老司机传媒

Before each school year begins and new stressors enter the mind, the average student has a couple of months to rest and reset: a precious summer vacation. As college students, we will soon no longer receive summer vacation. The average working American gets of paid time off, which pales in comparison to the three months 老司机传媒 dedicates to summer vacation (and four weeks of Christmas vacation).

With the prospect of very few vacation days looming in the near future, many adventurous 20-something-year-olds use their vacation time to travel the world and explore other cultures. But how ethical is it to travel to other countries? What does it say about our privilege? 

About have visited at least one other country, and among them, 26% have been to five or more. Traveling exposes people of different backgrounds to new cultures and ways of life and allows people to deeply appreciate those things. It has the potential to expand not only the traveler’s perspective but the perspectives of communities being visited. The traveler can appreciate different climates and natural wonders, and constant new traffic in a place can highlight environmental, social, political, and other issues in the tourist destination and at home. Additionally, many governments preserve landscapes and historical sites to continue making a profit from tourism. 

Tourism can as the profits it generates supply funds to various projects that continue tourism’s progression, such as building and maintaining roads, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, and entertainment businesses. With these projects, jobs are created for potentially unemployed people. Tourism accounts for about

Unfortunately, tourism is not just sitting in a circle and singing “Kumbaya” with people of different cultures. A single person visiting a country for a few days may not have much of an impact, but the millions who visit the same place over the year can cause detrimental effects. Additionally, emissions from airplanes, the leading method of international travel, account for 2.5% of carbon emissions, contributing to about 4% of global temperature rise since pre-industrial times. 

In addition to atmospheric changes, tourism causes in countries being visited, as tourism affects both local inhabitants and travelers. Examples of resource depletion include local land focused on tourism instead of housing, overburdening energy infrastructure, soil erosion, increased pollution, natural habitat loss, pressure on endangered species, and overuse of freshwater. And, while tourism may lead to an increase in funds, an overreliance on tourism may cause even more resource depletion and strain on local communities. The of water for and by tourists in Hawaii has caused a water crisis in the state, severely broad swaths of the population. 

Because much available land in tourist destinations is dedicated to hotels and recreational facilities—a problem compounded by unaffordable housing markets and little available land—overcrowding is pushing the native population of Hawaii out of their land and homes. These circumstances are also present in developing countries, like the , leading to calls for either eco-friendly tourism or to . 

I cannot claim that I do not want to travel the world. I used to dream of visiting Hawaii. However, out of respect for many Hawaiians, who for years have asked tourists not to come to their state, I no longer plan on traveling there. Ethical tourism depends on every traveler possessing respect for the country or region they are visiting and listening to residents’ boundaries. 

Stopping tourism completely would negate the good the tourism industry can bring to local communities and their economies. In order to bring about change for local residents, the negative effects of tourism need to be acknowledged and addressed by those who are privileged enough to have caused them.