There comes a point in every college student’s semester when academic burnout becomes so overwhelming they start planning flights for spring break. It’s a way to have some sort of goal — a beacon of hope, if you will — to look forward to after a daunting week of midterms.
For those who decide to go on vacations, it’s exciting to travel with new friends and explore new destinations on a college student’s budget.
This “budget” often includes cheap flights to affordable locations. Unfortunately, our itineraries have lasting effects that we as tourists often don’t take into consideration—ones that are not plain and simple.
Travelers often ignore the impact of their getaways on postcolonial areas — such as the Bahamas, Mexico, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico — many of which rely on tourism to boost the local economy.
Tourists, specifically young ones, have a tendency to contribute to the cultural commodification of local areas — perhaps without even realising. This means they play a role in a system that transforms culture into a concept that can be bought and sold within the marketplace of global consumption.
In many ways, tourism has parallels to a postmodern form of colonization.
While it doesn’t involve the same type of direct territorial subjugation, it often results in the exploitation of local cultures, landscapes and traditions for profit by first-world countries. The idea that vacationers can simply visit these places, enjoy the beauty and leave without considering the deeper consequences is problematic.
Think of the classic souvenir T-shirt with a big “Jamaica Mon!” slogan, a phrase that many tourists love to wear as a fun, lighthearted reference to the island.
Souvenir t-shirts featuring depictions of Indigenous people are often marketed as lighthearted keepsakes to remember a vacation. However, this type of marketing reduces the rich culture and traditions of local communities to commodities, stripping them of their deeper significance and transforming them into objects of capitalism.
In a similar sense, many tropical locations market their travel by promoting beautiful sandy beaches and the concept of “paradise.” But as the population of tourists increases in tropical areas, the rise in pollution caused by human interactions eventually ruins the reasons that drew tourists in the first place.
Tourist activities, particularly in coastal areas, are often unsustainable due to improper waste disposal, leading to the accumulation of plastics around travel attractions. Cruise ships frequently release millions of gallons of contaminated waste into the ocean, causing harm to marine life.
I think about this a lot — how many of my own travel habits have unknowingly contributed to these social and environmental issues.
As much as I love exploring new places and experiencing different cultures, I can’t ignore the fact that our presence can sometimes do more harm than good.
It’s a harsh realization, but an important one. The ethics of tourism are complex, and it’s crucial for all of us — especially as young travelers — to reflect on how we can navigate these spaces more responsibly.
So how can we travel responsibly to areas so vulnerable to the impacts of tourism?
It starts with asking ourselves how our presence affects the communities we visit, and whether our actions are contributing to the preservation of local cultures and environments — or exploitation.
Supporting local businesses, respecting cultural traditions and being conscious of our environmental footprint are all small steps that can make a big difference. It’s also about approaching travel with humility and understanding that we’re guests in someone else’s home.
It’s easy to be swept away by the excitement of exploring somewhere that feels like a distant paradise. But in doing so, we often reduce entire communities and ways of life to something that fits within our tourist expectations — something we can snap a photo of and walk away from.
Travel is not just about what we take from a place, but also how we leave it.
