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在《新旅行者：觉醒于旅行的力量与风险》（斯克里布纳出版社出版）一书中，记者佩奇·麦克拉纳汉探讨了旅游业如何塑造社会与个人，以及在如今日益缩小的世界中重新定义“旅行者”一词内涵的必要性。
请阅读下文节选，不要错过5月3日《哥伦比亚广播公司周日早间新闻》中赛斯·多恩对佩奇·麦克拉纳汉的专访！
《新旅行者》| 佩奇·麦克拉纳汉
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引言
约九百年前，一群僧侣在阿尔卑斯山区一处陡峭峡谷中冰冷澄澈的河畔修建了一座石制修道院。这些宗教人士与当地居民比邻而居——当地人终日放牧牛羊、搅拌黄油、给洋葱和芜菁除草、在森林里搜寻蘑菇，并用当地石灰石雕刻雕塑。数个世纪过去，修道院经历了兴衰、火灾与翻修的典型周期，直到1792年，入侵的法国军队夺走了僧侣们的世俗财产，并将他们驱逐出境。失去了宗教居住者的修道院迎来了新生，成为一家开采当地铁矿石的公司总部，这些铁矿石将用于快速工业化的欧洲基础设施建设。后来，随着富裕的欧洲人开始寻求阿尔卑斯空气的疗愈功效，修道院再次转型：成了一家酒店。
2018年夏天，我和家人搬到了距离该修道院几英里外的一所房子，如今修道院整洁的草坪每年夏天都会举办热门的户外音乐会系列。这家修道院酒店于20世纪90年代关闭——败给了度假小屋比酒店房间更受欢迎的趋势——但山谷中的旅游业依然兴旺。以至于如今住在山谷冰冷澄澈河畔的居民们，终日忙着接送游客往返机场、为他们提供意式浓缩咖啡和蓝莓蛋挞、打扫客房更换床单，或是带领他们徒步旅行、攀岩，或是滑行在新鲜松软、无人踏足的宽阔雪坡上。过去50年来，旅游业一直是当地经济的基石。这也是为什么自二战结束以来，这个当地村庄没有像西欧许多村庄那样彻底消失的主要原因。
我和男友在2007年首次以游客身份到访这个山谷。当时我们和住在日内瓦的朋友们一起前来度周末。我们爱上了这条冰冷澄澈的河流，以及河面上高耸、棱角分明、点缀着瀑布的山峰。11年后我们重返山谷——如今我们已经结婚，有了两个年幼的孩子，还在非洲和欧洲的另外三个国家生活过。我们搬进了自己的房子，申请了居留许可和驾照，还让孩子在当地学校注册入学。我们大半辈子都在作为游客造访旅游目的地，如今我们成了这里的居民。
随着我们在山谷中安顿下来，我们学会了适应游客的来来往往，这是一场如同法定假日和学校假期安排般可预测的季节性迁徙。我渐渐爱上了游客为我们这个美丽而宁静的角落带来的活力与生机——还有工作和收入。我很高兴能和游客们共享当地的徒步路线和滑雪坡，也乐于在当地众多餐厅用餐——其中大多数餐厅若没有游客光顾便无法生存。
但并非只有乐趣。2018年8月的一个周六下午，我第一次去当地超市时就领教了这点。还有一次，因为我们常去的停车场在工作日早上8点就停满了车，我的孩子们上学迟到了。还有好几次，我们这条双向两车道的乡村公路上堵得水泄不通——这条路既通往我们家，也通往一个每年吸引数十万游客的自然保护区。搬到山谷才几周，我生平第一次真切体会到了这个现象的深度、微妙之处和重要性，而我此前一直，通常是在不知不觉中，参与其中。
旅游业塑造着我们的世界——我的意思是，它深刻且出人意料地改变着我们的经济、文化以及自然环境。数据令人惊叹：2019年，旅行和旅游业创造了全球经济产出的10%以上，规模是全球农业产业的两倍多。它还占据了全球约十分之一的就业岗位，以及过去五年新增就业岗位的五分之一。2019年，国际游客的旅行支出达1.9万亿美元，远超同年美国联邦国防开支的两倍。而且这一数字还在持续增长：预计到2032年，全球旅行和旅游业的经济价值将以年均5.8%的速度增长，而全球整体经济的预测增长率仅为2.7%。
但旅游业的影响远不止就业和国内生产总值。在许多地方，旅游业是野生动物保护的重要资金来源；同时旅游业也贡献了约8%的温室气体排放。每年约有10亿国际游客到访，旅游业已成为人类跨文化交流最重要的方式。你甚至无需跨越国界就能感受到它的影响。如果你曾在出租车仪表盘上看到草裙舞女孩摆件，进而想到夏威夷，你就感受到了旅游业的影响力。同理，弗拉明戈舞者的形象会让你联想到西班牙，或是无需查手机就能说出冰岛首都的名字，这些也都是旅游业的作用。
旅游业塑造国家叙事、创造国家符号，并左右我们对其他社会的认知。它还加剧了我们文化的商品化，尽管有时也有助于文化传承。旅游业为保护世界自然奇观提供了强大的经济激励；但它也可能威胁到这些奇观的存续。旅游业将我们这样的村庄转变为充满活力的地方，总体而言，这里对游客和居民都友好宜人。但旅游业也可能摧毁一个地方的灵魂，掏空城市中心，留下只剩下纯粹商业主义的空壳都市。
各国政府，尤其是地方政府，对一个地区旅游业的净影响是正面还是负面有着巨大影响力，尽管许多政府直到最近才意识到这一点。旅游企业也会影响支撑其利润来源地的活力，这些逐利企业的自我认知和确保运营利大于弊的意愿千差万别。但游客同样发挥着作用。我们这些有幸属于旅行者群体的人，无论个体还是集体，都在决定旅游业的影响——既影响我们到访的地方，也影响我们自身。
在进一步讨论之前，我应该先明确一下本文所用的术语。因为虽然词典对“旅游业”的定义往往侧重于人们度假时的住宿业务，但我对这个词的理解更广泛。联合国世界旅游组织将旅游业定义为“一种社会、文化和经济现象，指人们为个人或商务/职业目的，离开惯常环境前往其他国家或地区的活动”。我对旅游业的理解与此一致，但我会补充一个时间维度：游客的出行是有期限的，我们这里讨论的不是移民。
很多人对“旅行者”这个词感到不适，至少当这个词用在自己身上时。我希望这本书能帮助摆脱这种 stigma，因为我认为这种情绪毫无益处。有些人坚持区分“旅行者”和“游客”，前者是探索型，非要追求“真实”体验才满足，后者则是只满足于陈词滥调的大众市场体验的俗人，这让我很恼火。实际上，我发现这两个词最大的区别在于，我们用“旅行者”指代自己和身边的人，而“游客”则用来指代其他人。我不否认人们旅行的动机千差万别，有些动机比其他的更高尚。所以当然，你可以称自己为旅行者，但永远别忘了，你也是一名游客。作为游客，我们的救赎不在于因站在卢浮宫排队人群前方而产生的优越感，而在于提升我们对“游客”身份的理解，以及我们——所有人——在世界上扮演的重要角色。
那么我们该怎么做？从哪里开始？我发现想象一个光谱两端的两种游客原型会很有帮助。一端是新旅行者，她是旅行者最成熟、最高级的形态。这与光谱另一端的旧旅行者形成鲜明对比，后者代表着我们最好都摒弃的旅游方式。我们可能会把旧旅行者想象成一个大声喧哗、嚼着口香糖、穿着运动鞋的美国人，像寻热导弹一样在国外寻找星巴克。但我的定义要更微妙一些。在我看来，旧旅行者纯粹是消费者，他们将旅行中遇到的人和地方仅仅视为满足自身目的的手段：清单上划掉的一项、Instagram上的一张有趣照片、又一件可以向同龄人炫耀的东西。旧旅行者将目的地及其居民局限在预先设定的叙事中，这让他无法深入或带着真正的同理心去看待到访的人和地方。他将自己的幻想投射到所选目的地，当现实与他心中的理想不符时，就会感到失望甚至愤怒。
但我相信，新旅行者确实存在，这也是我写这本书并选用这个书名的全部原因。在我看来，新旅行者完全有可能是一个大声说话、嚼口香糖、穿运动鞋，有时还喜欢在海外喝杯咖啡的美国人。这些细节最终并不重要。真正重要的是：即使和我们所有人一样，新旅行者有时也会从熟悉的事物中获得慰藉，但旅行让她变得谦卑，让她意识到自己在浩瀚历史和茫茫人海中的渺小。新旅行者珍惜与背景迥异的人相遇的机会，向那些她原本可能会恐惧或蔑视的文化或宗教学习。旅行归来后，她会对自己的祖国产生一定程度的怀疑——如果从未离开过家乡，她可能不会产生这种想法。因为旅行，新旅行者不会被任何试图说服她憎恨或看不起与自己外貌不同、说不同语言、信仰不同神明，或是恰好生活在国境另一边的人的言论所影响。因为旅行，新旅行者成为一个更开放、更慷慨的人。
我们所有旅行者都介于新旧旅行者原型之间，在不同的旅行阶段，我们可能会在这个光谱上移动。放心，我和你们一样，也处于中间位置。但如果我们了解新旅行者的模样，我们至少可以渴望达到她的境界。我已经努力了一段时间，想要抵达新旅行者的境界。在我看来，这本书是我为最终抵达那里所做的最用心、最全面的尝试。
旅行给我们带来了令人眼花缭乱的选择：去哪里、什么时候去、怎么去、在那里做什么。已有许多书籍探讨如何“可持续地”“负责任地”或“用心地”旅行。我将这本书视为这些书籍的前传。我的目标不是为你的下一次假期列出条条框框，因为我不可能为你可能遇到的每一种情况都提供答案。只有你自己才能在当下，结合自身所处的任何限制做出选择。与其给出规定，我的目标有两个：一是为你提供一个框架，帮助你提出自己的问题；二是激励你提出这些问题——问自己、问你光顾的企业、问你的政府，以及旅行中遇到的符号和叙事。这就是新旅行者的行事方式。
我的目标是讲述完整的真相，哪怕真相杂乱无章，并展示我们游客如何塑造旅游业本身。每一章都会探讨一个关于旅游业及其参与者、影响、权力杠杆和利害关系的复杂问题。一小撮年轻的婴儿潮一代是如何改变数百万西方人看待世界的方式的？社交媒体是否正在改变我们看待自身与其他文化和风景的关系？旅游业如何影响一个国家在世界舞台上的形象和影响力？旅游业何时会摧毁一座城市的灵魂，何时又能为其带来新生？“最后机会旅游”是在促使人们深刻转变观念，还是在摧毁我们珍视的地方？在游客对某地的幻想与当地日常现实之间，是否有可能找到平衡？如今有关游客的负面新闻铺天盖地，我们所有人都待在家里会不会更好？
意识到旅行带来的后果听起来似乎要付出很多努力，但这样做能为我们个人和社会带来深刻而持久的回报。有些人乐于以旧旅行者的身份周游世界，作为纯粹的消费者，他们刻意无视自己漫游带来的影响。但我知道，你们中的许多人已经准备好和我一起，追求一种全新的、更好的旅行方式。我希望这本书能帮助我们共同达成目标。因为作为一名旅行者是一种特权，对我们许多人来说，这是人生最大的乐趣之一。只要方法得当——从深刻理解其中的利害关系开始，旅游业也可以成为一股强大的向善力量。
_摘自《新旅行者》| 佩奇·麦克拉纳汉。版权©2024、2025 佩奇·麦克拉纳汉。经西蒙与舒斯特公司旗下斯克里布纳出版社许可摘录。*
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Book excerpt: “The New Tourist” by Paige McClanahan
2026-05-01T13:08:00-0400 / CBS News
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In “The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel” (available from Scribner), journalist Paige McClanahan writes about how tourism shapes societies and individuals, and about the need to redefine the meaning of “tourist” in today’s shrinking world.
Read an excerpt below, and don’t miss Seth Doane’s interview with Paige McClanahan on “CBS Sunday Morning” May 3!
“The New Tourist” by Paige McClanahan
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Introduction
About nine hundred years ago, a group of monks built a stone abbey along the banks of a cold, clear river in a steep-sided valley high in the Alps. The religious men took up residence among the locals—people who spent their days tending cows and sheep, churning butter, weeding onions and turnips, scouring the forests for mushrooms, and chiseling sculptures from the local limestone. Centuries passed, and the abbey went through the typical cycles of decline and renewal, fire and renovation, until 1792, when an invading army (the French) claimed the monks’ worldly possessions as their own—and kicked them out. Stripped of its holy residents, the abbey took on a new life as the headquarters of a company that mined the local iron ore, which was destined for the infrastructure of a rapidly industrializing Europe. Later, as wealthy Europeans began to seek out the restorative powers of alpine air, the abbey went through another reinvention: it became a hotel.
In the summer of 2018, my family and I moved to a house that sits a few miles from that abbey, whose tidy lawn now hosts a popular outdoor concert series every summer. The abbey’s hotel closed in the nineties—a casualty of the rise in the popularity of chalet rentals over hotel rooms—but tourism in the valley is going strong. So much so that the people who live along the banks of the valley’s cold, clear river now spend their days driving tourists to and from the airport; serving them espressos and blueberry tarts; cleaning their bathrooms and changing their sheets; and leading them along hiking trails, up rock-climbing routes, and down wide slopes of fresh, untracked snow. For the past fifty years, tourism has been the cornerstone of the local economy. It’s also the main reason why the local village hasn’t gone the way of so many villages across Western Europe since the end of the Second World War—and disappeared entirely.
My boyfriend and I first visited the valley as tourists, back in 2007. We were weekenders coming up with friends from Geneva, where we lived and worked. We fell in love with that cold, clear river and the high, jagged peaks, spliced with waterfalls, that soared above it. We returned to the valley eleven years later— now married and with two small children and having lived in three other countries in Africa and Europe. We moved into our house, applied for our residence permits and driver’s licenses, and enrolled our children in the local school. We had spent most of our lives as visitors to tourist destinations. Now we were residents.
As we settled into life in the valley, we learned to adapt to the comings and goings of the tourists, a seasonal migration as predictable as the public holidays and school vacation schedules that dictate their movements. I came to love how tourists brought energy and life—as well as jobs and income—into our beautiful, sleepy corner of the world. I happily shared the local hiking trails and ski slopes with tourists, and enjoyed eating at our many local restaurants, most of which wouldn’t survive without tourists’ patronage.
But it wasn’t all fun and games, as I discovered the first time I showed up at the local supermarket on a Saturday afternoon in August. Or the time my children were late for school because our usual parking lot was overflowing at 8:00 a.m. on a weekday. Or the times when I sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on our rural, two-lane road—which leads both to our house and to a nature reserve that attracts a few hundred thousand visitors every year. Within weeks of moving to the valley, I began to appreciate—for the first time in my life—the depth, nuance, and significance of a phenomenon in which I had always, and usually unwittingly, played a part.
Tourism shapes our world—by which I mean it alters our economies and cultures, as well as our physical environments—in profound and surprising ways. The numbers are astonishing: in 2019, travel and tourism generated more than 10 percent of global economic output, which makes it more than double the size of the global agriculture industry. It also accounted for about one in ten jobs around the world, and one in five jobs created in the previous five years. In 2019, international visitors spent $1.9 trillion while traveling, which was well over double U.S. federal defense spending the same year. And the numbers are only getting bigger: the global economic value of travel and tourism is expected to rise by an average of 5.8 percent per year until 2032, compared to a 2.7 percent predicted growth rate for the global economy overall.
But the impacts of tourism go far beyond jobs and GDP. In many places, tourism is a significant source of funding for wildlife conservation; tourism also generates about 8 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. And with roughly a billion international tourist arrivals every year, tourism has become humanity’s most important means of conversation across cultures. You don’t even have to cross a border to feel the impact. If you’ve ever seen a hula girl on the dashboard of a taxi and thought of Hawai’i, you’ve felt tourism’s influence. Thee same is probably true if an image of a flamenco dancer makes you think of Spain, or if you can name the capital of Iceland without consulting your phone.
Tourism shapes national narratives, creates national symbols, and frames our perceptions of other societies. It also intensifies the commodification of our cultures, even as it sometimes helps to sustain them. Tourism provides a powerful economic incentive to protect the world’s natural wonders; it can also threaten their very existence. Tourism transforms villages like our own into vibrant places that are, for the most part, agreeable and welcoming to visitors and residents alike. But tourism can also destroy places’ souls, hollowing out city centers and leaving empty urban shells whose most striking feature is sheer commercialism.
Governments, particularly local governments, have an enormous influence over whether the net impact of tourism in a place is positive or negative, though many governments have only recently woken up to this fact. Tourism businesses also affect the vitality of the places that underwrite their profits, and these profit-seeking ventures vary widely in terms of their self-awareness and willingness to ensure that their operations do more good than harm. But tourists play a role, too. Those of us who are privileged enough to fall into this category wield significant power, individually and collectively, in determining tourism’s impact—both on the places we visit, and on ourselves.
Before we go any further, I should take a moment to define my terms here. Because while dictionary definitions of “tourism” tend to focus on the business side of accommodating people when they go on vacation, I have a broader understanding of the word. The UN World Tourism Organization tells us that tourism is “a social, cultural, and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes.” My understanding of tourism aligns with that one, although I would add a temporal component: tourist movements are for finite periods; we’re not talking about immigration here.
A lot of people are uncomfortable with the word “tourist,” at least when it’s aimed in their direction. I’m hoping this book will help shake loose some of that stigma, because I don’t think it’s helpful. It irks me that some people insist on a distinction between “travelers” and “tourists,” where the former are explorer types who are unsatisfied with anything short of an “authentic” experience, while the latter are philistines who are content with clichéd, mass-market experiences. In practice, I find that the biggest difference between the terms is that we use “traveler” when referring to ourselves and people close to us, while “tourist” is reserved for everyone else. I don’t deny that people travel for a huge range of reasons, some higher-minded than others. So sure, call yourself a traveler, but never forget that you’re a tourist, too. Our redemption as tourists lies not in wallowing in a sense of superiority over the people standing in line ahead of us as we wait to get into the Louvre. It lies in elevating our understanding of what tourists are, and the important role that they—that we—play in the world.
So how do we do that? Where do we begin? I find it helpful to imagine two tourist archetypes that lie at either end of a spectrum. On one side, we have the new tourist, who is a tourist in her most evolved state, her highest manifestation. This is in contrast to what we find at the other end of the spectrum—the old tourist, who represents an approach to tourism that we would all do well to leave behind. We might like to think of an old tourist as a loud-talking, gum-smacking, sneakers-wearing American who seeks out Starbucks abroad like a heat-seeking missile. But I have a somewhat more nuanced definition. The old tourist, in my view, is a pure consumer who sees the people and places he encounters when he travels as nothing more than a means to some self-serving end: an item crossed off a bucket list, a fun shot for his Instagram grid, one more thing to brag about to his peers. The old tourist confines his destination and its inhabitants to a preconceived story, which makes it impossible for him to consider the people or places he visits in any depth or with any real empathy. He projects his fantasies onto his destination of choice, and he reacts with disappointment or even outrage when the reality fails to match his notion of the ideal.
But I believe there’s such a thing as a new tourist, too, which is the whole reason I wrote this book—and chose the title I did. In my view, it’s entirely possible that the new tourist is an American who talks loudly, chews gum, wears sneakers, and sometimes likes to get a coffee at Starbucks when she’s overseas. Those kinds of details don’t matter much in the end. Here’s what does: Even if, like all of us, she sometimes takes comfort in the familiar, the new tourist is humbled by her travels, which open her eyes to her smallness in the great stretch of history and the vast sea of humanity. The new tourist embraces the chance to encounter people whose backgrounds are very different from her own, and to learn from cultures or religions that she might otherwise fear or regard with contempt. The new tourist returns from her travels with a degree of skepticism for her native land that may not have occurred to her had she never left home. Because of her travels, the new tourist is inoculated against anyone who might try to convince her to hate or look down on people who look different from her, who speak a language other than her own, who pray to a different god, or who happen to live on the other side of a border. Because of her travels, the new tourist is a more open and generous human being.
All of us who travel fall somewhere between the old and new tourist archetypes, and we probably find ourselves sliding along the spectrum at different points in our travels. Rest assured, I’m somewhere in the middle with you. But if we understand what the new tourist looks like, we can at least aspire to reach her heights. I’ve been trying to find my way to the land of the new tourist for a while now. This book, as I see it, is my best and biggest effort to finally get there myself.
Travel presents us with a dizzying array of choices: where to go, when to go, how to go, what to do while we’re there. Many books have been written about how to travel “sustainably,” “responsibly,” or “mindfully.” I see this book as a sort of prequel to those. My goal here isn’t to give you a list of dos and don’ts for your next vacation, because there’s no way that I could provide an answer for every situation you might encounter. Only you can make those choices—in the moment, and within whatever constraints you happen to find yourself. Instead of prescribing, my aim here is twofold: to provide you with a framework that will help you come up with your own questions, and to inspire you to ask those questions—of yourself, of the companies you patronize, of your governments, and of the symbols and narratives that you encounter when you travel. Because that is the way of the new tourist.
My goal here is to tell the whole truth, messy as it may be, and to show how we tourists help to shape the phenomenon of tourism itself. Each chapter explores a complex question about tourism and its players, its impacts, its levers of power, and its stakes. How did a handful of young baby boomers transform the way millions of Westerners view the world? Is social media changing the way we see ourselves in relation to other cultures and landscapes? How does tourism influence a nation’s image—and influence—on the world stage? When does tourism destroy the soul of a city, and when does it offer a place a new lease on life? Is “last-chance tourism” prompting a powerful change in perspective, or obliterating places we cherish? Is it possible to strike a balance between tourist fantasies of a place and the realities of everyday local life? Given all the negative headlines about tourists these days, would it be better for all of us just to stay at home?
To wake up to the consequences of our travels might sound like a lot of work, but doing so can bring deep and lasting rewards—for us as individuals, as well as for our societies. Some people are happy to roam the world as old tourists, pure consumers who remain willfully blind to the impacts of their wanderings. But I know that many of you are ready to join me in striving for a new, and better, way of doing things. I hope this book helps us get there together. Because to be a tourist is a privilege and, for many of us, it’s one of life’s great pleasures. With the right approach, which begins with a deep understanding of what’s at stake, tourism can also be a powerful force for good.
Excerpted from “The New Tourist” by Paige McClanahan. Copyright © 2024, 2025 by Paige McClanahan. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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