Couchfish

Blink and you’ll miss it right? I feels like only yesterday that 2019 was drawing to a close, yet here we are on the cusp of 2023. It has been, it would be fair to say, a sub-optimal spell.

Last time I got into predications, I suggested the pandemic would stretch for years rather than months—broken clocks and all that. So what do I see on the cards for 2023? Smash all the clocks within reach and read on to find out.

1. The return of the queue

In the heady days of early on in the pandemic I was one of a group interviewed about what it all meant. One of the others, a technologist investor, declared it would be a shot in the arm for “contactless.” By that they meant the technologies built around removing human contact in travel. Driven by the fears of human contact driving Covid, they, along with others, argued for the removal of humans.

Screenshot from The Serpent: Stuart McDonald

Thankfully, and for a glad bag of reasons, this hasn’t happened. What is back with vengeance though, is queues. If you thought queues were awful in 2019, expect 2023 to be a special surprise.

2. The return of China

If you think queues are bad now, wait till China comes back on stream. The teat Southeast Asia’s tourism industry welded itself to will start pumping in quarter two. By the middle of 2023, Chinese outbound tourism will be back big time. I’d like to say this will pump needed income into regional economies, and to a point it will, but ...

3. ... the structural problems of tourism will remain unaddressed

Much of the income China’s tourism brings will beat the passengers to the departure gate. The leaky boat that tourism is will continue to leak and vast amounts of money that should be staying in the destination will continue to get offshored.

The only leakage here is the roof. Literally. Ko Chang Noi. Photo: David Luekens.

The industry at large remains patently uninterested in addressing the exploitative financial arrangements that underpin it. Or at least that underpin the wealth of the CEOs whose decisions perpetuate it. There is though, hope for change in at least one area—greenwashing.

4. Greenwashing will see court time

The passing of Australian laws aimed at reigning in greenwashing are welcome indeed. Expect in 2023 to see a high profile operator, a media outlet, or more likely an influencer, to have their day in court. Taken to task for deceptive claims around their activities, this could be a watershed. Bring the hammer down hard please.

If you’re not convinced this is true, check this out about the tourism industry deciding to measure their carbon emissions a different way in order to be able to crow about what progress they’ve already made.

5. Destination communities will get involved ...

... though not in a way one might expect. The days of being nothing more than background for Instagram photos are over. Expect legal action much as you already see against natural resources firms. After all, is there that much difference between the coal and travel industries? Communities will point the finger over the environmental, social and economic ravages tourism can bring.

Pave it over baby. Sapa, Vietnam. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

There are no shortage of regional destinations that would make for test cases in this regard. Residents have seen a tourist-free world, and while most would like some degree of tourism, nobody sane wants 2019 back. The industry meanwhile, is racing back to 2019’s madness—pushback is inevitable. Head to court, today—well, on January 1 please, so this prediction counts.

6. Tourism’s spots will not change

Many, myself included, argued that the pandemic provided the opportunity to “rethink tourism.” Many, again myself included, argued that this was a pipe dream—and it was. There are exceptions, but by and large, tourism is not going to change its spots. As mass tourism comes on stream through the middle of 2023, expect the industry to both encourage and embrace it.

7. Flying is toxic

Flight frequency will surge to accommodate the tens of millions of returning travellers. A minority though, a vocal one, will speak out against it. Their travels reorganised, forward-focused operators will highlight opportunities for “no-flight travel.” Much like the “Responsible Travel” schtick of the late 1990s, this will be a profitable niche for some. It will also be one that matters.

Look, at least it wasn’t coal-fired. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

If you think vitriol aimed at superfluous flying was bad now, you ain’t seen anything yet. Expect to see public calls for the boycott of operators who elect not to put this thinking into practice.

8. Visas will not get smarter

Destinations will continue to blather about “quality tourists” but ignore long-stay slow tourism’s value. In particular they’ll continue to distance themselves from backpackers and independent travellers. Visas will remain too short to allow slow travel to gain any true scale nor deliver on its potential.

9. 2023 will bring opportunities for ...

... operators who swim against the flow. For those who eschew domestic flights. For those who embrace and work to deliver the benefits of tourism that vests communities.

Avoiding tourism that leaves local people no option but this. Ko Phi Phi, Thailand. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

This could take all sorts of forms. Not flying is an obvious one, but another could be avoiding destinations that are the worst example of over-tourism, and instead visiting alternatives that offer many of the same factors, but empower the local community in better ways. Expect to see this niche increase in size as both operators and travellers grow to see their holiday as more than a holiday.

10. A growing realisation that travel is more than travel

For these people, and the companies that help them, 2023 could be the beginning of something great. Great how? Great in that bucket lists become the antithesis of responsible travel. Great in that the calculus in determining a good trip changes. Great in that the question changes from “what am I getting out of this trip,” to “what am I achieving in this trip.” Great in seeing travel as an agent for positive change rather than one simply of change. Great in embracing outward facing rather than inward-looking personal growth.

This is the last Couchfish post for 2022. They’ll be a Travelfish newsletter tonight, but after that, I’m taking a break. I’ll be back in your inbox on January 9, by which time I’ll be in Vietnam working to deliver on some of the above. Watch this space!

Tourism in 2023, be not like this. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

Happy holidays to you all, and if you’re hitting the road, good luck with the queues! Thanks for your support through the years and see you on the other side!

Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend.

Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish.

A quick note up top. I had a motorbike accident yesterday and have a lot more stitches in my right arm than I’d prefer to have, so this is a shorter post than I had planned. It should be fairly self explanatory though.

You can’t throw a satay stick without hitting a report by some mob in the travel industry saying that travellers want to travel more sustainably. These surveys are often poorly run with terrible questions. I mean, who is going to say “No, I don’t want to travel sustainably”? Rather than asking people “do you want to travel sustainably,” a better question perhaps could be “would you prefer to stay at hotels without horizon pools, no air-conditioning, no foreign staff, and eating only locally-grown food?” Nobody it seems though, asks questions like this.

So, given that the OTAs like Booking, Agoda, Expedia, AirBnb etcetera are the primary gatekeepers to accommodation bookings, how could one put sustainability up front, and also, better explain what it means? Here’s four simple screens to get started.

Start with some broad strokes

In case you were wondering, the bit on the right is my addition.

So here, in the right panel we have four new summary reports for the destination. For each, the bar goes from green (good) to red (bad). The numbers indicate the lowest and highest value for the destination. The blue circle shows the average score for the same destination.

The electricity and water usage should be self explanatory. Though it is important to note that the water use per room would include all water—not just what is used in the rooms—pools, especially private pools, count too. By remittance destination, I mean where the OTA pays the money due to the hotel—the point of this being to highlight the leakages concerned with foreign-owned hotels. This is an inexact science as some OTAs don’t take the full money upfront, rather the deposit you pay is their commission, but, well, it is a start. The last one is to highlight local employment practices of properties. A better approach perhaps could be to look solely at management rather than all employees.

WTF is sustainability

Most OTAs offer filtering on stuff like price, district, facilities and so on. “Sustainability” though is a very recent add-on and can be seen to the left in the example above. There are a range of problems associated with this.

First, it isn’t clear how many sustainability actions one needs to undertake to qualify. Second, unsustainable practices don’t appear to count against a property, meaning you can have a gargantuan swimming pool powered by a personal coal-fired power station, but if you also have bamboo straws, let guests skip room service and don’t exploit animals, then it appears you can still score a sustainability qualifier. Third, while you can click through from individual property pages to see what they are doing, many things, for instance “using low-wattage light bulbs” should be a standard form of business. We are past the days where accolades are deserved for stuff like lightbulbs.

Instead, I suggest something like what I have in the right pane. The blue ticks are ones that are selected by default. So, if properties are not following the four that I have ticked (as an example) then they should not be listed by default on the OTA. Travellers should need to uncheck the box to see properties that don’t pay minimum wage for example. So, start with some base points which any property should be doing, then offer further specific aspects which people can filter on. Each should be linked to an explainer on what each one means.

Tell me the bad news up front

This is my beach shack. No, it is not for rent, I’m just using it as an example so some eco-vandal hotel doesn’t get angry at me.

On the profile page, up top the OTA could mark how the specific property compares to the averages for the destination (the blue lines are the average—excuse my poxy graphic design skills—my arm is killing me!). So in this way at a glance, at the very top of the screen, potential bookers could see how this property compares to others in the location.

OTAs could get cleverer and have perhaps moving averages for different classes of accommodation. For example high-end hotels, on average use far far far more water and electricity than a homestay does, so a sector-wide average discriminates against homestays. Likewise while I’ve used the four cases of electricity, water, offshoring and employment practices, there is no reason why other sustainability factors couldn’t be treated in the same way.

Help me understand

Hotel sustainability at top left, what it says on Booking bottom right.

The OTAs also need to do a far better job of explaining what they mean by their sustainability factors. See the example above, from what it says on Booking and what the property’s own 2022 sustainability report says. These do not mean the same thing. The 100% renewables one is clearly being abused on Booking—there are dozens upon dozens of properties in Ubud for example claiming to be using 100% renewable electricity, a claim I find extremely difficult to believe. It is far from only dubious claim, take for example the following two that often appear:

* Single-use plastic water bottles not used

* Single-use plastic bottles not used

Does this mean in the room or the resort? If you only select the first one, does that mean you can use plastic bottles for other stuff? Why are we making a case for water in particular? Why is this being made more confusing than it needs to be?

Help everyone understand

The core problem is OTAs are telling people a property is sustainable, when it often isn’t. Through clearer and far more prominent approach to labelling and explanations, travellers would be far better positioned to make informed choices—and that would be a good thing.

Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend.

Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish.

Over the weekend I had a fun chat (the sound is a bit scrappy sorry—I blame Skype) with David Luekens. David worked with us for many years at Travelfish and later, as the pandemic kicked off, started a newsletter focussed on Thailand’s many islands and beaches. He has just returned to Thailand after a longish break Stateside, and has great plans for the newsletter—including changing it into a quest of sorts.

Think island thoughts. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

I recommend listening to the podcast for the full story, but is that isn’t your thing, a transcript is below. It has been edited and tidied up … a bit. I’ve also added below a bunch of links to posts by David in the past to give you a feel for his work.

Stuart

Stuart

This Monday I’ve got something a little bit different for everybody who’s managed to survive the whole rethinking travel never-ending series. Now that that’s wrapped up, I’m moving back onto something a little bit different, a little bit lighter.

If you’re somebody who’s used Travelfish in the past and you’ve found yourself on an island here or there, chances are that you were travelling off the work of David Luekins who worked with us at Travelfish for a long period, covering a vast section of the country, and later on he went on to start a newsletter the Thai Island Times. A Substack newsletter which looked at all aspects of travelling around Thailand along with a wrap on news and developments and that kind of stuff.

Earlier this year, David took a break from Thailand and headed back to his home country, the United States. But just last week, I believe, he returned to Thailand and he’s got some big changes coming along the way to Thai Island Times, and it’s great to have him here to chat a little bit about what he’s got planned.

So David, how are you?

David

Good, thank you for having me here.

Stuart

I hear that it’s your birthday, so I should really start by saying happy birthday, correct?

David

Oh, thank you.

Stuart

Or are you one of those people that puts fake birth dates into social media tools?

David

Yeah no, no. Once you’re over, well, once you’re over 40, I think it is kind of like you start to dread the birthdays rather than appreciate or enjoy them. I feel like a bit, but ... not getting any younger, you know, but... Happy to be back in Thailand to celebrate it for sure.

Stuart

So when did you get back to Thailand?

David

Last week, it’s been a little over a week now.

Stuart

And how long were you back Stateside?

David

Better part of this past year. I actually went back in January last year, so almost all 2022. It’s by far the longest that I’ve been there, been back in the US since I moved out here to Thailand in 2011. So it was, it was interesting. It was nice to kind of reconnect with the country after I’d been here for, I’d been here in Thailand for the whole, you know, pandemic the whole emergency phase of the pandemic 2020 and all of 2021 pretty much, but definitely feels good to be back in Thailand.

Stuart

That was actually my next question, what is it like being back in Thailand after almost a year away?

David

Well, it’s really nice because things have changed here. Last year, I mean, I had waited until the end of 2021, and it looked like maybe there would be a bit of a tourism high season. At least the start of a recovery and then the Omicron variant hit in December, and so pretty much it’s been I guess, now this will be, finally, it’s been about three high seasons that have been missed here basically, in 2020 that was really only the tail end of the high season that was where we encountered lockdowns and that was the beginning basically of the pandemic.

But then all of 2021, I mean the tourism, the actual arrival numbers in Thailand completely plummeted throughout 2021, and that was the worst of the pandemic here in Thailand as well. So it’s finally really feels like there’s hope and it’s starting to turn around. A lot of businesses are open, a lot, many, are still closed as well, but I remember just walking down Khao San Road, back in like the middle of 2021 and literally every single shop and business was shuttered. And now quite a few are still closed, but there’s definitely a lot of energy there now. I walked down there again the other day, and I was happy to see quite a few backpackers and just people back, people out, Thai people out. Working and traveling and having a good time and so yeah, I’m really just excited to get some sense of normalcy coming back to Thailand.

After this rough few years, I mean because during the pandemic it was really, especially here in Bangkok, it was weird to be here. I felt like kind of the soul of the city just kind of disappeared for a long time. And millions of people moved, from what I understand, millions of people moved back to their home provinces and things like that. So it’s nice, it’s really nice to come back and feel like almost like it did. It almost reminds me of some of my early trips to Thailand in a way, because there aren’t, there’s not as many tourists as there had been in like 2018-2019. But there’s definitely some energy, and things are starting to pick up again.

Stuart

Right, I mean. I’ve heard from some other friends who have travelled through there over the last few months. And they’re comparing it to, I mean, obviously the look of the city and so on has changed, but the feel they’re comparing it to the late 1990s early 2000s would, would you say that sounds on the money to you.

David

Yeah, I mean yeah, it definitely does remind me of my first trip to Thailand was in 2005, and yeah, in a way it does remind me of that a bit. It feels a bit more like that than 2019 when there were 40 million tourists. I mean, I think in 2005 there were less than 20 million tourists that came into the country that year, around those years and then by 2019 there were almost 40 million. So basically over the 10 years, like over the years when I was working for Travelfish, I really saw the impact of the increasing tourist numbers and a lot of sites like the Grand Palace and places like that and also a lot of beaches, like of course Maya Bay is well known for having been totally overrun during those years, and so it’s not like that at all anymore.

I mean Bangkok has changed a lot, in some ways for the better, I think like there’s a lot more Metro stations, it’s more accessible which is good because you don’t have to be stuffed into trains and boats quite as much as you did and I mean it has like a low key, little bit of a laid back more of a laid back kind of feel I think in the city. Which is kind of refreshing and like I said I feel like there’s a sense of hope and a sense that now it’s like finally it feels like it’s really time for an actual recovery. And to see how the future shapes out after this whole three years of a pandemic that that we’ve been through so, yeah, it’s exciting.

Stuart

I realise you’ve only been back for about a week, so I’m not sure how much you’ve been out chatting to people and what have you. But when you talk about a hope for recovery, and that kind of thing, do you think there’s a degree of apprehension? From Thai people that they would like to see, perhaps not 40 million people not bouncing back to 40 million people anytime soon. And perhaps the lower level of tourism is desirable.

David

Yeah, I mean certainly I think there’s there are people who feel that way. I haven’t talked to too many people specifically about that since I’ve been back, but I mean the thing with the pandemic, and I’ve been saying this for years now, is that the effects of it we’re very unevenly balanced in terms of financially speaking, especially in the tourism industry, and that’s still the case.

If you’re a tour operator or someone who had been focusing mainly on tourists from mainland China, then you’re probably looking for it to get back to similar numbers as 2019. That’s obviously a big group that’s still largely absent. So I mean there are a lot of businesses that have been focused on that group specifically, who are lagging behind everyone else in terms of trying to rebuild and everything, so I think it depends on who you talk to really in their own situations, but I mean for me, I personally feel like it’s not a bad thing to not have 40 million a year coming into the country.

Maybe something more like 25 million or 30 million, would be a little more manageable, but then again, like I said, talking about tourists from China and other parts of Asia, those China, India, that’s where a lot of the increase in the tourist numbers came from over the last 10 years. Like especially starting around like 2010 or so, and there was an awful lot of infrastructure that was built that was sort of geared more towards, not totally 100% towards them, a lot of large hotels kind of mid range hotels like with air-con rooms and stuff. A lot of those places are still sitting empty unfortunately so it’s like there are reminders.

You think back to the mid 2000s or something, and it’s definitely not exactly the same. There’s certainly reminders of everything that’s happened here over the last few years still, and we’ll see. I mean, that’s just really my observation from walking around Bangkok and especially around the Old Town parts. On Khao San Road itself, a lot of most of it seems, like a lot of the hotels and actually notably a lot of the really old long-standing guest houses that have been there since the 90s and early 2000s or even earlier maybe, I don’t want to say a lot, but I definitely noticed that some of those are still around and some of them have even expanded. There’s a lot of buildings for rent there, so if you wanted to, if you were a guest house owner and you had survived and you had some savings, I think it would be a good time to kind of expand your business and you’re seeing a bit of that.

Stuart

So you just mentioned you’ve done a bit of walking around the Old Town. Have you managed to get out of Bangkok yet or have you just been in the capital?

David

Yeah, we did go up to Lopburi just for a day, I don’t know, well the they have the sunflowers it’s December, it’s they got the sunflower fields at, I think it’s called Khao Lae Chin or Khao Chin Lae, can’t remember the mountain, it’s like a limestone karst mountain. I’m not sure if they still do it, but they used to do rock climbing there, that was one of the activities that was offered to backpackers coming through Lopburi town.

It’s beautiful, actually, the countryside, we actually went around Lopburi and part of Saraburi just around the countryside, you know, stopped at some farms and took some pictures. We didn’t hang around the Lopburi town much, but we did drive through and the monkeys didn’t get us—we kept our windows closed—but yeah, it was good little trip, but we’re heading out today actually later to head south and start getting back to all the islands and beaches and stuff.

Stuart

You’re leaving today so how long a trip have you got planned heading down south?

David

It would be like at a least a week, maybe? Maybe nine days max, and then we’ll be back in Bangkok and then next month, definitely be traveling again, probably down to the Andaman coast. For this trip we’re going down to Chumphon and we will get probably over to Ranong on the Andaman coast.

Stuart

Up until when you headed back to the States you were running, or writing rather, the Thai Islands Times newsletter and I’ve always been a big fan of the newsletter, but also, I believe that words matter, so the other day I received an e-mail from Thailand Island Times, which is from you really, noting that you’ve made one change.

You’ve changed one word in the title, so it’s shifted from Thai Island Times to Thai Island Quest. So I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about why you’ve decided to make the change of that single word and what it’s going to mean for what the newsletter is going to become.

David

Well Thailand Island Times, when I started it, I had a lot of time. It was during the COVID lockdown here in April 2020. They weren’t even like selling alcohol in the country or anything at that time, so everyone was stuck inside, and so I wanted to, I had, different contacts, people, I know who live in all around different islands, and I just wanted to kind of share what was going in the islands.

Specifically, part of what I wanted to share was how the islands were faring and all the beach areas were faring throughout the pandemic and how that was affecting things. So a big part of the Times aspect of it, kind of represented like more of a news angle. So I did like these island wraps, which got quite long and time consuming. I did more than 50 of them, first it was weekly and then it was like biweekly and they were pretty popular and I feel like it was a good thing to spend my time doing during the pandemic. I covered a lot of how COVID was affecting the region, the coastal region, and then also just kind of Thailand more generally and I talked about, I wrote a piece about how you could help charitable efforts to help people in the tourism industry and a lot of the islands that that we’re struggling and things like that. Then I also covered in the island wraps a lot of environmental issues and basically I would just scour the news and talk to people in those places and scour social media and just like put together a whole giant summary basically of everything that was going on.

But I would also in Thailand Island Times, the other thing I would do, was like more travel more kind of what we would call like evergreen content, where I would just cover islands. Basically write these feature length articles about certain islands or beaches or mainland coastal areas and basically, just unleash everything that I know about all those places and that I’ve learned throughout the years and throughout researching and also while working for Travelfish and just basically summarising and wrapping up, and sharing photos

So here we are, at the conclusion of my series on “Rethinking Travel.” I have more half-written posts, which I’ll drop in over the coming weeks and months, but I wanted to tie this off for now. I know paying subscribers would like me to get back to the itinerary posts—they will recommence this coming Tuesday. Before anything else though, a quick thank you to you all for reading and/or listening!

For many of the posts in the series, I’ve looked outside. I’ve looked at what is happening in the real world—then tried to tie it back to both my own—and academic—thinking on the topic. But what does it all mean? There’s not much point writing over 20,000 words on a topic and then acting on none of them.

Where we’re headed. Tourist information booth, Sihanoukville. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

With this in mind, in conclusion I’m looking at each post in the series, and detailing a change I will put in place. In some cases it will be my personal actions, in others, how Travelfish operates, others still, both.

In each, I’m making concrete, measurable goals. Aside from doing nothing, there’s no one correct approach, and I’ll revisit my changes a year from now. Why? To see what worked and what didn’t, what was unrealistic and what was too easy.

Let’s see how it pans out.

Sustainable Tourism

I’ve touched on the lack of holistic sustainability certification—the sector is a mess of pyramids and b******t. As the last thing we need is another scheme, I’m going back to my gut and the duck test—which I learned today harks back to 1738!

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is probably a duck.”

If a place strikes me as not being future-looking, I’ll not stay there, and I’ll remove it from Travelfish. I’ve already started the removals, but with thousands of places listed, this will take a while. Not staying in such places will be easier!

What will this mean for readers? For starters it will mean far fewer places to stay will be listed than currently. For those that remain, it would be fair to consider them, in the least, to be moving in the right direction. Plenty of context will come into play in the decision making here, and to a large part the approach will be similar to that of EXO Travel.

Responsible Travel

In this case, I’m all about my stomach—and anyone who knows me will know this one isn’t a hard one for me. When I’m on the road, I’m going to eat local—by that I mean street food and local-fare restaurants. Yeah I know, going to Vietnam and eating only bowls—the horror! I’m allowing myself one “imported meal,” meaning a cuisine not from the country, a week. I don’t drink, so imported alcohols are not an issue, but I will miss those gooey French cheeses.

Boiled down for readers, this means more local food and fewer Irish Pubs.

Pro-Poor Tourism

Here it is all about where I sleep. It can be hard to determine who owns a hotel—especially at the mid- and above bracket—but I’m going to try. The easiest approach is to stick to homestays—the joints with grandma watching soap on the foyer TV. This won’t always work, but save the OTAs deciding to cough up this info, it is the best approach I can think of. Talking of the OTAs, I’m going to book direct whenever sensible.

Oh Koh Rong. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

For readers, expect swaths of the interchangeable “cookie cutter” concrete box hotels to vanish. The affiliate relationship with Agoda will remain, so a bazillion other hotels will be but a click away. Likewise while the luxury end has never been a focus for Travelfish, going forward this will be even less of a priority.

Slow Travel

Ok, I’ll confess as a travel writer, this one at first struck me as hard. A typical trip for me in the past would involve being on the move on a near continual basis. After all, a day on the road is a day away from the family—and doggo! The more I thought about it though, the more I realised it wasn’t such a big deal.

Drawing on the “do as I say not as I do” file, who am I to sit here and tell you to slow down when most couldn’t keep up with my pace? If I was to spend three days in a place rather than one, I’m better positioned to find out more reasons to linger. In allowing time, I make time—for you. So, my rule here is if I sleep in the town, I’m there for at least three days (two nights). Yes, even Sihanoukville.

Readers should expect more information based around a theme of “stay another day.” I’ve long written that every town is worth a night, well, I’m doubling that.

Flying

Oh boy. What to do with this one. I’m approaching this from two directions.

First let’s cover domestic flying. My rule is, if I can get to the destination in under 48 hours on the ground, no flying. As far as mainland Southeast Asia goes, this rules out almost all direct domestic flights. In practice this would allow me some domestic flying in Indonesia (where I live), but 48 hours cuts out the egregious flights.

Not all aircraft are equal. Ratna Hotel, Yogyakarta. Photo: Sally Arnold.

On international flights, I’m taking a different approach. For every 1,000 km flown, I have to wait a week before getting on a flight again. So, as an example, according to The Google, the flight from Bali to Ho Chi Minh City is 2,373 km. As I’m going there in January, it means I have to stay there at least two weeks. The thousand kilometres equals a week is arbitrary, but it felt like a good starting point. Side-note, for my return from Vietnam, I’m thinking of doing it overland—could be fun.

For readers, rewrites of the transport sections are coming. These will reorganise the sections to place ground transport ahead of air. This is the tiniest of changes, but every bit counts. We’ll also devote more coverage looking at why ground transport is preferable. Any itineraries with domestic flights will be rewritten and re-timed to remove them.

Tour Companies

Aside from a few outlying cases that I can count on one hand, I will only use majority local-owned tour companies. As with the accommodation section above, this can be tricky to determine, but my goal is to try as best I can. When I say “local owned” I mean by a national of that country.

On the site, activities won’t be deleted wholesale, but there will be a focus on local-owned.

Money Matters

Ensuring that as much of my money stays local ties in with many of the above points. When you start thinking about this stuff, it is funny how often they’re all inter-related. If staying in local-owned homestays, eating at local restaurants, and using local guides, much of the money is by default staying local. I guess no more Prada handbags as gifts though.

On Travelfish, no listings for Prada outlets sorry.

Community Based Tourism

While we already profile some of the better known ones on Travelfish, I’m going to work to expand this. My goal is to find and try at least two schemes that fit the bill on each trip.

For readers, for once this will mean more coverage rather than less.

Travel Writing

Much of the above will tie in to how I’ll be doing my research and writing moving forward. This in turn will reflect onto the coverage you’ll read on Travelfish. Destination intros will include new coverage on how to visit in a responsible manner. In the coming weeks I’ll be adding a “Travel better” section to the site. It will hold all the posts in this series—and more. Other changes I mentioned in the piece on travel writing, so I’m not rehashing them here.

In Conclusion

The above marks the biggest single series of changes I’ve made to Travelfish—ever. It also takes place over a period where the site is ahhhh somewhat financially challenged lol. So, don’t expect all the above to happen overnight. Rather, this will be a slow iterative process.

There’s a whole new world through that door—yes, and a bloody jet-ski. Koh Rong. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

I have my first research trip since the start of the pandemic this coming January, to Huế in Vietnam. While I’m there in part to present at a conference, I also plan to use the trip as a sandpit for some of the above changes. To figure out what is practical and what isn’t. My view is, you’re better to start with the impractical and wind it back rather than start out with easy.

For readers, I hope Travelfish will remain a useful resource for travel in the region. More than that though, I want to see it become a learning resource for how we all can travel better. Only in doing that will we be able to deliver on the true promise of travel—and leave a world worth travelling for the generations to come.

Other episodes in the Rethinking Tourism series:

* National Chocolate Milk Day (World Tourism Day)

* Nice Tourism (Sustainable Tourism)

* The Benevolent Lie (Responsible Tourism)

* The Year Is 2006. The Town Is Luang Prabang (Pro-poor Tourism)

* Zoom in to the Red Plastic Chairs (Slow Travel)

* The Petro-bourgeoisie (Flying, carbon etcetera)

* Reality Check (Tour companies)

* Follow the Money (Money matters)

* Foundations Matter (Community Based Tourism)

* The Writing On The Wall (Travel writing)

Couchfish is 100 per cent independent and reader-supported. If you’re not already a subscriber, and you’d like to show your support, become a paying subscriber today for just US$7 per month—you can find out more about Couchfish here—or simply share this story with a friend.

Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish.

A quick note, save a series conclusion running tomorrow, I’ll be back to regular programming on Monday. Yay!

On one of my very early trips to Thailand, I lost a few weeks at Hin Wong Bungalows on Ko Tao. Set on the back side of the island, you’d approach on a longtail from the port. It was quiet. Very quiet.

My hut was a wooden bungalow on the rise, with a bathroom down the slope a bit. The only furniture was a mattress and a hammock on the deck. There was no beach to speak of, rather large boulders you could dive off into the crystal water. It was, for years, my favourite place.

The 1993 Hin Wong view—no complaints. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

This was pre-The Beach, yet echoing the book’s (and later film’s) plot, a previous guest had drawn a map on the interior wall. It was a rough charcoal outline of Thailand, and the traveller had annotated it with their wanderings. Chiang Mai had some hills and an elephant, Bangkok some “sexy ladies,” and Railay had its cliffs and a sunset. Hin Wong on Ko Tao was also marked, with the emphasis on a swim-through out in the bay. Around the map, arrows pointed in, with the names of places to stay. Linda Guesthouse in Chiang Mai for some reason still sticks in my mind.

It was one traveller’s guidebook, marked up to share.

Democratise My Travels

Back then, guidebooks did near all the guiding. There were no TripAdvisor or Agoda people, and no Pinterest or TikTok travellers. Instagram? If someone had said that to me, I’d have assumed it was a reference to buying drugs. Google? It didn’t exist. At least in the circles I mingled, you were either a Rough Guides or Lonely Planet person.

Today, a traveller might be using all the above sources—and dozens upon dozens more—for their travel planning needs. Magazines and Pinterest for inspiration, OTAs for hotels, food websites for stuffing face, Google Maps for everything. Instagram for bragging.

Somewhere on Lombok, where, just an hour away, the beach is packed. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

With this democratisation of information, you’d expect trips to have become more diverse. In practice, the opposite has happened. I’d bet my flip flops that if you visited a third-tier destination in 2019, you’d have found fewer tourists there than you would have in 1999.

A part of the answer to the question of why, is that the internet changed travel writing’s incentives. Guidebooks sold you a book, and the book—at least in theory—contained information that helped you have a better trip. With the internet, the reader became the product as websites sold your interests to advertisers and gave you the travel intelligence in return. They also sold you a whole load of swag—as travel writing went retail.

Over in the dead tree side of the industry, outside of guidebooks, travel writing’s role as the PR wing of the travel industry ran sordid and deep, and had done forever. In Elizabeth Becker’s Overbooked, she notes that by the 1960s “travel” accounted for 25% of newspaper ad revenue, yet there often wasn’t a firewall between advertisers and writers. Not content with buying ads, free trips became the norm. Comparing travel to political (where—again in theory—political parties don’t pay journalists’ expenses), Becker writes:

“That would be declared corrupt and the antithesis of ethical journalism. Yet it is the engrained way of writing about travel in the United States, much of Europe and Asia. ... The editors told themselves it was the only way they could afford to cover the travel world. And the public relations professionals were thrilled, knowing that a handsome write-up or recommendation in a magazine was far more credible than an advertisement or brochure.”

Becker’s take though, was hardly news. Writes travel writer Elizabeth Austin—in 1999—of a press trip to Bali:

“I was a travel w***e. This is my story.”

Fill My Wallet

When online income streams appeared, new media, Travelfish included, adopted them with enthusiasm. “Add this code to your site and the money will roll in,” and it did.

Did these monetisation schemes skew coverage? Yes. On Travelfish? Yes. How? To garner more search traffic, we fed the beast with hundreds of pieces, all to run ads against—oh and inform! When the bottom fell out of ads, we moved to hotel reviews, and went nuts there instead.

Pai, Thailand. Google said to list everything. Photo: Mark Ord.

Over the years we’ve reviewed 8,685 properties, and to a point the effort paid off. Yes we helped thousands of readers find great places to stay—but we also earned plenty through affiliate commissions. I still remember the day we received a commission of over US$1,000 for a single hotel booking. It is to be fair though, easy to remember as this only ever happened once! That booking, through an OTA for a luxury hotel on Thailand’s Ko Samui, is instructive.

The real money for publishers, be they a travel blog, website, magazine or newspaper, is in lux travel. The highest impact sector of the tourism industry? The luxury end of the stick.

In our case, we had a separation many if not most others didn’t. We never took free stays or media rates. We always paid our own way. We reviewed in an anonymous and independent fashion. We had a gaggle of middle-men running interference between us and the hotels. We always listed the property’s direct contact details. Despite all these steps, to me it has always felt a bit icky—but hey, it paid the bills.

Hell No

I’ve debated comps with many professional writers, friends who argue the comp doesn’t play a part in what they write. I believe them when they say they believe it. A talented writer should be able to write in an independent fashion. When I ask if they’d have written about the place—or even visited it—if they’d have had to pay themselves, the answer is near uniform:

“Hell no.”

Madelaine McWha et al., in a paper looking at sustainable travel writing notes:

“Traditionally, many travel writers, as well as travel writing in general, have been associated with commercial imperatives to sell travel destinations, and hence perhaps the promotion of travel more aligned with unsustainable types of mass tourism.”

Go pick up a copy of CondeWhatever and take a leaf through—look at the ads and the copy. How many affordable homestays do you see? What does an affordable homestay have to do with anything? How does this play into responsible travel and/or sustainable tourism?

At Happy Homestay near Cao Lãnh in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Absolutely responsible “per se.” Photo: Stuart McDonald.

EXO Travel Group has been busy for a few years working to measure the carbon emissions of their trips. I asked Alexandra Michat, their Chief Purpose Officer, about how they deal with hotels. I was curious about budget joints, places that lack the funds for certification pyramid schemes. Her answer by accident dovetails with travel writing and sustainability:

“... we’ve realized that most of the time “Responsible hotels” were internationally owned /managed and they were getting higher scores because they already had policies in place and strong financial capacities etc rather than independently owned properties and/or homestays, therefore we usually consider homestays as responsible ‘per se.’”

These places, which EXO usually sees as “responsible ‘per se,’” tend not to feature on journo comp lists. Yet those on such lists—and that do get written about—are often far from enviable on the sustainability front. They do though have bamboo straws.

In Tourism Leakage of the Accommodation Sector in Bali, Suryawardani et al., looked at hotel leakages. They found that typical four- and five-star hotels in Bali had a leakage rate of 51%. At the other end of the stick, budget places, the leakage rate was a mere nine per cent. From a sustainable tourism point of view, this is bad, yet it is the four- and five-star sectors that features most often in contemporary mainstream travel writing.

Gimme the bad news

Academic Ben Iaquinto has written quite a bit on backpackers and both their good and bad habits. Touching on Lonely Planet’s mainstream shift, he quotes an (unfortunately un-referenced) comment:

“Once, a number of young women had written to LP to report being raped by a certain proprietor in Southeast Asia and the local tourist board took legal action against LP for warning young women to avoid that establishment. This sort of thing eventually led to the directive ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’. I believe that this does a disservice to travellers.”

Keeping to this theme, a highlight of 2020’s news cycle was the traveller who got jailed over a hotel review. Unhappy with a hotel on Ko Chang in Thailand, they took to TripAdvisor to vent and got jail time for their efforts. As a travel writer focused on Southeast Asia, I’d be lying to suggest certain legal regulations don’t have a chilling effect on what I write.

Today, the impact of tourism development exacts a greater toll than ever. Yet, taking a name and shame approach to writing on this, is, well, often not all that sustainable for the writer. The Deportation Express is always on call. The alternative then, is to ignore the bad and focus on the good, and hope readers can read between the lines. It is far from an ideal situation.

Whose gaze

Take a look at the list of interviewees in the McWha et al. paper mentioned above, and tell me what is missing. In a related paper, the author notes the writers were “largely from Australia, New Zealand, UK and USA.” Travel writing in the English language has for decades been dominated by white men of means (like me, except for the “of means” bit). Today there’s plenty more women writing, but the trade remains predominantly white.

She’ll know more than I ever will. At Xẻo Quýt in the Mekong Delta. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

With this comes a glad bag of -isms and other challenges for the writer. Exoticism, colonialism, genderism, objectification, orientalism, and so on. These have all featured in academic literature on travel writing for decades, but out here in the real world, change—or even awareness—is low. Though you can do a course on it for $215 a head. This piece, by Chloe-Rose Crabtree, raises plenty of solid reasons for change.

Travel writers often see themselves as mediators, explaining the unfamiliar to readers. Done well, this can have a positive impact on both the readers’ journey and the hosts’ experience. Yet, why are travel publishers relying for a large part on white writers? Where is the diversity of voices? More often than not tour companies will highlight their use of local guides. Sure it is the law in most countries, but the companies clearly feel it is a selling point as well. Why don’t travel publishers feel the same way?

Since going online in 2004, Travelfish has had 95 contributors—including me—of whom 46 were women. Three contributors were from Southeast Asia—two Singaporeans and one Thai. How bad is that? Pretty bad. I could make excuses for the sad state of affairs, but I’m not going to even try—it is inexcusable. This isn’t to say our contributors were not excellent, they were. That said, as soon as we’re employing again (who knows when that will be), this will change. Better late than never and all that.

Walk the talk

Despite these flaws, good travel writing, be it service- or long-form- can be an agent for change. In 2021, Sara Ullström et al. published research that looked at the travel media’s role in changing conversations around holiday air travel in Sweden. They wrote:

“As a response to the urgency of taking climate action, and the importance of living one’s values and taking moral responsibility for high-carbon practices, flying is problematized while alternative ways of travel are valorized. In this way, Staying on the ground shapes people into questioning, and in some cases ultimately changing, their travel behavior.”

In recent times, phrases like “travel like a local” or “experience whatever as a local” are a common mantra—Google offers up 2,320,000,000 results on a search for it—thanks Google. These are a marketing ploy, playing to an out-dated and exoticised fever dream of “local.” To a point, they’re all smoke and mirrors—one need only step outside their lodgings to see “the real deal.” This real deal though, isn’t the real many are after. They don’t want families in Starbucks, or teenagers glued to a Hollywood blockbuster. They want the real deals of yesteryear.

There is another approach. For years there’s been a slow bubbling scene on tourism’s sidelines—Community Based Tourism (CBT). Offering insight into how people live in smaller communities, on paper they seem like a good idea. The premise centres on co-opting the community into “the experience”, so they’re better vested in it. In theory, they’re implemented in a manner to share the wealth, they reduce the cons and push the pros. In practice, opinions vary—this paper by anthropologist Noel Salazar is a good primer on the former.

Stormy times ahead. Chi Phat scenes. Photo: Nicky Sullivan.

Issues aside, CBTs often have an eco tilt, but the community and its culture and society are vital draws. Over a stay, relationships can morph from a typical host-guest one to something more. The guests learn a skill or three, be it a bit of weaving, how to plant rice or brew rice wine. This learning works both ways—an inquisitive host learns plenty too. With some of the middle-men removed, more money can trickle in at the basest of levels.

“The jungle is my home and finally I am taking care of it.”

So says Chenda, a poacher turned tourist guide, at Chi Phat in Cambodia. Towards the end of the “virtual tour” of Chi Phat embedded below, Chenda talks about how he once sold a gibbon for US$200. Today, he earns money a different way—by taking tourists to see the same gibbon, over and over again.

An excellent “virtual tour” of Chi Phat. Worth every minute—with earphones!

Long-time Travelfish member amnicoll, tells me about Chi Phat by email:

“Chi Phat ... is now regarded as a model example of eco-tourism and receives many official visits from other interested parties to see how it operates. There is a range of accommodation and the main change you see in the village are the bungalows, which are all of a high standard and in nice locations. They have a program of activities for visitors and the villagers share the jobs and rotate so that everyone gets a share. The community take a percentage of the income to spend on the community.”

Wildlife Alliance established the CBT in Chi Phat. They work to reduce wildlife and lumber poaching, and people like Chenda are important. In the kleptocratic garbage fire that is Cambodia today, the challenges may seem insurmountable, but steps like this matter. Chenda’s pivot assists in the preservation of gibbons, but the money tourism brings floats more than his boat alone.

Menu alterations are limited. Trek-eating, Chi Phat. Photo: Nicky Sullivan.

At Chi Phat, jobs can be anything from guides to drivers, boatmen to food prep and sale. Travellers’ money brings benefits to the community through a variety of touch points. For the visitors, the upsides are likewise multi-faceted. Writes amnicoll again, on the family he stays with:

“His mother was a great cook and I used to eat there most days as my host’s wife works away from the village. ... These days I am part of the village family and am invited for meals, drinks, weddings, parties, housewarmings and unfortunately occasionally funerals. I come back for two separate month stays every year.”

That’s the income from a single traveller spending around two months a year in Chi Phat. More to my recurring point through this series. Who has the time to spend two months a year in Chi Phat? Backpackers and independent travellers do.

Another project that has pivoted communities from poaching to tourism is the “Nam Nern Night Safari,” in Laos’ Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area. I don’t have enough words to cover it here, but you can read about it on Travelfish. This paper, by one of the people associated with it, is an excellent read.

The Fortress of the Cat

Set in northwest Cambodia, Banteay Chhmar started a little earlier than Chi Phat. It’s home to a 12th/13th century Khmer complex of ruins which is one of the largest in the country. Despite its size and grandeur, the “Fortress of the Cat” sees precious few visitors.

A potted history of the early thinking at work at Banteay Chhmar.

In this case, French NGO Agir Pour le Cambodge (APLC) kicked things off. The Global Heritage Fund, involved in conservation work on the temple, came on board in 2009. Later still, education and heritage-focused Heritage Watch got involved. They work to link the value of protecting Khmer cultural heritage to tourism.

When the Banteay Chhmar project commenced, the road from tourist hub Siem Reap was—take my word for it—awful. From the get-go, a major handicap was that of the nature of its primary point of access. Siem Reap has the largest concentration of Khmer monuments on Earth on its doorstep. Why would you go see more somewhere else? Visitors needed either an interest in ruins, the less-travelled, or plenty of time. It should come as no surprise that visitor numbers were low—and those who trickled in? Backpackers and independent travellers.

Home is where the heart is. Banteay Chhmar homestay. Photo: Nicky Sullivan.

As with Chi Phat, the CBT rotates guests through local households, bringing money to local families. Aside from the ruins, activities include weaving and farm experience type stuff. Visitors eat local fare local-style, be it at the homestay or in a local restaurant. Sourced from the community, guests pay trained guides for tours through the ruins.

The road is better today, but unless one books a tour or car from Siem Reap, the nuts and bolts remain a slight hassle. This paper argues that due to a lack of skill transference, the community has not been proactive post-APLC. Outreach to tour companies languished, with many operators putting it in the “too hard” basket. The business acumen instilled was insufficient to build upon the foundation that had been laid. As we’ll see, tour companies can provide a reliable stream of bums on seats, and for this project, the lack of them has been a problem.

No queues at Banteay Chhmar. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

While the project hasn’t foundered, it is under-performing. Today, a trickle of independent travellers and backpackers are the mainstay. When I last visited in the year before the pandemic kicked off, I asked who visited. My guide pointed at me—rather than my mother—and said “people like you.” You can read into that what you want.

Guinea pig me

Around 800 km more of less due north of Banteay Chhmar, in Laos, lies the Nam Ha National Protected Area. In 1999, with financial support from (the now) NZAID, the Nam Ha Ecotourism Project (NHEP) began. An eventual Equator Initiative award winner, within three years, the accolades came in—in a 2002 review for UNESCO, the authors note:

“... the Nam Ha ecotourism Project has been a tremendous success in providing a model of how tourism might be used as a tool for development in rural and largely subsistent villages and as a mechanism for promoting forest conservation.”

In the Nam Ha National Protected Area. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

The NHEP offered a range of one and multi-day trekking and rafting trips in and around the protected area. The primary market? Backpackers. The economic impact in Luang Nam Tha (the base for most activities) demonstrated a reach beyond the park. From the same report:

“Although the project is not targeted to developing the economy of Luang Namtha it has had a significant impact on employment of guides, tuk tuk drivers, food producers and sellers, etc. ... Guest house proprietors report increased occupancies and a tendency for tourists to return to their properties after a trek. This represents an extra night that would not have been spent in the town, as well additional income for food and beverages consumed.”

There has long been a road between Huay Xai in the south and Luang Nam Tha in the north. For the first decade or so post Laos’ reopening though, it was an a-grade shocker. The trip took over 12 hours in a songtheaw, making the appeal of a multi-day trekking/rafting trip obvious. Businesses had no problems filling weekly four-day trips for US$200+ a pop. It was, for a spell, one of the Laos experiences.

Then the government fixed the road.

This one isn’t dammed yet. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

Lee Sheridan is a tourism professional who has been mostly based in Laos since 2001. With the Nam Ha project in mind, I asked about CBTs and financial sustainability. By Lao standards, the project was well-financed—for a spell it received $100,000 per year from NZAID. Direct revenue never topped half that. While not speaking specifically to the Nam Ha project, Sheridan saw a bigger role for the private sector:

“... I think private businesses could play a much stronger role in these situations and partner with the donor and community to help improve the chances of a sustainable outcome. I believe that if the private sector is able to play a stronger role in product development and market access, while the development agency / NGOs focus on supporting the communities, ensuring the private sector is behaving responsibly and helping offset the natural power imbalances between the two, then there is a much better chance of sustainability.”

On backpackers, whom Sheridan sees as being “more forgiving,” there were pros and cons:

“They can make great guinea pigs for developing new products, but I would recommend using this as a stepping stone on the path to product / customer diversification and upgrading, rather than a target end goal.”

I asked was there a need to educate backpackers around the connection between paying more and sustainable tourism. Sheridan saw as much a need to educate local businesses to help them keep in business:

“Within Laos, where so many businesses are small, family run enterprises I think there also needs to be further education and training on business management and finances. When many small businesses rely on undercutting their competitors as their primary point of differentiation and see short-term gains, it leaves very little space for investing in staff training, refurbishment of facilities, replacement of equipment, dealing with unexpected challenges etc that are needed to maintain long term sustainability.”

Money—and ideas—can change hands

In all the above cases, backpackers and independent travellers can play an important role. In the case of Chi Phat, they might stay far longer than the typical visitor. With out-of-the-way spots like Banteay Chhmar, even if the program isn’t delivering, they still trickle in. They can play an important role in product development—and a well designed foundation supports all sorts of floors.

“How’s life kids?” Village kids ham it up on periphery of Nam Na NPA. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

They’re flexible, they have more time, they can handle discomfort, they often have an interest in where they are. Destinations eschewing these people, are making a long-term mistake.

These programmes—and many others—are delivering money into local hands. Something else they can deliver, is a better understanding of what is happening in a country. This could relate to all manner of matters. Hanging out with a family for a week in a small rural community can teach you all sorts about how the wheel turns.

It can also teach you aplenty about human rights, government-sanctioned deforestation, encroachment by rubber plantations, and evictions due to dam construction projects. These too, can be valuable life lesson

One of the most oft-cited upsides of travel is the financial benefit it can bring to destinations. It can assist in raising living standards, covering school bills or putting food on the table. You putting your money in local hands matters and it can make a difference.

Indeed, for many nations in Southeast Asia, inbound tourism is a significant source of income. How significant? This World Travel & Tourism Council report (PDF) indicates that pre-pandemic (2019) travel and tourism was responsible for over 10% of GDP. International spending was responsible for over half of that, and leisure travel over 75%. Tourism matters.

When it comes to dosh, tourism matters. Source: World Travel & Tourism Council.

There’s plenty of different ways to spend your money though. As far as I can tell, the above figures don’t take into account how much of your spending will beat you to the departure gate in its rush to leave the country. This also matters.

This is what the travel industry refers to as “leakages”—money you spend in-country that doesn’t stay there. Writes UK tour operator Not In The Guidebooks:

“From profits distributed to foreign companies (like airlines or resorts), to foreign imports to meet tourism demand, the actual amount of money that ends up where you think you’re spending it can vary wildly.”

To better explain what this means in real life, consider the following example.

You spend $5,000 on a holiday to Thailand. $1,000 is on your airfare, which is with a foreign-owned carrier. Some subset to that $1,000 will stay in destination through arrival taxes, airport landing fees and so on. The majority though goes to the parent company, so may not stay in-country.

“My brother did it.” Leaky boat on sandbar off Labuan Pandan, Lombok. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

With your remaining $4,000 you book yourself ten nights in a glorious beach resort at $200 per night. The resort though, is part of a foreign-owned or managed chain, so as with the airline, some of your money gets offshored. Yes, a portion of the $2,000 will stay local through staff salaries, food and whatever, but not all will.

The remaining $2,000 you spend two ways. First, one has to eat and drink, so half goes there. Those imported spirits, wine, cheese and Vegemite all have leakages local fare doesn’t. The other half you spent on a week-long trekking adventure that you purchased before leaving home. Anything from 60% of money put into inbound operators can get offshored.

So, of that $10,000 you spent—depending on how much you like your Jack Daniels with a Vegemite chaser—a not insignificant amount leaks. It is hard to say what percentage leaks out as this isn’t information businesses brag about. One thing is clear though, if you stay and patronise local-owned businesses, your travel boat is less leaky.

Local-owned means less leaky—in this case, thankfully as we took a trip in this boat the next day. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

I’m not saying leakages are bad by default. Airlines have loads of local hires and airports likewise hire a tonne of people. Luxury hotels and tour operators also hire a bunch, and someone has to carry all those crates of JD and Vegemite right? Some proportion of your spend will stay local—and that is good, or rather, it is better than nothing. What I am saying, is if responsible travel matters to you, it is a good idea to keep in mind where your money is going.

Let’s jump back in time a bit—to Laos.

In 2002, a report for the International Labour Organisation (PDF) noted the growth in small enterprises following the nation’s economic liberalisation. Of almost 150,000 small businesses, 90% were family businesses and 63% were female-owned. These were not all tourism-related of course, but many were. A report five years later, on Lao tourism and poverty alleviation noted (the report is paywalled, but if you’re interested in Laos, it is a super-interesting read—so let me know if you’d like me to email you a copy):

“... in all of Lao PDR’s main tourism centres, in the accommodation sector (and in restaurants), small/micro businesses are the norm.”

With this in mind, it doesn’t feel like a stretch to suggest the following: If you spend your money in a small tourism business in Laos, chances are it will be a family- and/or female-owned one. This is good—and it is in line with some of the smarter ethos behind responsible travel.

Going local and less leaky might mean a few more bumps—and adventures. Our broken-down boat, Togean Islands, Sulawesi. Kids were not bothered. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

Figuring out who owns what is a fraught undertaking. Throw your mind back to the tourism boycott of Burma. At the time, people who still visited said they were careful to keep their money away from the junta’s clutches, but it was complicated. There were easy things to avoid—the train system, airlines and so on, but trying to find out who owns your hotel? Hard. Who owns the brewery or the rice wholesaler? Hard again. At the end of the day, most went with the low-hanging fruit.

To be clear, I’m not putting foreign-owned businesses on the same table as a murderous junta! The challenges though, of determining who owns what, are somewhat similar. This challenge isn’t helped by companies who muddy the waters.

Take adventure company G Adventures who run tours in Southeast Asia (among other places). I was going to say they were a Canadian company, but their terms say they’re a Barbados one—who knew? Anyway I digress. G Adventures promote what they call a “Ripple Score.” A score out of 100, it purports to show how much of the money from G Adventure’s “local expenses” stays in country. Given the difficulty in determining where a guests’ money goes, this seems like a good idea. It isn’t though, quite so simple.

Yeah, but is any of this true? Boat timetable, Ampana, Sulawesi. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

G Adventures claims that 100% of their spend on “local expenses” on for example, this Vietnam trip, goes to “local businesses”. Great! Read the small print though and the waters turn as muddy as the Mekong. To qualify as a “local business” G Adventures writes:

“To qualify as a local business or service, 50% or more must be owned by a legal resident or national citizen of the country where it operates.”

This means a business could have a resident foreigner and a foreign partner as the two owners and yet qualify as local. To my mind, this doesn’t, in any way shape or form, equate to local-owned. I asked G Adventures about this by email, but after being strung along for a few weeks I gave up ever receiving answers. By the way, don’t worry about any flying you do on a G Adventures trip causing ripples. Flying doesn’t count towards the score’s calculation.

They could fix this by removing the “legal resident or” bit. That would then guarantee that the businesses they use are at least 50% owned by a local. Better than nothing right? I wonder why they have phrased it as they have.

“Sounds a bit iffy to me.” Porter, Gunung Ijen, East Java. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

G Adventures’ Ripple Score is especially problematic when viewed through a marketing prism. Early in this Low Season Traveller podcast, Tuan Pham talks about leakages and tour companies. Pham is one of the co-founders of Travel Neutral, a company which claims to be a leading DMC in Vietnam, so there is an angle at play, but still, he is well worth listening to. Talking about inbound tour companies, Pham says:

“... probably up to 60 70 80% of the money that you spend goes back to the company owners, with very little staying in the country.”

This isn’t only a concern held by Pham. Miquel Àngel of MQL Sustainable Tourism Services is a tourist professional with over 25 years experience in Vietnam. In an exchange by email, he mentions—in a conversation related to an upcoming story—the high-end boat tours in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta:

“Consider the seven-night Mekong by luxury boat trips—these can command huge prices, but create close to zero benefit for local areas and people—and much of the revenue leaves Vietnam.”

Imagine a tour operator leading their tour page with “Our tours create close to zero benefit for local areas and people.” Sign me up! When operators put their finger on the scale, and extoll in their marketing that 100% of their spend goes to local businesses, it merits a very critical eye. Of course, if it is true, that’s great, and it belongs in the PR push—but is it? As I’ve written before on tour companies, their walk needs to match their talk.

Think before using. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

So what is the traveller who cares about where their money goes to do?

I want to note, this isn’t black and white stuff. Plenty of foreign-owned places have owners who’ve been resident for decades. Owners who do all sorts of great stuff and are community minded. Owners who deserve your encouragement and business. I’m not advocating for boycotting part- or fully-owned foreign businesses. Hell, my company, Travelfish, is an Australian company with no local-ownership. What I am suggesting, is it is important to be mindful of where your money is going. Mix it up.

For anyone not on a tour, and aside from flights, hotels will be the largest expense for most. This is where your money’s impact carries the heaviest sway. If you don’t know if a place is local-owned, email them before you book and ask. While you’re at it, tell them why you’re asking.

Skip the nouveau cuisine Pacific Rim Sustainable Tasmanian Antelope. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

For every foreign-owned hotel you do use, try two local-owned ones. Eat at local restaurants more than you may have otherwise. Skip the nouveau cuisine Pacific Rim Sustainable Tasmanian Antelope restaurant you read about in Travel & Leisure, and try a Thai street-side eatery. Skip the overpriced martini at a god-awful beach club for a feet-in-the-sand cold drink by a local-owned shack-in-the-shade. Rather than booking a tour overseas, organise short tours piecemeal—with local operators. Use local guides. When you’re shopping for gifts or keepsakes, support local producers—ask vendors where they source their goods. Take my word for it, plenty of the “souvenirs” for sale on South Bali streets came out of factories nowhere near Bali.

Each of these steps can bring you closer to local people. Sure these are still all transactional in nature, but every touch point is one that can lead to something more—both for them and you. And that is what travel is all about.

Other episodes in the Rethinking Tourism series:

* National Chocolate Milk Day (World Tourism Day)

* Nice Tourism (Sustainable Tourism)

* The Benevolent Lie (Responsible Tourism)

* The Year Is 2006. The Town Is Luang Prabang (Pro-poor Tourism)

* Zoom in to the Red Plastic Chairs (Slow Travel)

* The Petro-bourgeoisie (Flying, carbon etcetera)

* Reality Check (Tour companies)

* Follow the Money (Money matters)

* Foundations Matter (Community Based Tourism)

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Don’t forget, you can find the free podcasts on Apple, Pocket Casts and Spotify as well as right here on Couchfish.

Yesterday, Bloomberg scored themselves an advance copy of The Travel Foundation’s Envisioning Tourism in 2030 report. While the report hasn’t been released publicly yet, going off what Bloomberg have to say, it makes for a hard reality check.

Not before time.

According to The Travel Foundation’s own prep for the report’s release, they took the Paris Agreement’s goal of halving emissions by 2030 and hitting net zero by 2050 and applied them to the travel industry. Once they took into account a forecast doubling in global tourism size by 2050 (from 2019 levels), they saw current strategies as being “woefully inadequate.”

No s**t Sherlock.

The report doesn’t look at the cruise industry, nor the emissions around hotel construction, and this is a shame. Flying though—particularly long haul—came in for a flogging. They write:

“Some limits must also be applied to aviation growth until it is fully able to decarbonise, in particular capping the longest-distance trips to 2019 levels. These made up just 2% of all trips in 2019 but are, by far, the most polluting. If left unchecked, they will quadruple by 2050, accounting for 41% of tourism’s total emissions (up from 19% in 2019) yet still just 4% of all trips.”

Four per cent of trips responsible for 41% of the industry’s total emissions. That is quite the statistic.

On the outskirts of Sinh Ho. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

As I argued in an earlier piece, if a long haul flight is unavoidable, then it should come part and parcel with a longer stay and no domestic flights. This is a point The Travel Foundation’s Jeremy Sampson notes, writing:

“A shift to less flying around during a period of time has the potential to make tourism genuinely more local and a better experience for visitors.”

So what steps are already underway? Bloomberg mentions operators adding in overnight trains, and a Kiwi zipline company that labels its products. These are all positive steps, but in the scheme of things, minuscule.

The story also notes Booking.com is planning to show the carbon emissions for flights and hotels. This is not dissimilar to what Google Flights does, but the question begs, if a flight or hotel is going to score 400% over the average, why are they listing it?

Looks legit.

First and foremost, money. These listings are all commissionable. They make their cut, then kick the can down to consumers. I guess they borrowed BP’s shifting blame handbook from an Amsterdam library.

I have similar concerns around Booking’s “sustainability labelling” which is a greenwashing train wreck. While one could argue it it is better than nothing, I’d argue the opposite. Every time Booking awards a sustainability badge to an undeserving property, they devalue the real efforts of others. I mean, why bother with 100% renewable energy if switching to bamboo straws will get you the same sticker?

Airlines and hotels are easy pickings, but I’d argue another problematic one is tour operators. Why? Because their businesses depend on airlines and hotels for their tours. While some operators are better than others, you don’t need to look far to see they’re just as apt as kicking the can down the road.

No train to Son La, but still, no need to fly. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

Founded in 2001, UK operator Responsible Travel describe themselves as an “activist company.” The site is essentially a clearing house for the tours of other companies, which are then sold on a commission basis. (Edit: I previously had written that RT sell their own trips, but I’ve been advised by an RT representative this is incorrect as they do not run their own trips—my apologies for the error). In a step I guess to live up to their name, sometime in 2021, they drew a line in the sand. Founder Justin Francis wrote (you can see the post here on the Internet Archive, as the text is no longer on their website):

“By January 2022, we won’t be selling any holidays that include internal jet flights of less than one hour.”

Heady times—but it wasn’t to last—within a few months if I recall correctly, the above was gone. Today the same page reads:

“We’ll be working closely with our holiday partners to ensure that no itineraries on our site include unnecessary flights.”

Define unnecessary. In the revised post, they try to, writing:

“After long consultations with our member tour operators, including those working with local communities in some of the world’s most remote – and often fragile – places, we realised there are a number of barriers to imposing a complete ban.”

When you keep in mind these member tour listings all exist on the site on a commission basis, it is hard not to see us back at money. Again.

So should have stuck to their guns.

Now I’m willing to contemplate there being some places on earth where a domestic flight is the only practical option. That said, I can’t think of anywhere specific to Southeast Asia that would qualify. There is only one way you can make a domestic flight essential in this part of the world. You need to have an itinerary so time-constrained a domestic flight is the only way to make it work.

Which brings me to Vietnam.

Long and thin, many of the destinations of touristic interest in Vietnam are set along a north south axis. It is a deceptively time-consuming country to travel in, but all is not lost. A train line runs much of the length of the country, with stops either at, or nearby, many of the “highlights.” The train is, by Southeast Asian standards, comfortable, safe, and affordable.

If you go to Responsible Travel’s website and pull up their Vietnam page, you know what the number one trip is? A ten-day trip from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, with the last leg being a flight from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City. This trip isn’t buried at the bottom of their collection of 148 trips that touch on the country.

It is the first trip they recommend.

Muong Lay is the perfect spot to get over writing about responsible travel. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

While it isn’t branded as such, the trip is an Intrepid Travel one. The Australian adventure tour company claims to be the world’s largest such company, a leader in sustainable travel, and responsible for some 1,000 trips worldwide.

Aside from the above-mentioned trip, they offer over 20 specific to Vietnam. One of the highest placed tours on their own website is an eight-day tour of Vietnam which includes two domestic flights. Both are under an hour and thirty minutes.

Trying to make sense of this (and other things), I dropped Intrepid an email with a bunch of questions. To my mind, whistle-stop tours are the antithesis of responsible travel, so I was curious how they reconcile their talk with their walk. In a written answer, Karen Zhao, the Global Product Manager for Vietnam, wrote:

“Market demands tell us that customers want 8-10 days to see all that Vietnam has to offer. We need to cater to this market (or we wouldn’t be a commercially viable business).”

Back to money. Again.

The problem isn’t limited to their crazy-short tours. Intrepid’s 15-day “Classic Vietnam” and “Premium Vietnam in Depth” trips each have two domestic flights. Their 20-day “Premium Cambodia & Vietnam in Depth” trip has three domestic flights plus one regional one. All three domestic flights on that last tour are under an hour and a half in length, the Ho Chi Minh City to Da Lat one, under an hour.

What?

To be fair, Intrepid doesn’t only offer whistle stop tours. In her reply, Zhao listed trips which are “more focused and slower paced and don’t try to cover the entire length of Vietnam.” This is great, and while I personally feel the pace of some of the trips are akin to a military expedition—that’s just me. Whatever rocks your boat. Regardless, offering longer tours or plant-based meals (another point Zhao made) doesn’t negate the damage of the short trips.

The only plant-based menu I want in Vietnam. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

Intrepid isn’t alone. Mark Ord, co-founder of the far smaller UK operator All Points East echoed a similar line. All Points East offers a smaller range of Vietnam trips, but a number do include domestic flights. [Note: Ord is a personal friend and he has written at length for Travelfish over the years.] Chatting on the phone, Ord told me:

“The market is different to a decade ago. We used to plonk guests in Nan [a semi-remote trekking centre in northern Thailand] for three days, but today guests want short trips and to zap from highlight to highlight.”

In both cases they’re kicking the can down the road. More to the point, if you’re going to state that you’re “recognised as a leader in sustainable travel,” as Intrepid does, then behave like one. Galavanting around the world to accept a pay-to-play sustainability award while offering trips like these, seems, I don’t know, a bit off.

If you’re going to offer an eight-day trip to Vietnam that includes two domestic flights, you are not a sustainable operator. More to the point, if you’re going to sit at COP27 and talk about how you have reviewed your use of short flights on your top 50 trips then email me and say you run high emission trips because you need to make money, well, excuse me for being confused.

One important point here, as the top 50 trips were not listed during the COP27 session (thank God, as it is near interminable), I guess perhaps their Vietnam trips are not among their top 50 trips. That said, Zhao wrote “Most people going to Vietnam on Holiday want to do the standard 8-day trip to Vietnam” so it seems like a safe bet. If not, my bad, and I am more confused than I thought.

Forget climate—I’d like to declare a fashion emergency. Photo: Mark & Tu’s staff.

This isn’t to say, Intrepid doesn’t do plenty of good work—they do. For starters they run the Intrepid Foundation (more on this in a sec), which undeniably does great work. They also underwrite online travel publication Adventure.com, which often has a refreshing take. This stuff matters. It can make people’s lives better. It can work to shape (or better still, shift) consumer attitudes and opinions. It deserves applause.

In January 2020, they declared a “climate emergency” and outlined a seven-point plan. In it they noted a desire to offset 125% of their emissions (the company has been “carbon neutral” since 2010). They also plan to transition their trips to 100% renewable energy by 2030—I’d love to see the small print on that one. While there are issues with carbon offsetting, these steps remain laudable. Another point in their plan, that they will keep empowering women around the world, could perhaps be redirected to their management team.

I mention that last point only because it is a great example of the divergence between their talk and their walk. As I’ve written earlier, sustainable and responsible travel need to be viewed in a holistic manner. If you say you are going to do something, do it—starting with your own organisation.

No more bull please. Stranded with a flat tire on the way to Bac Ha. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

I asked All Points East’s Ord why they fly domestic, his reply was instructive.

“Adding an entire day [for a train trip] with no highlights is a bit tricky and having a trip with two overnight train trips would be hard to sell—the market would not bear it. In an ideal world we’d use no domestic flights, but for the tour to be attractive to guests, there needs to be compromise. It boils down to what does the guest want? Do they want to spend nine hours in a bus or 45 minutes in a plane?”

I don’t know that the people who will bear the brunt of climate change—more often than not in the very countries these companies run tours to—would be all that keen on talk around compromise. At what point in this climate emergency is it ok to tell a potential customer that a ten-day tour to Vietnam is climate vandalism?

By all means continue to sell these short tours if you want—but then stop calling yourself a respon

Sorry for the delay in this, over the weekend I got savaged by some virus which kicked off with me temporarily going blind while riding my scooter with doggo on board. Please no jokes about that bringing me down to the riding standard of most tourists on a scooter in Bali. Thankfully traffic was light. Anyway, back on deck, though still shaking the last of this plague virus thing.

More than once over the last few episodes of this series, I’ve mentioned that as an absolute minimum, one should skip flying domestic. Today, I’m outlining my thinking on why I say this.

Writes Ryszard Kapuściński in Shah of Shahs:

“The Shah’s big money enabled him to breathe life into a new class, previously unknown to historians and sociologists: the petro-bourgeoisie. An unusual social phenomenon, the Petro-bourgeoisie produces nothing, and unbridled consumption makes up its whole occupation.”

I’ll get back to the above quote in a moment, first though I want to note, I’m a realist in saying flying is not going to go away. I’m not one who is going to argue that one should never fly. There are after all, many perfectly justifiable reasons for flying—both for work and play. I think flight shaming has a place, but the application of its concepts needs considerable fine-tuning.

Like the long distance steam cruiser and rail options it has surpassed, flying is the most time effective means to get from one side of the planet to the other. This convenience though, comes at a cost. There is no single personal mainstream activity that is more damaging to our planet than to get on an airplane. And yet, despite this, a minority of the Earth’s population does exactly this, day in day out.

How much to London? Photo: Stuart McDonald.

Intercontinental flights have long been a critical ingredient of long haul travel—it brings the entire globe within reach of a day spent in moderate discomfort. Few in the UK would holiday in Thailand if the only means of getting there was overland. Instead of weeks atop four wheels it’s a day atop four engines—I’ve written before on the “changing universe” appeal of flying—there is, in truth, nothing else like it.

If long haul travel is to remain a thing, long haul flights, likewise, will remain. To my mind, the question is what then? There are persuasive arguments for applying increasingly onerous surcharges on frequent fliers, while for others, a minority to be sure, offsets is seen as a reasonable approach. This though, is problematic.

To understand one of the reasons why, a brief look at the genesis of carbon counting is required. The concept was invented by the oil industry, well by an advertising company, Ogilvy & Mather, on behalf of an oil company, BP.

Excuse me while I am ill.

The campaign, launched in 2000, was a masterpiece of duplicity and misdirection. You don’t need to take my word for it being a masterpiece—it won an advertising award always a bad sign—and was described as:

“a landmark platform for a company trying to change the way the world uses, and thinks about, the fuels that are vital to human progress” [my emphasis].

The unstated message of the campaign was that addressing climate change was the responsibility of the world—not that of the company earning billions pumping oil out of the ground. To facilitate this “shared responsibility,” the carbon calculator was invented. This sexy little online tool would help each and every one of us total the impact of our personal existence, thus helping us to modify our behaviour to tackle climate change. In 2004, over a quarter of a million people used a carbon calculator—and not without reason—BP was spending north of US$100 million per year in part asking people “What on earth is a carbon footprint?” An odd question when you consider they invented it.

As soon as you start talking about carbon footprints though, you’re using language designed to mislead you, to shift blame and responsibility from the oil companies to you.

Ok, now that I’ve got that off my chest…

Travel with—not like—a local. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

In April 2022, Mongabay noted that aircraft generated some one billion tonnes of carbon. That might sound bad—it is—but the true picture is far worse—and complicated. This paper states that the complete “warming footprint” of aviation is considerably higher than the bare-bones carbon “score,” noting:

“Nevertheless, for all scenarios the warming footprint of aviation is at least twice as large as its carbon footprint in the coming decade, clearly highlighting that non-CO2 effects are non-negligible to assess the contribution of aviation to global warming.”

Please don’t get me started on why the emissions from military aircraft are exempt from all this, or that in 2021, gas flaring by the oil industry—a practice described by the World Bank as “totally unproductive”—alone generated 500 million tonnes of carbon. I digress.

As I wrote earlier in this series, getting down to the nuts and bolts of emissions is complicated. Even people who are far smarter than me (aka most of you), and who are not PR flacks for the oil or airline industries, cannot agree on exact counts. What sort of aircraft are you flying? How full is it? How old is it? How much cargo is it carrying? Which route is it flying? How long is the flight? How windy is it? What is the seating configuration? What class are you flying? All these questions (and many more) need to be answered to come up with accurate numbers.

Carbon-porn. Photo: Stuart McDonald.

These questions though, to a point, are a distraction. They’re a perverse take on the “unnecessary complexity breeds job security” maxim, clouding the air and making a clear answer difficult to determine. The answer however is exceedingly simple, and is as follows:

There is no single mode of public transportation that has a higher carbon footprint (bloody hell, here I am using BP language) than flying. If you want to minimise your footprint, any alternative mode of transport is preferable. Anything—well except for a cruise ship of course. Really—this is all there is to it.

If you are going to fly, then the above questions matter—you should fly on a new aircraft and in economy for example. With longer haul flights, I’ve read persuasive arguments that after a point, breaking the flight into two legs is preferable as at some stage you end up “burning fuel to carry it,” which makes sense to me.

An endangered species? Photo: David Luekens.

There are no shortage of pieces arguing that carbon offsets are a scam, or a form of greenwashing, but this is a bit of a baby meets bathwater thing. There are good projects, many of which are worth supporting even if you are not flying—you just need to put as much effort into selecting the right project as you do finding the cheapest (or most convenient or whatever) flight. The problem though, is unless the act of carbon offsetting is going to modify your behaviour, then you’re just affixing and ripping off the same bandaid over and over, while the oil companies are leaving the planet looking like a scene out of Bloodbath at the House of Death. Writes The New York Times:

“While individual activities do have environmental costs, and flying is one of the costliest, climate change is overwhelmingly driven by the actions of the fossil fuel industry. And the vast majority of carbon offsets are purchased by corporations, including fossil fuel companies themselves, on the premise that they can hit “net zero” emission targets without fundamentally changing how they operate.”

Behaviour modification—not only for the fossil fuel companies, but you and me too—is required, and with my above assumptions in mind, once you are in the region you should not fly regionally and you absolutely should not fly domestically. If you have just flown long haul, do not fly short haul. Here is why:

There is nowhere in Southeast Asia that can only be reached by aircraft. On some of the busiest air routes in the region, there are perfectly adequate ground transportation options—most often train or bus. Taking a short flight, on a per kilometre basis, is the worst polluting kind—on this the evidence is clear. If your itinerary doesn’t work without mid-trip flights, the problem is you and your itinerary. Fix that. If you’re recoiling at the suggestion of a 12-hour bus trip, then break it up—see more by seeing less.

Already grasping. Photo: David Luekens.

This ties in with what I was writing about slow travel, which in turn hooks in to sustainable tourism and responsible tourism—slow down and smell the coffee. Research has indicated there is one group of travellers who tend to fly less than other types of tourists—independent and budget travellers … dare I say … backpackers. Those who tend to fly more? The big-spenders—the very market tourism boards are gagging for more of.

Much has been written on how the climate change wrecking ball will smash island and coastal economies—archipelago nations like Indonesia and the Philippines will be particularly hard hit, but the damage is hardly limited to those nations. A study from 2018 looked at what could happen to Thailand’s beaches in the face of rising sea levels. They wrote:

“The results indicated that present beaches have rather small widths, and national beach loss rates in the future are projected to be more than 45.8% even for the lowest RCP2.6 scenario. The projected loss rate may reach a maximum of 71.8% where 23 beach zones will be completely lost.”

The report notes Thailand’s Andaman Sea coast as being particularly at risk, and while the study is looking at what changes would be manifested 80 years from now, these are gradual changes—even in half the time span—40 years from today, the damage would already be formidable. Would you still travel to the Andaman Coast if there were no longer any beaches? In writing about tourism, I’ve often trotted out the paving over paradise cliché, but perhaps submerging it is a more fitting term for this century. The irony of Thailand so emphatically chasing big spending tourists—the ones who will, through their flight practices, contribute more than any other to the country’s vanishing beaches, should not be lost on anyone.

Those who will bear the brunt of climate change are those least equipped to respond to it. There’s a whole range of reasons for this—inept and corrupt government being a standout, but tourism is far from blameless. The carbon deposited in our upper atmosphere thanks to discretionary flying, has, for decades been largely the doing of the West.

Responsibility should not be evenly shared. Photo: David Luekens.

Yes, in more recent decades flying in Asia (particularly China), Africa and South America has increased in popularity, but carbon emissions are a cumulative game. As was seen thanks to the pandemic-forced reduction in flying, when the planes stopped, there wasn’t a commensurate fall in carbon. The damage done since the 1950s is going to take generations to address, and yet those destined to wearing its worst excesses will be the populations who never had the privilege of being able to whine about Jack in 32C reclining before take-off.

This is what brings me to Kapuściński’s quote up top. He was writing of the Shah’s entourage of sycophants and hangers-on, parasites who enriched themselves as the general population suffered untold hardships. When you take a long bow to tourism, through th

Power up Google Maps and while still zoomed out, centre the map on Ho Chi Minh City, then switch it to satellite view. Click zoom in. Zoom in again. Keep zooming. Pretend you’re at a CIA field station in a new Mission Impossible flick. Watch as the city comes into view. There’s the airport, the undulating river, a still tree-lined boulevard. Keep zooming.

Each click, each zoom, wait till the image loads nice and sharp, then zoom again. Keep zooming until a single city block, it doesn’t matter which, District 10 is good for this, fills the screen. By city block I don’t mean a block of blocks, I mean a block—be careful not to zoom too much. Are you there yet? Has it fully loaded? Can you see the red plastic chairs? Well done.

Start here.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it dear reader, is to head to Ho Chi Minh City and spend an entire day exploring this single block.

There will be plenty of disagreement on this—an increasingly common issue I keep running up against in this series—but, the mission above is a type of slow travel.

Slow travel, as the term is popularised today, is often seen as an offshoot of the slow food movement, but in fact, the concept is as old as travel concepts come. Lucy Lethbridge, in the thoroughly amusing and interesting Tourists: How the British Went Abroad to Find Themselves quotes John Ruskin from The Stones of Venice as he laments the speeding up of travel:

“In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadow beside its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw for the first time, the towers of some famed city, fain in the rays of sunset – hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway stations is perhaps not always or to all men, an equivalent – in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder.”

The year was 1851—clearly also the year of the run-on sentence—and people were already moaning about how others travelled. If, like me, you struggle with eliciting meaning from a 173 word sentence, Ruskin’s lament was aimed at trains—they were faster than the horse-drawn carriage he’d travelled in as a kid.

Narrowing the focus.

Writing in Slow Travel and Tourism, Janet Dickinson and Les Lumsdon write (far more succinctly than our mate Ruskin):

“The core of my argument is that travel not only takes time, but it also makes time.”

I like this line—a lot. Over the years, I must have written “Slow down and smell the coffee” hundreds of times. Spend more time doing anything and you’ll most likely learn something from it. Spending thirty minutes in Wogo village in Flores will obviously result in less learning than spending eight months there as Stroma Cole did in the late nineties. In Tourism, Culture and Development Hopes, Dreams and Realities in East Indonesia, Cole writes of the indiscretion of the belly button and the dreaded cropped top:

“A navel is a person’s centre, sacred and revered, and it is considered rude to put it on show. Pierced and adorned navels were met with horrified astonishment. As women said, ‘We just have to look away’, and another added, ‘How could they do that?’ ... Cropped tops, the most serious transgression of acceptable attire, were particularly popular in the summer of 1998 and provoked numerous debates about how to tackle the problem of ‘such rude tourists’ coming to the village. The fashion signalled a new type of tourist for many villagers, a particularly rude type.”

These sort of indiscretions point as much to poor guiding standards as anything else, but, the logic goes, if the cropped top wearer was travelling slower (rather than swapping Labuan Bajo for the alternative universe of Wogo via a few hours in a van) they’d have learned far earlier, and hopefully before causing offence, that cropped tops and belly buttons were a no no. Slow travel, in theory, should make for some lighter footsteps.

Just a few clicks to reach 100% Vietnam.

In today’s world, as the environmental impact of tourism has shifted towards the fore, the slow travel ethos shows promise. It eschews the whistle-stop style of travel popularised by travel companies, where itineraries are closer to that of a military expedition than a holiday, in favour of spending longer in each destination. The slow traveller travels by bus or train—or even bicycle or foot—and there are clear and positive environmental flow ons from this.

In my view though, there’s a bit more to it. Back to Dickinson and Lumsdon, on the underpinning of the tourism system, they write:

“Despite the decline in the popularity of the heavily packaged holiday and the rise of the internet as a main distribution intermediary, the structural elements of the supply chain have not changed radically. The process remains an essentially industrial one based on batch production of air travel, intense utilization of perishable accommodation stock at the destination and the creation of large-scale infrastructure ... to support the tourist flows stimulated through the marketing efforts of suppliers in a world of cascading substitutes.”

Putting it like that makes tourism sound positively Dickensian.

Airport, bus station, markets. Everything I need is on this map.

Slow travel is the antithesis of this. While I never thought I’d get to quote Dr Timothy Leary on Couchfish, and while I readily admit he probably didn’t have slow tourism in mind when he uttered his seminal “turn on, tune in, drop out,” the thinking behind it gels well. Leary was talking of becoming aware of alternate approaches, to act on this new awareness with the greater world in a harmonious fashion, and to build self reliance and seek detachment from “the system.” This is, in a way, slow travel.

There are though, three inter-related problems with it. Unless you’re Paul Salopek slowly walking around the planet, you’re going to be taking a long-haul flight or two, and it doesn’t get much more un-slow than that. Secondly, one of the reasons people take short holidays is because that is what they can afford, or they have work commitments that don’t allow them to, say, spend eight months in an Indonesian village. Thirdly, if an argument behind slow travel is to visit—and spend time in—the lesser visited, isn’t there a risk of simply broadening tourism’s footprint?

There’s no getting around the environmental impact of a long-haul flight. Some “slow travel thinkers” try by making it an in-destination process—ignoring the getting there bit when they pull out their slow travel abacus. Dickinson and Lumsdon differentiate between those who view the entire process and those who don’t as “hard slow travellers” and “soft slow travellers,” bringing to mind the whole backpacker or flashpacker debate. It is a practical approach I guess, but it feels disingenuous. The in-destination slow travel helps to mitigate one’s long haul flying excesses, but the elephant is there, squatting in the corner of the fan-cooled homestay room you cycled to.

Ahhh HCMC traffic—I have not missed thee.

While some may be time rich and money poor, often-case it is the opposite—the money is there, but there’s never enough time. After all, who has the money to spend six months a year travelling as a snail’s pace? For starters the wealthy do. This is a dilemma the slow food movement has battled with for years—the president of Slow Food USA, Josh Viertel, wrote as much in 2012:

“There are real, difficult questions at hand. What does it mean to promote paying the real cost of food while also promoting social justice and access? Is asking people to pay more for food elitist? Is exploring affordability an affront to farmers?”

To turn those questions to travel, is “true” slow travel an undertaking only the rich and shameless can afford? For this, I talked to one of my favourite slow travellers—and Travelfish member—Martín Aristía (who, as far as I know, is neither rich nor shameless). Aristía pushed back hard against my asking if slow travel was elitist.

“I strongly disagree with this idea. At least in my experience, it’s exactly the opposite: I normally spend far less traveling slowly than taking shorter holidays. Nowadays working online has become more popular than ever, so that also helps. You can travel slowly and visit two places in a two week holiday—this qualifies as slow travel to me—or you can spend two weeks at an all inclusive resort. By far, travelling slower will be far cheaper.”

His comment ties in closely with the rise of the global nomad phenomena, that travellers can today combine work and play to prolong a trip, perhaps indefinitely, in a way that 20 years ago wasn’t quite so easy—speaking from experience! I’m looking at Global Nomads in another piece in this series, so I’m not getting into it now, but it is worth keeping Aristía’s comment in mind. His argument, that slow travel, well, you can do it in a day, is supported by travel writer Lola Akinmade who says in this Youtube clip:

“I’m a big advocate for slow travel, but slow travel to me isn’t about duration but about your pace. So I can actually travel slowly, in one week, by slowing down my pace and choosing just one theme...”

Akinmade goes on to use an example of dance, and visiting a destination to learn about dance and the society and culture that revolves around it, saying this is preferable to:

“...running around trying to tick off everything .... so that can give you more meaningful slow travel experience even though it is a shorter duration.”

She covers similar ground in this episode of the Thoughtful Travel Podcast (if podcasting is more your thing than YouTube).

My God, there’s some trees the municipality mob have not cut down yet.

Yes, there’s still the flight to get there, but in the soft slow traveller realm, this view is a popular one. Slow down, do less, learn more—let travel make time. I like it, but let travel make time where?

As highlighted earlier by Cole, foreign travellers showing up at a village without being abreast of cultural norms can cause all sorts of misunderstandings. Đỗ Nguyên Phương is the co-founder of Slow Travel Huế, an agency in Huế that specialises in, well you guessed it, slow travel. In his view, a careful hand is required—both for the hosts and the guests—to make sure everyone is satisfied with how matters play out. He describes this as “Fulfilling in Connecting”:

“For us, we work with local people with a mutual agreement, sharing benefits. If travellers go on a full day tour, the farmer’s family who shares the farming experience will earn some income, as will the fishermen and boat driver, the family who offer lunch, and the ladies who make the sticky rice cake or conical hats—our host families are very proud to be involved. The guests are looking for authentic experiences and true connecting moments, and they are immersed into local life to share and appreciate these—even if there may be differences to their comfort zone. Our motto is “Fulfilling in Connecting” and for us, the quality customers are those willing to connect and share these fulfillments.”

Phương’s point here is an important one. It’s all well and good to say travellers should travel longer, deeper and slower, but there is little discussion about what the residents think about this. For decades, local communities have lacked a seat at the tourism table, their considerations and sensibilities an afterthought—if at all. Agencies like Phương’s, that are working to better vest these communities into the tourism process, are moving in the right direction.

Food joints start popping up willy nilly.

In a previous piece in this series, I wrote about pro-poor tourism in Luang Prabang, noting that one of the struggles was most visitors didn’t have the time to do overnight trips to outlying villages. This makes slow travellers—those who do have the time—a valuable asset for destinations like Huế and agencies like Phương’s. This is where I’d normally slip in a rant about how tourist visas need to be longer to enable longer, slower stays, but as I’m already way over my word count, you’ll just have to imagine it.

Which brings us to the money. The economics of slow travel, for the destination, can be persuasive. Independent travellers spend longer in destinations and travel farther, than regular short-stay tourists. Their spending is more likely to end up in the hands of small, family-owned businesses, rather than some travel conglomerate that is going to offshore half the funds into shareholders’ pockets. This matters.

Slow travellers though, can be a bit like three days, fish and all that. If they stay too long, the line between some variation on tourist and some variation on expat blurs. Rising property prices, creaking infrastructure, drugs, crime, racket and pollution—these are all standard issues when a destination gets “too popular.” It’s not only slow travellers who contribute to this—everyone does—but the longer one stays, the bigger ones’ contribution. What would Barcelona or Venice look like if every tour