Debate: 'Travel is not a vital need, just a paid fashion'

Travel is not a vital need: it is a fashion paid by installments

A silent current challenges the airport frenzy. It is not that they dislike leaving home: it is that they do not need to travel thousands of kilometers to see mountains or beaches thirty kilometers from their door. The stance, exposed without complexes in a responsible consumption forum, breaks with the dominant narrative: traveling does not make you a better, more cultured, or more interesting person. And the one saying this is not bitter; they have been to five countries and claim they would feel the same if they never left Spain.

Social pressure, however, is real. Some confess to pretending to like traveling to avoid group conversations. Others stay silent. Digital posturing, with its social media photos, is the main suspect: what benefit does telling the world where you have been bring? Likes? For what purpose?

Tourism as an economic and social control tool

The harshest analysis comes from the economic trench. It is argued that travel is an imposed fashion: a aid to globalization, an attenuator of geographic inequality, and, above all, a tool against deflation. The mechanism, according to this current, is simple: if people accumulate savings, the economy cools; if they spend it on immediate satisfaction, money circulates. Hence, travel is pointed to as a ram to prevent certain sectors from accumulating savings.

The criticism goes further. A distinction is made between the resort tourist and the intellectual traveler, and many are accused of pretending to be interesting when they cannot see beyond their nose in their own town. The bitter conclusion of this current: neither traveling nor reading cures anything.

Those who travel and return with the same ignorance

Not all who defend travel do so from blind enthusiasm. Some acknowledge that travel is leisure, the best kind, but leisure nonetheless. The most repeated criticism is that in fifteen days you do not learn customs, mix with real people, or see the country's life. You can live years in a city without doing any of that. Like any Spanish expatriate who goes to work for a while in Panama.

Globalization has homogenized destinations. Several European capitals are, according to this view, the same: McDonalds, Starbucks, Zara, and souvenir shops. It is difficult to find the seven differences. Some claim that someone traveling to Egypt who does not know what they saw has spent 1,500 euros per head to suffer heat, swallow sand, and sleep little.

Unique experience versus theme park

In response, the defense of authentic travel. Some recount crossing Java by motorcycle, being invited to a wedding in Malaysia, or witnessing a ritual sacrifice in Tana Toraja. These are unique experiences, from which you learn things, especially about yourself. In a Caribbean resort, you learn the same as in Gandía: nothing.

The problem is that this authentic travel is incompatible with mass tourism. Organized travel, with early mornings, schedules, and mandatory visits, generates stress instead of rest. Someone who claims to have lived twelve years in the third world warns that a few days in a remote place do not make you know anything: you only take away a distorted image.

Social media pressure and the end of the bubble

The conversation shifts to the role of social media. Some argue that the travel bubble is mainly fueled by women, citing cases of people unhinged for not being able to make posturing trips to upload photos to Instagram. The criticism extends to those who go into debt or borrow money to pay for a alucinación.

Confinement and health restrictions appear as a turning point. Some point out that the sustainable agenda and obstacles to mass tourism will turn travel enthusiasts into the odd ones, not the other way around. Some predict that national and regional tourism will benefit from restrictions on foreign travel.

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With these threads, the initial question — 'Am I a sad person for not wanting to travel?' — answers itself. You are not. You are, if anything, a forerunner. Or a saver. Or simply someone who does not need an airplane to feel alive. Social pressure will remain, but the narrative is cracking. And if mass tourism hits physical and economic limits, perhaps the odd ones will be others.