Reservations: The Pleasures and Perils of Travel

A personal investigation into the real price of our holidays.

Travel was once a marker of sophistication. Now the tourist is just as likely to be viewed as one locust in an annihilating swarm. Tourists face tough questions: When does economic opportunity become exploitation? How do we justify the use of climate-changing jet fuel? And can we be sure our tourist dollars aren’t propping up corrupt and brutal regimes?

Now, as the world returns to travel, Steve Burgess asks: Is satisfying our own wanderlust worth the trouble it causes everyone else? Or is the tourist guilty of the charges—from voyeurism to desecration—levelled against them by everyone from environmentalists to exhausted locals to superior-feeling fellow tourists who have traded in the tour bus for “authentic experiences”?

In this smart and sharply funny interrogation of our right to roam, Burgess looks into the traveller’s soul, sharing the stories of some of his most personally-significant travels, from Rome to Tana Toraja, and looking to studies and experts around the world for insight into why we travel and how we could do it better. And throughout, he tells the story of a month in Japan—his first trip outside North America—and the whirlwind cross-cultural romance that brought him there, and took him on a journey around the country in search of wonder and maybe even love.