The Last Tourist

We watched The Last Tourist, which is a documentary on Hulu about how unsustainable the modern tourism industry is. I was expecting 2 hours of ignorant western tourists and their selfie sticks, and there was some of that before it went in a much darker direction, diving into animal abuse in SE Asia and orphanage tourism in Kenya, and how demand from the developed world makes these problems worse. It got pretty damn dark and depressing before focusing on some success stories and how tourism can be a force for good. The overriding message of the documentary is that tourism inevitably changes the places people are going, so it's incumbent on us to work to make sure those changes are positive. As it stands today, only about 15% of the tourism dollars stay in the underdeveloped places westerners are visiting.

I hate the idea of cruise ships and all-inclusive resorts, two things that were criticized in the movie. I don't understand why anyone would go someplace interesting like Jamaica and then spend the entire trip on a resort with other well off tourists. That sounds more like hell than a vacation to me.

I'd rather be out in the woods or at the beach in my camper, preferably with limited people around, but that is hard to accomplish sometimes.