What is local travel? Perhaps the main issue of defining local travel is that, in theory, every hotel could jump on the ‘local’ trend just by virtue of having ‘a location’, writes local travel expert and journalist Vicky Baker. So where do we draw the line? For her, ‘local travel’ is about awareness, personal judgement calls and rethinking the way we have become accustomed to travelling (ie the set routes, cocooned environments and the only-for-tourists experiences).
She writes: “personally, I don’t think there should be too many rules or lines. As soon as you try to define ‘local’, you get yourself into problems. How long do you must have lived in a place to be considered local? Or is it less about years, more about lifestyle? If you use a travel-networking site and meet a rich Argentine who lets you stay in their penthouse and takes you to the polo, does that still count as getting ‘the local perspective’? Or perhaps just ‘a’ local perspective? Or is local travel more about where the money goes? And, in that case, how much of that has to be kept in the local economy for a place to be considered a ‘local company’?”
Via How do you define ‘local travel’? | Going local travel.
Opinion:
You are right, Vicky, local travel is a tricky issue and something you cannot define easily. But then again, what is it about us that we always want to define everything. More important than the label or definition are the real-life implications of our travel behaviour for the host communities and their environment, i.e. whether they benefit from tourism and travel activities in economic, cultural, social (etc.) ways, or whether they don’t.
Read more about green travel, a concept closely linked to travelling locally.
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Picture credit: kevindooley
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