Tourism is itself one of the wonders of the world that inspires people to visit some of the most fascinating cultural and natural sites and bring them closer to the communities and people like the one in Unlearn. And, this has been so depressing to see how tourism has been desolated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlearn: The Year The Earth Stood Still has brought the global travel economic catastrophe. However, the pandemic’s big pause has allowed us to reboot our thinking, reinvent our approach, and reconsider traveling and the future.
The G Adventure founder, Bruce Poon Tip, has actually moved to write a new instabook during the pandemic called Unlearn: The Year The Earth Stood Still, that brings the answer to the question, Where Are We Going? He shares his thoughts on the future of travel and gives a more in-depth insight into how travel will look and what lies ahead.
“People were asking me to put out a public statement about the situation, too. Three times I started to write something, and each time, the points were irrelevant before I got finished because these days every day seems like a month. And I was starting to sound like every footwear company and provider of fine salamis that had sent me their important message: “We’ll be stronger,” “We thank our community…” says Poon Tip
In his new instabook, here’s what he has to say……excerpts from the book
TRAVEL-LESS-NESS
We’re born explorers. From the time we learn to crawl and can see what’s behind the sofa under our own steam, everything in our lives is about exploring. Riding our bikes to the next neighbourhood over, going to summer camp, that first time we get behind the wheel of a car and can just drive anywhere. At every stage, our world expands and we can’t imagine it any other way. That’s why getting grounded is such an effective parental punishment. It shrinks our newly expanded adolescent world back to a size we thought we’d grown out of; a size that’s suddenly intolerable.” writes Poon Tip.
THE OTHER SIDE
The term overtourism had also just entered the mainstream, describing the situation in places like Venice and Amsterdam, southern Thailand, and Hawaii, where there are too many people in the same place at the same time. This is sometimes referred to as “loving places to death.” Those pictures of enormous cruise ships looming over 500-year-old Venetian palazzi were, for many, eloquent arguments against an industry, a cultural norm that had gotten out of control.
The travel industry has made us into tourists, consumers of culture rather than contributors to it. We have become people who leave their ethics and even their manners at home, lumbering drunk and naked on Bali’s Kuta Beach Road, throwing bottles over the sides of catamarans in the Caribbean, spray painting ancient walls, and toppling even more ancient geological wonders. In so many ways, the travel industry does to travellers what the Tiger King did to tigers. It takes these noble creatures and packs them into tight spaces, feeds them off-label food, and makes them behave in whatever ways earn the most profit.
UNDERNEATH
Unless we try very hard not to, we will all see the world differently on the other side of this, and my hope is that people will understand, or at least have more of an openness, to seeing other countries with new eyes, and cultivating a better understanding of the world in general. Maybe this will make the world seem smaller to people. That’s my hope anyway. This travel pause we’re taking now is our chance to hit reset. Here are a few ways I think we can do that.
WE’VE GOT TO DO BETTER THAN SUSTAINABLE
I’ve never related to the limited definitions of ecotourism, responsible, sustainable, green or ethical tourism, labels that can be confusing, overlapping, and constricting. As I sit here at home refreshing my screens with updates on policies and laws and case counts and poorly lit celebrity messages thinking about what I’m going to be doing on the other side of this, I’m convinced that term is the best way to express my ideas and hopes about what travel could and should look like in the post- corona era.
DON’T TRAVEL LESS; TRAVEL BETTER
The tourism industry is not tourism. We are tourism as mentioned in Unlearn: The Year The Earth Stood Still. The industry is just doing what our buying habits are telling them we want. Sure, they try to nudge us in directions that work better for them, but the whole $8,000,000,000,000 (that’s eight trillion) industry of airlines and cruise ships, hotels and resorts, trains, tour companies, and car rentals are all there to do our bidding. Which means if we want less leakage, there will be less leakage.
I hope that one of the things we get from this generation-defining event is that we think more about people as individuals wherever we go and conduct ourselves accordingly. That means being as conscientious when we travel as we are at home, not only by reducing single-use plastic to help the turtles, but by travelling in ways that don’t rip people off.
SPREAD THE LOVE
What would happen if, in the wake of this virus, we started to see the world as a fragile place? I mean, we’ve known it is for a while now. Climate change is real, just like those dying coral reefs and all the plastic floating around the oceans. But maybe it’ll take something like this, something even more personal, our own personal worlds falling apart, for it to really hit home. And what if, as a result, we decided to spread ourselves out a little, both to see parts of the world our friends, families, and Instagrammers have never seen, and to land where we land a little more lightly? That means not only going beyond the usual destinations (see above), but spreading ourselves out in the more popular ones as well.
THE YEAR THE EARTH STOOD STILL
If there is one thing we should learn from this pandemic, it is that we all share the same planet, and the better we understand each other the better we’ll appreciate who we are and where we came from. That’s why your decision to travel is important. We cannot let fear spread faster than coronavirus. With great challenge always comes great opportunity for those who choose to rise and meet it.
From the Inside Flap, through the course, it’s a thought-provoking instabook giving a good insight into current over-tourism and the mass-market holidays. It brings out an essential question of how we can all do better going forward. The truthful peek into the travel industry, this free e-book is available at unlearn.travel, or Apple Books. You can also download it here.
