The travelers culture is a dynamic and diverse amalgamation of experiences, perspectives, and shared values that emerge from exploration and interaction with various destinations. It encompasses a spirit of curiosity, adaptability, and open-mindedness, fostering a community where individuals celebrate the richness of global diversity.
Rooted in the joy of discovery and a passion for new horizons, this culture encourages a respectful engagement with different customs, cuisines, and lifestyles. Embracing the essence of wanderlust, the travelers culture promotes a deep appreciation for the world’s beauty, connecting people through a shared love for exploration and the wellness power of travel.
Travelers culture can all be mapped back to one element — us.
“The culture of our tourism industry businesses is starting to head down. Environment is starting to get really toxic, everyone’s complaining that they are overworked, and the vibe is getting really bad. Where is all this coming from and how do we change course?”
We are the cultural North Star of our travel plans, and everything we do, and how we act, puts our ship on a course for good things, and if we allow it, really bad ones. Our challenge is that we often don’t recognize how even our simplest actions broadcast across the entire environment and poison the natural life of the planet. Our worst behaviors, even those that we think are positive, become the virus that infects everyone.
Toxic Environment in tourism? That’s Us
All of that terrible infighting and toxic environment — that’s on us. Either we encourage or we let it happen — either way, we’re responsible. We may not see it that way though, we may think that “everyone else is being shitty” but that’s not how this works. Yes, those people may in fact be acting awful, creating little cliques, and talking smack in Slack. But that behavior is a reflection of what we allow in travelers culture.
While the complaints and spoiling nature do in fact originate from the travelers culture. as the travel psychologist, it’s a foreseen responsibility to stamp it out and set the tone. By simply allowing it to create new proactive behavior in tourism, we are just encouraging the right movement for the future to withstand itself.
Conversely, if we nip it in the bud and address it head-on, either by calling out the offenders or in a more extreme case, parting company with them altogether (usually a better solution BTW), we’re setting the tone for everyone. And sometimes the human we need to be harshest with is ourselves. The moment we start acting toxic, we’ve basically given everyone else in the environment permission to follow suit.
Overworked and Burnt Out is travelers culture: Our Fault?
Our life is going to pace itself at our pace, good or bad. If we’re busy slacking off and sending selfies from our world travels all the time, no one is going to work twice as hard while we’re working on our tan. On the other hand, if we’re working ourselves to death and convincing the rest of the life connections that they need in the name of lifestyle glory, their horrible health and mental not-well-being is entirely at fault.
We often fail to understand the massive impact we have on our own well-being but everyone in our environment. The ability we have, isn’t a great one, to inflict an ungodly amount of pain on so many people simply by the tone we set in our natural lifestyle.
We also have the power to do the opposite in travelers culture — to enable proactive behaviors, life changing decisions, and well-being. But if we assume that’s “their responsibility” we overlook the fact that their lives are directly correlative to the environment we create. We would never choose to make everyone miserable, but we have the power to do it regardless.
Ashamed of Being Who We Are? On Us.
Can our tourism actions even be about themselves, their true selves, within the environment? Can we openly talk about the struggles of daily life or are we supposed to be a caricature of the model person that we pretend to be so that we overlook our lives altogether? Is vulnerability a pro or a con?
Whether or not our tourism business feels comfortable being vulnerable is directly reflective of our own vulnerability. If we project an image that shows we can do no wrong, our instant connections will try to mirror that image as best they can — and that’s a motto. Creating a false image prevents us from understanding who they really are, which, if we’re speaking truly as tour managers, creates bad data to respond from.
If our professional self can’t tell us that they have to watch the kids versus working, or that they are fried from being overworked, or that they simply made a mistake, we’re going to try to solve the wrong problems. If we want to foster a culture that truly allows people to open up and share completely, we have to do that ourselves. We have to show that it’s OK to make a mistake because we make them too. We have to show that yes, life happens, and our lives happen too.
Share Your Thoughts with a Travel Psychologist
What we can’t do is expect our travelers culture to flourish without our guiding hand. We can’t expect the culture to develop in one direction while we’re personally heading in another. We are the amplifiers, and we need to be as deliberate in our actions to drive our internal culture as we are to build our entire future based on the United Nations World Tourism Organization “UNWTO” global movement Tourism based 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This is the way.
As days and years progress the global development has been hampering the planet’s health in return harming all life forms on this planet. As we understand the psychology of travel towards tourism culture it stands as the biggest solution to move towards this solution oriented proactive behavior standards for tourists aka travelers and the tourism businesses overall.
What if the Traveler’s Personality Is a Cultural Liability?
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