The Dance Used to Run All Night. Tourism Cut It to Ninety Minutes, and Nobody's Hiding That.

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Put the Guidebook Down, brought to you by Kultura Travel, with me, Kiara, the creator, as your host. Today we're going to start by exposing ourselves at Kultura Travel a little bit by calling out the term we like to use, "living like a local" and immersive travel. Now, many people ask, is that even possible? What do you really mean by that? Is it just going to become another cliché, or fad, or marketing line? As a marketer and the creator of Kultura Travel, this makes me really excited, because it means people are questioning what they're seeing in the content they're taking in, which is a plus. It's also positive for me, because it means people are already starting to come around to this idea of authentic cultural travel versus curated cultural travel.

In our previous episodes we've talked about tourist versus traveler, some cultural faux pas, and in some of Kultura Travel's other content we've already talked about authenticity versus curated authenticity when it comes to tourism. In this episode we're going to really break down what it means to be authentically created, like what we pursue with Kultura Travel, versus other travel ads or tourism saying "live like a local," and how to differentiate the two, so you're fully informed making decisions for your travel and meeting your travel values and goals on your dream destination trip.

One of the big questions I get, as the creator of Kultura Travel and a fellow traveler, is about experiences you see on Airbnb Experiences, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Expedia, where people advertise cultural experiences, events, cooking classes. Airbnb does a great job with their Experiences section, pairing you with a local host, maybe locals who don't want to host accommodations but want to showcase their culture, have a bit of a side hustle sharing more about their culture. It's a great opportunity, and great for people new to travel who don't know where to start, because if you're booking with Airbnb you can easily add on those cultural experiences within your stay.

I'll admit I'm one of those people who's done Airbnb Experiences, and this was also kind of my first exposure to authentic versus curated cultural experiences. The first one that comes to mind, one of my first Airbnb experiences, back when they were really starting to build up that part of the platform, was when I was in Poland, visiting Gdańsk, Warsaw, and Kraków. During my stay in Warsaw I signed up for a pierogi cooking class with a local, or as it was marketed, a local. This woman was fantastic. It was one of those experiences on the borderline between authentic and curated, because she has an established business in the area, her own building, and this is something she regularly does, hosting several cooking classes throughout the day, every week, all year. It's taught in English, people from around the world show up and sign up, and she takes them step by step through making pierogi, with a bit of history and a bit of local liquor too. I'm not taking anything away from the experience, I think she did an amazing job, I learned a lot. I'm Polish, I've made pierogi from scratch before from my grandmother's recipe, so it was interesting to compare it with hers. I also met a bunch of different people from it, some I'm still in contact with today, people who've reached out saying they're popping into my area to visit, which I'm excited about, because it's the power of small conversations that can leave a big impact.

But again, going back to the question of whether it's truly authentic or a curated experience: because it was done in English, clearly marketed to foreigners, not locals showing up to classes, and something done almost daily, it's on the borderline of being a curated experience. This is common in other major tourist destinations too, like Rome. If you're near the Colosseum, staying in one of the touristy areas, you'll come across advertisements for "authentic" pasta cooking classes, with a pretty large price tag. What's supposed to be a regular class, maybe making pasta from scratch, maybe with a cultural or historical angle, comes with a price tag of about $120 for one ticket, when you could have a similar experience in a smaller village actually being in a family's home learning the grandmother's recipe. That latter one, being in an actual local's home working with the family, falls more on the side of a genuine, authentic cultural experience, whereas the one with the big price tag, standardized across all the offerings you'd see on TripAdvisor or Booking, tends to be one of those curated, cookie-cutter experiences where everyone gets pretty much the same thing. And I'll admit, I'm one of the people who's paid that high price tag for a cookie-cutter travel experience in the past, before I was fully aware of what authentic cultural travel means and how to differentiate the two. That's okay, I'm completely admitting it, I was in the same boat as you, or maybe you're already ahead of me on this. This is a safe, accepting space, we're just here to educate and improve your travel experience.

I started becoming more familiar with this distinction while in Moldova. One of the first cultural experiences that really solidified this understanding for me was staying in one of the local guesthouses with a family, ecotourism, very common there, guesthouses run by families who host locals and foreigners touring the area, with breakfast and dinner together. One of my first experiences with real authenticity was when one of the babushkas, grandmothers, literally took me aside and offered to teach me how to make plăcintă. This was offered to me one-on-one, not something offered to all the other guests at the villa, and it wasn't extra, she just genuinely knew I had experience living in Moldova, liked that I'd learned Romanian and Russian, and made a real effort to immerse into the local culture and learn. She wanted to demonstrate this part of her culture by teaching me her mom's plăcintă recipe. She took me into the kitchen, we chatted in Romanian, and she walked me through making it from scratch, explaining the history and the different types and forms you can make. She even helped me pack a little to-go bag, because I was leaving in a couple hours on the marshrutka, the bus, back to my city. We hugged goodbye, and she invited me back to visit. It was a unique experience, I felt I'd built a real bond with her, someone I can still reach out to, and I do plan on visiting her again. That was my first real authentic cultural experience, and it became my baseline for booking other experiences seeking cultural immersion, telling what's real from what's cookie-cutter.

If I have to sum it up quickly: if you're booking something usually offered by major tourism companies, the same experience offered at different times of day, different days of the week, throughout the entire year, you're getting a cookie-cutter, not-really-authentic cultural experience. And if that's what you're looking for, that's okay, if you're just trying to check boxes. But I'd encourage you to do a little deeper research to find smaller tourism companies, or reach out to a local directly and say, hey, this is what I'm interested in, do you know anyone who could teach me about this? Because they'll connect you with someone who gives you that one-of-a-kind authentic experience, where you leave with a different perspective, a deeper connection to the person and to the region.

Taking this to the bigger question: why are these inauthentic cultural experiences offered in the first place, and are we all going to fall into this "live like a local" cliché? Every experience is going to be different regardless, but going back to why these cookie-cutter experiences exist: first, some people want that chauffeured, checklist-travel experience, they don't mind getting the same experience as everyone else, they just want surface-level interaction and exposure. There's also convenience, people know exactly what they're going to get, every listing spells out what's included, no unknowns, which can make some people more comfortable. Third, this is just how traditional tourism has always worked, not everyone is flexible enough to travel with no itinerary. I actually used to plan mine down to the hour, that's changed since living abroad, and I've met people who just show up and figure it out, that's not my style, I like some structure, but it's uncomfortable for a lot of people to show up not knowing what they're doing, especially traveling from far away, wanting to make sure you're getting your time and money's worth. That's another reason cookie-cutter experiences get offered, they're already planned, you know what you're getting.

I think a big part of it also comes back to traditional tourism being a large part of a country's economic system, a big example being Indonesia with Bali. I can't remember the exact percentage, but tourism contributes something like over 50% to the economy there. The country puts a lot of focus into tourism development, which means creating a lot of these checklist, cookie-cutter tourist experiences to keep tourists interested, giving them some exposure to the culture while still delivering the marketed "Balinese experience." This helps give locals jobs, helps with some surface-level culture preservation, and helps people learn about the local culture at a surface level. But there are different schools of thought on the tradeoffs here. One side is that with cookie-cutter travel you're only preserving the aspects of a ritual or experience that get chosen to showcase, so you're not getting the full scope, and it may not even be fully accurate. One example: in Indonesia there are performances from Javanese tradition, with masks and dances, telling stories, that traditionally ran five to seven hours, back when there was no other form of entertainment, people would sit in the theater that long. Over time, the performances have gotten shorter and shorter, to the point where for tourists now the experience ranges from thirty minutes to an hour, an hour and a half at most. That's wild, going from five to seven hours down to maybe thirty minutes, you're obviously omitting information. So are we fully preserving the most accurate representation of the culture? Probably not, maybe you get the highlights, but not the full thing.

That gets into the difference between cookie-cutter travel and authentic travel experiences, because authentic experiences are usually run by local, smaller tourism groups who don't have to follow big corporate strategy and design, and have more flexibility in creating experiences and showcasing their culture, plus a different expression of the culture, dialects for example, we think of countries having standardized national languages, but many have hundreds of dialects or smaller languages within them, so you get a different experience within the culture and travel. People do these cookie-cutter travels because they want a checklist itinerary with fully known expectations, but authenticity isn't always about perfection, it's about the intention and openness and immersion that comes with it. Going back to "living like a local," no one's life is perfect, even in the era of social media where so many people market and create a facade of a perfect life, with an authentic cultural experience you're actually getting the full insight into what it is to live like a local, with all the authenticity of the culture and language that comes with it. It's not always going to be exactly the checklist, you might not get the marketed version of the cultural festival you saw in photos and videos from influencers, because it's not going to be perfect, you might get a completely different experience, learn something completely different, it might not be pretty, it might expose you to a darker part of history you weren't familiar with. That can be uncomfortable for people, and that's why with cultural travel I always emphasize learning to be flexible, adaptable, and get a little comfortable in the uncomfortable or unfamiliar. That's really where you begin to grow as a traveler, as a person, gaining new experiences and perspectives, which is part of what cultural travel is about, leaving your travel experiences with new adventures, new memories, new stories, but also a little bit of a better, deeper version of yourself.

So if I have to define quickly my three suggestions, not rules, for finding authentic travel moments: one, try to avoid the easy-to-book big travel websites, you know who they are, I'm not going to name them, but that's going to be your cookie-cutter experience, if you don't believe me go check how often they're offered and what the itineraries look like, they're all exactly the same every time. Opt for smaller, locally-sourced tours or companies, might feel like more of a question mark, but they tend to be more flexible to make sure you're getting what you want. My second one, if foreigners are the ones running the tours, operating the company, designing the itineraries, and they're not from there, it's most likely not the most authentic tour or experience out there, I'd consider looking for a different option. The third, anything marketed as an "influencer package," "social media tour," "Instagram tour," expect surface-level and cookie-cutter, everyone getting the same thing, just taken to the spots that photograph well, not necessarily getting in-depth knowledge and exposure to the culture, language, and history of the place.

We're all at different points of our travel journey, I've admitted I've done the inauthentic cultural travel tours and experiences in the past, I've done ones in the middle, and I've eventually made it to where culture and travel feels completely unknown, spontaneous, one-of-a-kind, immersive experiences where you really do get that insight into local life. So if you booked through an ad, or an influencer's recommendation, it's most likely not going to be authentic, and that's okay as a starting point. But now that you have this knowledge, you can start challenging yourself to go beyond the surface level of your research and make the extra effort to book something more immersive and authentic, not just because it's on a checklist for every traveler.

With that, I'm going to close out this episode. I hope you learned a bit more about authentic versus cookie-cutter inauthentic experiences, and what this idea of "living like a local" really is, and that it's not necessarily going to become a marketing cliché in the end. And if it is starting to head that direction, now you know what factors to look for in tours and experiences marketed that way, so you're not falling into that tourist trap. Please continue to subscribe, tune in, and explore more of Kultura Travel, we're continuing this podcast series and expecting a couple of different guests to come on and share their perspectives, experience, and travel stories with immersive cultural travel. Stay tuned. Thank you.