What Is Slow Travel? The Pros and Cons of Slow Tourism
What is slow travel? The terms slow tourism and slow travel are experiencing a resurgence in popularity, but the specifics of this approach to travel are difficult to pin down, as are the benefits and drawbacks. We set out to help define exactly what slow travel is, and how it can add to or detract from your own travel experience.
What is Slow Travel and Slow Tourism?
Slow tourism is simply the idea of re-focusing the goals of travel, de-emphasizing collecting experiences, and instead prioritizing interactions with people, culture, and environment in the places you visit.
Mass tourism has conditioned us to treat travel as a competition to collect (and more recently to share via social media) as many attractions, activities, and experiences as possible from a list (the type of list we, as travel bloggers, often supply). Slow tourism offers an alternative, encouraging travelers to simply be present in a new place and be open to the opportunity to learn and grow by consciously engaging with that environment.
Where Did the Term Slow Travel Come From?
Slow Travel is not a new idea, in fact, it is thought to have come about in the late 80s. The term appeared in the wake of the slow-food movement which accentuated the importance of locally-sourced produce and home-cooked meals as an alternative to the increasing uptake of processed foods and fast food restaurants.
Where slow food offered a healthier and more sustainable approach to food consumption, slow travel was a similar reaction to the rise of mass tourism. Particularly, it proposed to eliminate some of the negative aspects of traditional travel, such as threats to cultural identity, environmental impacts, and the general commercial nature of mass tourism.
After experiencing growth for almost two decades, interest in the term seems to have peaked in popularity back in 2004 with as many as 20,000 people googling the term on a monthly basis. In the following decade, interest waned by as much as 80%. However, since 2018 the term has been slowly but steadily increasing in popularity once again.
What Would the Vanabonds Know About Slow Travel?
We’ve always been about slow travel!
Beyond the fact that, more often than not, our means of travel (vans, boats, and hiking shoes) are inherently slower methods to explore an area, it has also been a fundamental part of our approach to travel. In fact, it’s right there on the front of our website, “This page is about…slow, self-directed travel regardless of the means.”
Of course, the commercial nature of the blog sometimes puts us at odds with this objective and occasionally leads us to participate in mass tourism more than we otherwise might in order to report fully on a destination. Nevertheless, slow travel remains a core tenet of our travel ethos.
How Do You Slow Travel?
While using “slow” transport and staying longer in a destination can both help reach the objectives of slow tourism, the essential element isn’t necessarily traveling slowly. What is essential is focusing on your approach and attitude to travel.
For those interested in pursuing this approach to travel, there is no rigid set of guidelines to follow but rather a shift in mindset. Forget about trying to achieve a pre-ordained set of experiences and instead focus on experiencing a new place, people, and culture through immersion.
Some ideas that can help reach this goal include:
- Opt to stay in one location longer
- Explore new regions on foot or via public transport without lists, itineraries, or firm plans
- Do as the locals do, shop where they shop, eat at local restaurants, and if possible participate in local activities and events
- Actively avoid places and activities geared toward tourists
- Choose to stay in accommodations that will put you in proximity to local people such as homestays
- Use public transport and walk to get around
- Learn at least a little of the local language and use it
- Be open to opportunities to engage and exchange with local people
- Engage in tours and activities organized and led by local people – Airbnb experiences, local tip-based walking tours, and privately organized cooking classes are good examples
What are the Benefits of Slow Travel and Slow Tourism?
There are many significant benefits of slow tourism for the traveler, the communities they visit, and the environment. Through deliberate, conscious effort, travel can expand our horizons and deepen our knowledge and understanding of people and places. It can deliver economic as well as social and cultural advantages to the local communities we visit. Slow travel also has the potential to minimize some of the negative impacts that travel can have on ourselves, our community, and the environment.
Personal Development and Growth
When we allow it, travel can expose us to new experiences and introduce us to different ideas, lifestyles, and mindsets. By its nature, slow travel often also leaves room for reflection. This combination of perspective and the space to absorb and reflect on it can lead to personal development and growth.
A Deeper Knowledge and Understanding of Places, People, and the World Around Us
Slow travel allows us to connect with people and cultures from around the world. Through these connections, we can develop a far deeper understanding of people and places. We can learn far more about the geography, food, history, and culture of a place when we immerse ourselves completely in a new environment than we ever could from a guidebook or surrounding ourselves with other tourists visiting the top X things to see in a region.
Practicing Slow Tourism Can Combat Travel Fatigue
Mass tourism can often be draining, physically and mentally. The mentality that we need to constantly consume to travel properly can quickly leave us burnt out, stressed, and exhausted.
Attempting to visit all of the best attractions, sites, tours, restaurants, bars, and hotels, can be a challenging, stressful, and exhausting task. It can also leave us unfulfilled because, despite an Instagram album of the greatest hits, our experience may feel inauthentic.
By removing the obligation to take part in every experience promoted by tourist organizations and focusing on simply being in a new place, a lot of the draining aspects of mass tourism can be avoided.
Slow Travel Can Reduce the Financial Burden of Travel
Speaking of draining, tourism is a business, and when you travel you are the consumer. Mass tourism is designed to separate you from your cash as quickly and efficiently as possible. By stepping away from the constructs of traditional tourism we can avoid some of the costs. Forgoing typical touristic attractions and activities in favor of engaging with local people, businesses and the environment is often a far cheaper way to spend money when traveling.
Economic Benefits to Local Communities
The local community also reaps economic benefits from slow travel which can have a direct positive impact on the people living in the places you visit. When you slowly travel and mindfully interact with local businesses you directly benefit the local community. Conversely, when you stay in brand names hotels, book tours through large companies, and eat at chain restaurants your money is siphoned away from the community.
Reducing the Negative Effects of Over Tourism and Over Commercialisation
For a long time, tourism has been touted as an economic boon to local communities, but there are many examples of over-tourism having horrendous impacts on local communities while lining the pockets of tourism operators and developers. Sayulita in Mexico is one example of a former paradise and at one point the epitome of a slow travel destination that has today become severely tarnished by over-tourism, and there are many more examples.
Social Benefits to Local Communities
Slow travel can lead to an exchange of knowledge, ideas, and culture between travelers and local communities while avoiding the negative side effects of rampant over-tourism. The opportunity to share something when you travel is a powerful and productive benefit of travel that has been eroded by mass tourism, which is more often than not a one-way transaction.
Environmental Benefits of Slow Travel
Slow travel can also be better for the environment. By minimizing our movement we reduce our own carbon footprint. By choosing to interact with local businesses and avoiding hyper-commercialized tourism, we are choosing a more sustainable type of tourism and removing the incentives that drive over-tourism. Finally, in some cases, we can as individuals have a positive impact on local environments both through clean-up efforts and through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.
What are the Drawbacks and Barriers to Slow Travel?
Embracing slow travel and prioritizing immersion in local culture and connections with people and places can have enormous benefits, but it is not for everyone and it is not always easy.
Slow travel is not practical, achievable, or even attractive to many travelers. There are a number of barriers and drawbacks that may dissuade travelers from adopting the principles of slow tourism.
Scarcity of Time
Time is a major consideration. For most travelers, time is a scarce resource and this scarcity can often lead travelers to preference-focused itinerary-based travel.
Prioritizing Convenience
Convenience is also a key factor. Many travelers consider travel as a relaxing break from stressful ‘real life’, rather than an opportunity to challenge themselves. This type of traveler prizes ease of access to experiences over slow travel.
Prioritizing Comfort
Another issue at play is comfort. Many travelers prioritize the creature’s comforts, something that is not always compatible with slow travel.
Where Are the Best Destinations for Slow Travel?
While slow travel is more about how you choose to travel than where some destinations are undoubtedly more conducive to slow tourism.
Some of the best destinations to focus on for slow travel are those destinations that don’t have an existing tourism culture. This means going to at least one or two towns or regions away from existing tourist hubs or better yet steering well clear of tourist hotspots altogether. By doing this you are far more likely to find authentic travel experiences and local communities less jaded and weary of tourists.
Other destinations that can be excellent opportunities to slow travel are those experiences with community interaction in-built. Volunteering, work-away programs, or community-driven projects like Sapa Valley homestays in north Vietnam or the Pueblos Mancomunados in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Finally, one question that is often overlooked when thinking about where to slow travel is, when should I slow travel? This question is arguably more important than where. Many travel destinations are seasonal and visiting many beautiful parts of the world during the ‘off season’ can reveal fantastic opportunities to slow travel to some of the most popular destinations in the world.
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Hopefully, we have been able to shed a little light on slow travel, at least as we see it. If you have a question or a comment, please let us know below!
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Looking for more travel lifestyle inspiration? Try some of these articles
- Full-Time Travel: 12 Essential Things You Need To Know
- The Cost of Living on a Sailboat Full-Time (with Examples)
- Van Life or Boat Life? Which Is the Best
- How to Start Van Life in 12 Simple Steps
- Is Van Life Worth It?
- 9 Simple Van Life Tips for Living on the Road in a Van
- 9 Things to Know for Working from the Road
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