Why Fast Travel Feels Productive and Why It Leaves You Empty

[0:00] How many times have you been on social media or in conversation with someone giving travel recommendations and they just happened to drop their country count into the conversation? We somehow started counting countries like accomplishments, using itineraries to plan trips like to-do lists, and somehow turned travel into a form of productivity as if our lives weren't

[0:24] already busy enough. We've been taught that a good trip is a full itinerary, early mornings, packed days, multiple cities, nonstop movement. But what if that productivity mindset is exactly why so many people come home from trips feeling exhausted in need of another vacation instead of changed?

[0:43] Did you know that around 80% of global travelers visit just 10% of destinations, concentrating tourism into a small handful of places? My name is Kiara and I am the host of Put the Guidebook Down. Today I want to talk about why fast travel may feel satisfying but it often doesn't stick and how this leads to travel burnout.

[1:06] It may be a feeling of emptiness. So when did travel start feeling like something we had to optimize? Travel has become an extension of hustle culture, whether that means it's people just needing to get a lot done because they're content creators in the travel industry, or just because we were listening to the recommendations of a content creator

[1:28] giving us the quote unquote, ideal itinerary, which resulted in moving around nonstop just to make sure we hit all of their recommendations that were extremely unrealistic to begin with in the timeframe allotted. Itineraries are essentially just like checklists. They are proof that we did enough, but we should maybe take a step back and ask,

[1:52] why do we even need to prove that we did enough when on vacation? It's our vacations after all. That's what we chose for us, how we want to spend our time. We're letting social media and others influence how we want to plan our travel and

[2:11] make them define what is enough and meaningful for us when it's not even their trip. Going back to social media, again, this can differ between people who are just travelers versus maybe those who do this for a living and are content creators, but social media really rewards the quantity over the quality and depth when it

[2:32] comes to content. And we see this all the time. I work in marketing and part of my job is to maximize social media strategy. Now, a large portion of that is the algorithm changing all the time. And the creators like to say that they're going to reward high quality content when

[2:49] we still see people who are just pushing more and more content getting rewarded by the algorithm. I see this with Kultura Travel when going through my content and interacting with those who are contributing meaningfully in the travel space. I'll see high quality content where people really put their time and energy to

[3:07] create it and to create meaningful and educational content. They don't get rewarded in the algorithm and tend to perform less than those who are relying on hook baits, click baits, and just trying to push out content to the max in order to increase their following. Now,

[3:25] this is not going to be an episode about social media marketing and the algorithm. This is going back to the travel industry and that social media rewarding content that is being pushed out on a daily basis really fast without contributing to the meaning behind it.

[3:41] And this is where we start to see the interaction and intersection between tourism and overtourism and social media. So overtourism isn't an accident. It's really being fueled by checklist travel and time compressed itineraries that are being put out and created from travel content creators and the travel industry. We see this with a lot of guided tours.

[4:04] You have this dream trip. You want to make sure you see everything that your heart desires and wants to accomplish. And those tour operators try to cram all of that into a seven day itinerary. And then you get to your dream trip. You get onto the bus to go to your first destination and then to your next

[4:26] destination, to your third destination. And you end up realizing that you're spending more time on the bus to hit those checklist points rather than actually being present in the moment. I'm guilty of this. I've done my fair share of those checklist travels early on in my

[4:43] travel journey, where I did seven countries in the span of a month and a half, which seems like maybe to some people that's not a lot, to others they might say the opposite reaction, like how did you do that, seven countries in a month and a half?

[4:58] Let me tell you, it wasn't easy, and that was the only time I did such a tour, because I spent most of my time on the bus and I was not happy about it.

[5:13] So this is just an example of how guided tours were really being fueled by checklist travel tourism and creating these time compressed itineraries that then limit our immersiveness into the destinations. Now, fast travel doesn't just impact us, right? It also impacts the places that we're visiting. When everyone is rushing through the same 10 destinations with multiple tours starting on the same day or the day right after,

[5:39] local life starts revolving around tourism instead of coexisting with it. And the economy becomes fully dependent on tourism. So if there ever was a natural disaster or a disaster, accident that occurs, or incident that would deter tourists from coming to that destination, we see the economy begin to suffer significantly. So I want to take a

[6:05] step back then and ask, are we traveling to really experience a place or just to validate the trip, to say that yeah, you've been there and this is what you did. This goes into the question of what do we actually lose when we rush.

[6:26] Many things. We may gain a lot of experiences, memories, and fulfill that checklist, but we lose local routines, insights to the day-to-day, local connections, being able to understand what a local person does on the day-to-day. We also lose cultural nuance. So going back to what we are passionate about at Kultura Travel, the language, the culture, the history, the reason why the place exists to begin with,

[6:51] sometimes these are left out or forgotten when you're just rushing between the places because you're just so focused on getting to those checklist points. The next thing we miss, and this is huge, something that has become very important to me in my destinations, are the unplanned moments. And I've talked about this in

[7:10] some of my previous episodes, but those are the times where maybe something doesn't go exactly according to plan, in either a good way or a bad way. So you missed your train and then you had to take a bus instead, and then you met Harold, who turned out to be your new best friend and future business partner.

[7:28] You ended up hearing in a cafe locals talk about this beautiful flower garden that just suddenly started blooming at the beginning of summer. So then you add that to your list and go off the beaten path a little bit to try the local recommendation. These are all parts of the unplanned moments.

[7:48] Lastly, we tend to lose the emotional processing. And I'm sure anyone who is a nomadic traveler living between multiple places, or one who does the checklist travel, we tend to get caught in the excitement or the heat of the moment, going from place to place, that it all starts to blend together and you become

[8:11] emotionally numb. I've experienced this in my trip that I mentioned earlier when I was going through those seven countries in a month and a half. There were points, and I still experience this unfortunately looking through my past photos, is where Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia really started to blend together. This is not anything on the cultural level.

[8:34] This is purely because that was the end of my segment. I had already been traveling for a month and we were going on the bus for 70% of the time in this segment because we were driving the popular path straight through. And there were points where we were just asleep on the bus. We would wake up,

[8:55] go walk around for maybe 30 minutes or an hour, take our photos, jump back on the bus, and then drive to the next. I don't remember sometimes which part, were these photos taken in Latvia and what part these were taken in Lithuania. That just happened because I wasn't processing and really being engaged in the

[9:14] present moment, because we were so much engaged, so much focused on rushing from point A to B. Research on slow tourism shows that longer stays increase interaction with local communities, businesses, and everyday culture, and which leads to a more fulfillment being felt after your trip. So people who stay longer don't just see more, they're understanding more,

[9:40] they're connecting more. They shop locally, notice the patterns that they're seeing around them, and actually build on context instead of snapshots and trying to take the photos and videos to remember from. Those memories are felt deeper and within and can be recalled easier after your trip. So on the flip side,

[10:01] talking about a time where I stayed long enough to stop rushing and to really pause and immerse and understand where I was, it was actually at the end of my seven-country trip, where my ending point was in Poland. And I'm Polish, so I always wanted to really experience Poland and learn more about my culture, history, identity,

[10:25] all of that. So I opted to stay longer in Poland after in order to go between a couple of the different cities, villages, and just to take my time. And this is where I started to recover from that emptiness feeling, that travel burnout, because I was taking the time to actually sleep, to walk around where I was.

[10:48] I don't think I took public transport, actually, the entire time I was in the north. Once I started heading south in Poland, that's when I started to explore more with public transportation just to get around, that's when I started to see more about what was going on around me.

[11:07] Seeing the local people go about their days into the markets, how people were greeting each other, how the energy was at restaurants, and it just became more memorable. And that's really a big difference. I mentioned earlier that my time in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia started blending together. This was a time where I really started to feel

[11:28] myself try to recall and separate the three, but then Poland also is so much easier for me to recall, and I can look at my photos now and be like, I remember exactly what was going on in that photo, who I was talking with, and where I was.

[11:44] It's just an example of the power of when you stay long enough in a destination to really understand where you are and to go deeper. So travel depth doesn't come from distance. It comes from time and effort. If you're making an effort to really connect and learn about where you are and stay engaged in the present moment,

[12:06] which unfortunately is harder to ask and look for these days with our growing reliance and interaction with social media and technology, but the result is a lot more rewarding and meaningful. So then why do slower trips feel more meaningful? Why are we talking about slowing down with our travel?

[12:29] Immersive experiences lead to a stronger emotional memory, as I mentioned earlier. Your recall is better. You're going to feel more rewarded from your trip, not just in the sense of memories, validation, and experiences, but the fact that you've grown as a human being. And slower travel is linked to lower stress and higher satisfaction,

[12:51] if we needed a research fact to support what I'm saying here. Kind of makes sense if you think about it, because you're not rushing around and feeling the emotional guilt or pressure that may come with missing some things on your itinerary checklist. So that is definitely a lower stress situation and higher satisfaction, just because

[13:11] you're able to feel more accomplished as a result of slowing down in your trip, but also because you're able to incorporate more of those unplanned moments to really enrich your itinerary and time and the place. So when you're not rushing, your brain has space to absorb what's going on around you, what you're doing,

[13:29] what the present moment is. That's why the moments we remember most aren't monuments, right? You're not going to recall, maybe you will, if you do, that's very impressive, I'm going to say this, but I'll speak towards myself, you're not going to remember much of the monuments you see, the museums you went to, or maybe the churches, because

[13:51] when you're in Europe, you tend to go to all these churches together, let's be real, because most of them are free to enter. I can't remember 50% of the monuments you visited in museums, to be honest. It's just the same stuff you're viewing at,

[14:07] and you're just going through the motions to say that you went to those monuments and museums. The parts you're going to actually remember are those meals, the conversations you had and walks. I have said this before, I always say again, just put the phone down, take a walk, go see what's going on around you, maybe sit and

[14:27] people watch and just observe, the power of observation. If you haven't listened to that episode you definitely should, it's very true and anyone can become a better observer. So talking about more examples in terms of remembering some of my previous trips, I can talk more in terms of when I was living abroad,

[14:50] which is a form of slow travel because you're staying in one place for a longer duration and really immersing into the local culture, that would be my time in Indonesia. I was there for a shorter period of time compared to my time in Moldova, and that was a point where I was living with a host

[15:09] family and staying in one place, so I didn't even move around Indonesia that much. If it was, it was for just like a weekend trip or two to go into some villages and just to interact with different people, to work on my Bahasa Indonesia.

[15:24] But the moments that I remember the most and the feelings that I feel when thinking about Indonesia are not attributed to the beautiful beaches I visited, which did really shock me, I'm not going to lie there. But it's the friends that I made while in the country and still talk to to this day, my language partners,

[15:44] my host family, the ones that took me around to show different parts of their village to me or their culture, teaching me how to cook or the cultural gestures and nuances that came with being there for a longer period of time. And talking about memories,

[16:04] there's even those points when we're talking about identity and existing in the middle, when you come back from living abroad or being abroad for long periods of time, you see yourself adopting some of those habits or day-to-days. So even today, like, I still, I'm very adamant about cleaning my floors because that was really big in Japanese cultures.

[16:25] You always wanted to have very clean floors. I offer guests tea when they come in, or I'm wearing slippers in the household. It's a bunch of different habits that I adopted from being abroad and living abroad with local families and putting them into my own day to day. These are the ones that I remember the most,

[16:46] not the monuments or the checklist travel itineraries that were told to me as recommendations from content creators, travel influencers, or even some other fellow tourists. So this is why cultural travel isn't just seeing less. I don't want you to take that away from this episode.

[17:05] It's more about seeing clearly and being able to really understand and take away moments that help you grow as a person from the destination. You really leave with a better understanding of where you went, where you came from, and where you're going. So I want to challenge our listeners to really take a step back and reflect,

[17:29] what if success in travel wasn't measured by how much you did? Not by destination, not by country count. I want to reframe it to success meaning presence, respect, and understanding, because not every trip needs to cover everything. You will have an opportunity to go back if you want.

[17:52] If you truly want something, you will find a way to make it happen. And if you really want to return to a destination, you will. There's a couple of different traditions in different parts of the world where sometimes you can do a certain action or stand a certain place, and that means you'll find your way back.

[18:09] The one that comes to mind is the one in Paris, in front of Notre Dame or close by it, and it's, if you stand in that area, that means that you will find your way back to Paris. And for others, that has

[18:25] happened for some, not yet. We're going to reframe the mindset to not yet, it's much more positive and aspirational, but I want to encourage you to really think what successful travel really means on the whole and to you.

[18:49] Now going back a little bit into what this success could mean, like from a local standpoint, slower travel will help distribute the economic and environmental impact more responsibly and evenly across destinations. Think about carbon footprint, talk about waste, talk about pollution. Slow travel can help with distributing it a little bit more evenly amongst all the different regions rather than just being concentrated to one city in the entire country.

[19:14] Going back to Indonesia, a very popular example is in Jakarta. It's the current capital of Indonesia, but they're in the process of moving to Kalimantan, which is a different issue in itself that we won't get into. But essentially Jakarta has, it was a popular tourist destination and has seen a decrease due to the high levels

[19:37] of air pollution, garbage, and overcrowding experienced locally in the city and from foreigners. So much that the country has even opted to move the capital to a different part of the country to help with evening it out. We'll see if that is true or not. There's other environmental impact studies going on in terms of if moving the

[19:59] capital where they want to is actually beneficial in the grand scheme of things or not. Again, not getting into it, but something to reflect on in terms of how your travel can really influence and impact a destination. So in conclusion, slowing down isn't just good for you,

[20:19] it's better for the places that you can grow to love and want to visit. Maybe the problem isn't that travel has changed us. Maybe it's that we've brought our productivity anxiety with us. As a New Yorker, we're always rushing from point A to point B, cramming our schedules and really in the hustle culture. So

[20:40] getting away from the checklist travel was very difficult for me, but since then my travel has been more fun, more rewarding, and more memorable. Travel doesn't need to be fast to be valuable. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is stay.

[20:59] And I would like you to think, if you plan fewer destinations, what would you gain instead? You don't need to see everything. You need to let one place see you. I want to encourage our listeners to reflect on the slowest trip you've ever taken and how it changed you.

[21:19] Be sure to check out Kultura Travel's website for more information on up-and-coming trips and more information on our travel app coming out soon. And to tune in to future episodes of Put the Guidebook Down, where we have a lot of new guests with different perspectives coming on to share their stories. Thank you so much to everyone.

[21:40] Remember, put the guidebook down and go out and slow down your travel. Bye.