I know this is a topic that has been discussed ad nauseum in the traveller community, but I've been thinking about the traveller/tourist distinction lately, and thought that I may as well weigh in on the debate.

As many people on my friends lists are, inexplicably to me, not travel junkies, I'll start by explaining the issue. “Travellers” hate “tourists.” This has been the case for quite some time, actually, as evidenced by quotes from the great minds of bygone eras such as Paul Theroux:

“Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.”

or G. K. Chesterton:

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”

It's a distinction that has been very much taken to heart by travellers. But why? Why is it so important to travellers to make this distinction, to try and make it clear that they are most assuredly not tourists?

For one thing, travel is important to travellers. I know this seems like a vacuously true statement, but it needs to be noted nonetheless. Travellers make travel one of the top priorities of their lives; it is a lifestyle, and everything they do relates to it in some way. Even when, like me, they're sitting in some normal American city working a 9-5, Monday-Friday job, they're doing it with one purpose in mind: funding future travel. Do I want to buy that bottle of wine? I could survive for 10 days in Cambodia with that money, so, no thanks. Do I want to go to the movies? That's 15 days in Senegal... I think I'll watch something for free on my computer.

When I'm saving money, greedily watching the number in my checking account tick upward, I am not thinking about buying an iPhone (I'm still using my parents' little phone from 2004), or about a down payment on a house (why would I possibly want something to tie me down to a specific geographical spot?!). I'll admit that I am thinking about paying off my student loans, but only because this is a necessity. What I am really thinking is that it will fund a trip. And when I look into airfare, possible places to visit, there's not even a twinge of guilt at the thought of the amount of money it will cost. I don't think, “Shouldn't I be using it on something more important?”, because there is nothing more important (except, of course, family and close friends). Travel is my priority. That's what the money's there for-- if I don't use it on travel, then what?

When something is that important to you, as to be your passion, your life, well, usually you don't like being equated with a dabbler, a hobbyist. Anyone can be a tourist, and most people from the traveller's home country probably are, at some point in their lives. Nearly everybody in developed countries travels at some point. They call it a vacation, and it's a brief, fun, relaxing diversion from their lives for a week or two.

If a traveller is disdainful of a tourist, it's important to remember that most tourists-- who are tourists for a couple of weeks a year, perhaps, and a local for the rest of it-- are probably equally so of travellers; or rather, they would be, if they ever stopped to think about such people. To them, travellers are just taking an extended vacation, for a year or two or three, almost certainly just trying to dodge real life. To them, travel is a vacation, not a lifestyle.

I think that some of the resistance to tourists is a resistance to the view of travel as diversion. If travellers approached travel the way most tourists do, then they would be drifters wasting their lives away on idleness. Instead, to them, it is the only way to live life to the fullest.

So do I think the tourist/traveller distinction exists? Absolutely. What I don't think is that there is any inherent value judgment attached to either of them-- neither is intrinsically superior or inferior to the other.

I don't think that a tourist necessarily should approach a trip the same way a traveller would. What is everyday life to a traveller is a special treat, and a chance to relax and get away from the pressures of their work for a tourist. And, in more cases than not, I'd wager, the reverse is true: what is everyday life to a tourist is a vacation to the traveller: one of those times when they return home to visit family or friends and take the opportunity of returning to their homeland to relax and catch their breath again.

Everybody treats what they regard to be their “real life” as different from their break. The difference between a tourist and a traveller is only what they consider real life, and what's the breather.