In Search of Productivity in Leisure? Go deep!

The latest fad in high-end travel is jetting — privately — to exotic locations in a short period. One glossy brochure touts a three-week jaunt to eight exotic locations on board a private jet, all for a mere $150K per person, double occupancy. Another promises 8 days of flying between four luxury hotels in four corners of the world. At the first glance, these trips are just a high-end, high-tech version of the old-fashioned bus tours–the kind portrayed in the 1969 movie, If Tuesday it must be Belgium. But they are not, and they are multiplying.

The bus tours of the 1960s were about exploration for a generation–whose only exposure to the overseas was through Hollywood movies and returning GIs — to see for themselves. It was a daring attempt when less than 1% of Americans even had a passport, to set foot in a continent devastated by war and foreign in all aspects including language. For many, this was the only realistic option for traveling abroad, given the difficulty to communicate and make arrangements. It was for the same reasons that soon the Japanese, Middle Easterns, and Chinese, took the same route, replacing the Americans in bus tours.

On the contrary, jetting trips today are aimed at sophisticated well-heeled professionals and are about efficiency. To see all one wants to see from Bhutan to Sicily, in as short a time as possible is productive. The customers for these tours–which include newly retired baby boomers–are obsessed with speed, productivity, and scoring one more than their neighbors. It is about Instagram pictures taken of Seychelle. Having lived all their lives on the fast lane, they have no time for lingering over a cup of coffee unless it is organic and served in a three-star Michelin restaurant in Bhutan.

Why travel?

But traveling is not about sightseeing. It is about connections with strangers. It is about discovering our shared humanity with those who live afar and look different. Even when we visit historical sites and museums, what we marvel at is how like people lived 500 or even 5000 years ago.

A journey is also about finding out who we are or could be. We can let our imaginations run wild; get ourselves lost in the backstreets of a foreign city; picture ourselves as a modern-day Marco Polo; reinvent ourselves. It doesn’t matter how far we travel. Back in the 1980s, I — fresh out of graduate school and penniless — and a friend–older but as adventurous–spent every Saturday visiting a town near Boston. Some of the locals were in affluent suburbs, and others aging industrial cities or fishing villages. Some still had working factories. We explored the town and ate dinner.

And I discovered a state — and a country — in transformation. Towns gentrifying, and people remaking themselves. And I got a new appreciation for the place that eventually became home. New England was more than a backdrop for its august Institutes of higher learning: Harvard and MIT. It was where real people — with their aspirations and troubles, beliefs and prejudices — lived and worked. Those jaunts were no less eye-opening for me than trips to Egypt, China, and Bali.

An authentic experience?

It is de-rigueur for group tours to include an “authentic” experience–a meal hosted by a local house or a performance in a church. One globetrotting trip even promises participation in a traditional wedding. I can understand a tea with locals–as staged as they may be–can be interesting, But a wedding? Weddings are for friends and family to celebrate a union, to share feelings, not for a bunch of foreigners to gawk at a spectacle. It is hard to get an authentic experience or understand a culture if you are there for less than a day.

Then what about the bucket list?

Many tour destinations — designated as world heritage sites — are worth seeing and reflecting on. But increasingly many can be experienced virtually through 3D immersion technology. And at the end of the day, they all convey the same message: humans are capable of creating great beauty but also inflicting horrible pain. Do we need to spend the equivalent of a new house to be reminded of that?

A more authentic way to travel would be to go deep, stay in a place for a while, soak in the local scene, talk to locals in a coffee shop, take a course, and pursue a passion. After all, trips are about making memories, not social media posts. You will remember the gelato outside Pantheon, long after you have forgotten what was inside the monument! And that is an authentic experience.