and the environment.

Should Everyone Travel?

“Do we really want everyone in the US to travel abroad? Can we afford that environmentally?” my friend Peter, who lives in DC, asked me. “And what about insensitive and ignorant people? They don’t seem to care, and they cause trouble. They also tarnish the image of America abroad.”

With overcrowding at many European tourist sites, this is a common criticism I hear. But I believe tourism promotion should not be focused on increasing the number of travelers; there are already many people traveling across the world. Instead, what we should be focusing on is changing how people travel.

Overtourism is a major problem in some destinations, but undertourism is also a problem—sometimes within a half-hour driving distance. When I visited Barcelona, Spain, for the first time in 2016 for a travel conference, I walked around the city and noticed that I didn’t hear anyone speaking Catalan, the local language. Instead, all the conversations I heard were in English or other languages. The city was filled with tourists who rarely got to meet locals, never mind speak to them. One Barcelona resident I met at the conference told me that he felt like a guest in his own city. It made sense, considering that Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million residents, receives 32 million tourists every year.

The Catalan government now has to battle these issues. Locals can no longer afford living in certain areas of the city, where housing prices have increased by more than 50 percent in the last five years.

The government was recently forced to pass a law that caps rent increases and ties rent to inflation, which currently stands at 1.5 percent. In 2014, the government attempted to tackle the issue of affordable housing in the city. It stopped issuing new licenses for vacation apartments, leaving approximately 9,600 apartments with a license to rent to tourists. A recent agreement with Airbnb allowed the company’s rental data to be shared with the government to prevent unlicensed apartments from being listed on the site.

A recent social media campaign asked travelers to verify that their vacation rentals were legal and report those that were not. This issue of overtourism should make us as travelers reexamine our travel destinations and our relationships with local communities. In 2002, 280 delegates from 20 countries met in Cape Town, South Africa, to discuss responsible tourism practices. At the end of the conference, they issued a declaration that addressed world travel issues, including the problems in Catalonia. As the document declared, “What is good for citizens is good for the tourist. Places that are good to live in are also good to visit. The tourist that Catalonia wants to attract is the one who will respect the environment, the society, and the local culture, [and who is] eager to discover and share experiences.”

In 2019, I visited Igualada, a small town about one hour away from Barcelona, for the purpose of meeting with the local community to discuss strategies that would attract tourists to spend more time on the outskirts of Barcelona. These villages outside of the city are interested in developing tourism experiences and see it as a valuable opportunity for economic development.

Locals in Barcelona have gotten fed up with tourism and want tourists out of their city, but just a 40-minute drive away there are beautiful villages where locals are eager to receive these tourists. While in Igualada, I met with the mayor and other leaders from the towns nearby, along with local business owners, community leaders, and young entrepreneurs—all of whom are working together on ideas to attract tourists to their towns.

The solution for overtourism doesn’t have to be no tourism. Tourism is still a major part of Catalonia’s economy. Many smaller towns in the region would love to welcome travelers. Traveling to Barcelona is still possible if we take into account the challenges and complaints of the residents, but a better solution would be to spend part of our vacation in the smaller villages outside Barcelona.

Similarly, I recently visited Dubrovnik, Croatia, where my friend the photojournalist Ziyah Gafic took me to meet with Wade Goddard, another photojournalist, who founded War Photo Limited—a photo gallery that exhibits war-related photography from the Balkans and other regions. Croatia saw 57,587,000 tourists in 2016 in an area with a population of 4,170,600. There are 14 tourists for every local, making Croatia the country with the largest number of tourists to locals.

Overtourism has gotten so bad that UNESCO threatened to remove Dubrovnik’s World Heritage Site status unless Croatia implemented changes that would reduce the number of tourists in the city.⁷ Wade, who is originally from New Zealand but has lived in the Balkans since the early ‘90s, explained that locals are tired of the crowded streets.

Growing cruise ship tourism has also caused the local tourism sector to suffer. Dubrovnik once attracted “seasoned” tourists, Wade said—tourists who spent several days or weeks in the medieval city and appreciated its breathtaking architecture and history. But now flocks of tourists are coming to the city just for one day. They don’t eat in local restaurants; they hardly see anything outside the old city. They just line up to take a photo imitating the famous image of King’s Landing at the city’s seaport.

Although the cruise lines and the Game of Thrones craze have attracted more tourists to the city, they have not benefited the locals. The change is palpable: Dubrovnik’s old city has only 1,500 people living there, as opposed to 5,000 in the early ‘90s.

“I swear, I think if I hear one more tourist call the old city ‘King’s Landing,’ I’m just going to pack up my things and leave,” Wade said, frustrated. You can’t blame him. The ships that dock in Dubrovnik are the megaships, which dwarf the old limestone buildings and the Franjo Tucfman Bridge. Cruise ship tourism— which usually involves up to 6,000 passengers per ship debarking for just a few hours to explore the tiny old town—combined with Game of Thrones tourism has thus turned the local economy upside down. Tourists are no longer staying for a week to take in the history and culture of the city and enjoy the countryside wineries. Instead, local business owners are lucky if tourists decide to stay for more than one night.

Cruise ships don’t only bring a load of tourists—they also are major polluters. In Dubrovnik, the cruise ships release significantly more pollution into the air than all the cars in the city. In Barcelona, cruise ships release five times more sulphur oxide than all of Barcelona’s cars put together. In June 2019, Barcelona was named the most polluted port in Europe, in part due to the cruise ships. These environmental challenges should be addressed and regulated. As travelers, we need to think more about our carbon footprint and how much pollution we generate by our choice of travel. Cruise ships have become a major tourism provider, but they must address their carbon footprint, their environmental and economic impact, and the level of their engagement with local communities.

A Shift in Strategy

It’s important for governments to change their tourism advertising strategies by promoting meaningful travel. Similarly, travel agencies must hold themselves responsible and promote travel that doesn’t just add carbon footprints without any positive outcomes. There are positive steps in this direction. In 2019, the Netherlands’ tourism board announced that it would stop promoting the country for new tourists because it anticipated that 29 million tourists would arrive annually to the country by 2030, compared with 19 million now. The tourism board is focusing on managing tourism instead of promoting it, while encouraging people to go to less visited sites in the Netherlands— instead of creating a bottleneck in Amsterdam.⁸

More countries and cities around the world will need to follow in the Netherlands’ footsteps. The only way to keep tourism sustainable is to manage it and ensure that we are not hurting the sites and destinations we visit.

We, the travelers, also have a responsibility in tackling overtourism. The world is bigger than we can imagine. Yet, we too often feel pressured to visit the same sites that our neighbors, friends, family, and coworkers have visited. In some cases, we don’t even share the same interests with these people, but we find ourselves visiting the same destinations, eating at the same restaurants, swimming at the same beaches, and doing the same sightseeing.

We are also swayed by advertisements, celebrities, Instagram photos, and “influencers” on social media. Every now and then we read articles with titles like “Ten Destinations You Must Visit Before You Die” and “Most Beautiful Sites in Europe.” These articles sell us one of the biggest lies in the travel industry. Some sites are rarely visited until they are featured in a movie, appear on the cover of a famous magazine, or are added to the World Heritage Sites list. Then, suddenly, they become major attractions. But there are breathtaking sites all over the world that are not featured in movies or magazines.

In 2019, I attended an education conference in Bali and decided to stay for a few days to explore the island. I have always seen the famous “Gate of Heaven” Instagram photos: pictures of tourists posing in a Balinese gate. Here, the local temple discovered that if they used a mirror to create an illusion of a lake reflection, travelers would come. And come they did: today, travelers spend four to five hours round trip driving to and from the temple. At the temple, they wait in line for at least two hours (and often longer) to take one photo—which may or may not look good, depending on weather conditions. I couldn’t believe that people would waste a full day of their trip standing in line for this. I asked our driver what he thought about it, and he said, “I don’t understand why tourists go there. There are a few other temples that provide a similar photo opportunity at a gate with a mirror. But everyone sees this photo on Instagram, wakes up at 5 a.m., and drives out to the same place to stand in line. If they ask, we can give them other options.” I tested one of these alternative temples, and sure enough, we drove right up and were able to re-create almost the same photo in five minutes—leaving plenty of time for meeting locals and exploring the religious traditions of the area.

When we fall for the trap of visiting famous sites just because they are famous, we make tourism unsustainable, and eventually we contribute to the destruction of these sites that we claim to like and care about. I’m often asked by friends, “Where is the best place to travel to?” or “What is your favorite destination?” or “Where should I go?” My answer is always that it depends on what you like, what you care about, and what’s important to you.

I also encourage people to visit the less traveled destinations. The size of the crowd visiting a destination shouldn’t be the reason you travel there. In fact, the size of the crowd at a destination is often a reason to avoid it, because you won’t go away happy, and you’ll end up being a burden to the locals and part of the problem. It is important to realize that more often than not, there is zero correlation between the size of the crowds visiting a destination and the beauty, culture, and experience the destination has to offer.

Be Aware: Travel Is a Privilege

Many people around the world can’t travel. Some can’t travel for financial reasons, and others can’t travel because their passport or government doesn’t allow them to. My nephew Eyad is a Jerusalem resident who wanted to take his first international trip last month. Like me, Eyad was born without any citizenship. He has only a handful of destinations he can visit without applying for a visa, and should he apply, he would likely be rejected because of his citizenship status (which for Jerusalem Palestinians is “undefined”).

As a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem, I didn’t have a regular passport growing up. That said, I engaged with the world without ever leaving Jerusalem. As a teenager, I tried to speak with tourists to practice English and to learn about the world beyond my city. I had no citizenship. I used to joke that I was a citizen of the world, but in reality, not many countries would give me a visa. Learning to travel in my hometown thus became important to me because it allowed me still to connect with the world around me. The world came to me when I couldn’t go see it.

I am a Jerusalem resident—often referred to as a Jerusalemite—but not an Israeli citizen. Applying for Israeli citizenship is possible for Jerusalemites, but very difficult. According to the news outlet The Times of Israel, as of September 2016, Palestinian Jerusalemites had submitted 1,102 applications for Israeli citizenship that year, and only nine applications were approved. Two were rejected—the rest waiting years in limbo for their applications to be processed (a way of rejecting valid applications without raising questions and the rejections being logged in official statistics).⁹

Not having Israeli citizenship meant that I also couldn’t get an Israeli passport. Instead, I was given an Israeli travel document and a Jordanian travel document (because Jerusalem was under Jordanian authority until 1967). Traveling as a stateless, young Middle Eastern man was a nightmare. You have to plan your trip months in advance and apply for visas that necessitate showing dozens of documents: bank statements, proof of employment, background checks, prepurchased round-trip airline tickets, prepurchased hotel reservations, invitation letters and sponsorship letters, letters of character, health records, and documents proving an official purpose for your visit—paying hefty nonrefundable fees for a trip that might ultimately be rejected.

This headache was then followed by weeks or sometimes months of waiting for a response. More often than not, I was denied; all of that money and work collecting documents were often for nothing. For someone who travels often for work, I was handcuffed by this process; my work suffered because of my inability to travel. Applying for a visa became a very stressful procedure; each time I went through it, I knew that I was likely to be rejected.

When I was invited to speak in Budapest, Hungary, for instance, my visa was rejected because the consulate thought there was a chance I would lodge an asylum request upon my arrival in the country. Even when my visa application was accepted to some countries, it was only after numerous calls to those who could vouch for me.

This was my normal travel experience: a continuous hassle for a visa.

This is the reality of most people in the world, but those with first-world passports tend not to comprehend this struggle. I have experienced both sides of this reality. I received my US citizenship and US passport in 2015, and since then, my travel life has completely transformed. I flew to Amman a few weeks after getting the passport and had a long layover in Frankfurt, Germany. For the first time in my life, I was able to leave a transit airport and meet up with friends. Suddenly, I was not a problem anymore.

If that trip had been just five weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to leave the airport. Now, however, I can travel almost anywhere in the world, and if a visa is required, it’s often just a formality or I can get it on arrival.

Travelers Can Positively Impact Their Destinations

When Peter, the friend in Washington, DC, asked me if I wanted people who were culturally insensitive to travel, I felt like I was trapped in a paradox. On one hand, I don’t want people who are disrespectful to travel. During my last trip to Cancun for another travel conference, I got into a discussion with four older Americans who were making racist comments about Mexicans—in Mexico. I felt embarrassed and upset.

However, I also know that travel is the best chance for these individuals to examine their biases and racist attitudes—if they’ll just step outside their resort. When we travel, we are confronted with what we really believe. We are able to examine our biases. I don’t think it is my right to decide who deserves to travel and who doesn’t, but I believe in providing the tools to travelers that can help them have a meaningful trip where they can expand their knowledge, reexamine their biases, and, most important, care about people and the destinations they visit.

Travel expands our horizons and helps us learn new things. Belize is a destination that is world famous for snorkeling and diving. When I arrived in the country, I was excited to swim, snorkel, and explore the caves in the interior. I also felt, however, that if I cared about snorkeling and the country’s environment, then I should also take the time to learn about the challenges facing these pristine seas.

What can be done to help preserve destinations like Belize? I am very grateful for my friend Enric Sala, a National Geographic Explorer who taught me about the role of tourism in saving our oceans. In his TED Talk, Enric spoke about the potential power of tourism in protecting the oceans without harming the fishermen:

According to Enric, the ocean’s beauty is what brings people to the beaches of Belize. Tourism is a foundational economic industry for Belize, making up 38 percent of the country’s GDP. If Belize loses its fish, it loses its tourism. It is no wonder that Belize is a leader in marine protection. According to the Guardian, Belize has recently increased its “‘no-take zones’ in its marine protected areas from 4.5% to 11.6%.”¹¹

Because I took the time to learn and talk to people about how Belize has developed since independence in 1981, when I returned home, I didn’t talk only about my snorkeling experience. I also became an ambassador for the environmental protection of our oceans. I learned to care!

Travel Can Solve the Biggest Threat

During an interview with the British newspaper the Independent, Stephen Hawking outlined the biggest threat to humanity, and it was not what most would have expected. It wasn’t an asteroid hitting the Earth that worried Hawking. It wasn’t even the environmental crisis that we’re facing. Instead, it was human aggression. “The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression,” he said. “It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory, or a partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.” According to the Independent, Hawking especially wanted humans to focus on empathy to safeguard our future.¹²

Hawking understood that major threats to humanity can be dealt with if we learn to work together; none of our issues will be solved if we continue fighting and killing each other. This is what makes travel important. It’s the largest exchange program in the world. It provides a huge opportunity to learn about each other and understand one another, which leads to our empathizing with each other. Travel is thus an effective avenue for promoting peace and understanding. If we can overcome aggression against each other, we can likely overcome the other threats facing humanity, guaranteeing a better future for the next generations.

Hawking’s message is particularly important amid growing nationalism around the world, in which individuals are told to always put their own interests first. We are told that we are in the midst of a global competition, in which there will be winners and losers—and our country must win.

But we all live on this earth together, and what happens in China will affect people living thousands of miles away in Uruguay. Similarly, what happens in the United States impacts the lives of billions of people around the world. We don’t live on islands isolated from the rest of the world’s political problems, climate policies, economic situations, and threats. The issues facing human society do not recognize the artificial boundaries and borders we’ve created. We are all connected.

Is There a Case for Travel?

In the end, travel has the potential to destroy communities. But it also can help us care more about the world and understand that we are not isolated from those who live in a different city or country. It can make us care about people who look different from us.

In conflict resolution, the contact hypothesis theory suggests that “an interaction between individuals belonging to different groups will reduce ethnic prejudice and intergroup tension,” as Stephen Ryan writes in Ethnic Conflict and International Relations.¹³ But Ryan qualifies this: to reduce prejudice, contact between different groups must be based on equality and respect. So, if the 1.4 billion people who cross international borders every year traveled responsibly and fostered real, intimate connections with the people in the destinations they visited, imagine what would happen to our world! We must understand the privilege of travel, and therefore the responsibility we have in bringing down barriers and building bridges between our peoples. If we accept Hawking’s claim that human aggression is a major threat to human existence, then I don’t know a better medium than travel to promote understanding and coexistence. We, the travelers, have more power to better this world than we can even comprehend.

This, I believe, makes traveling worth it—as long as we’re mindful of what impact we’re having on the world. We have to ask ourselves three honest questions:

• How is my travel impacting me?

• How is my travel impacting the communities I visit?

• How is my travel impacting the environment?

If one is just traveling for the sake of getting drunk on a cruise and taking selfies, then I don’t believe the pollution from that travel is worth it. But if one is traveling with the purpose of breaking boundaries, making connections, exchanging knowledge and culture, and learning from other societies and places, then there’s a good argument that this travel is worthwhile.

Finally, since not everyone is able to travel, we should consider how we are using our travel experiences to connect with other people. Travelers can use their journeys to reach out to others who can’t travel, both at home and abroad. Share your stories—and become part of the largest cultural exchange program in the world, because your next vacation can have more power than official diplomacy in connecting the world and bridging differences.