The Influencers Found Your Village. Now It’s Ruined

Looking through social media, I started to see the next iteration of Chinamaxxing: going off the beaten path. The travelers have already seen the headline sights. The Great Wall, the cyberpunk skylines, the Avatar mountains, the old towns...too many people already post polished videos and photos. Too many, in fact, that for the younger generations that mainly share their trips with others in visual forms, their own content would no longer suffice. The goal is now one-upping each other to find the most obscure villages and urban corners, where they can brag about being the first foreigner ever to set foot in.

This trend sees a parallel across the world. Wowing at the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, or Times Square is simply too passe. Now the travel influencers are crowing about the hospitality, the sights, and foods of places like Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, humble-bragging how they had to navigate through the challenges of there being little tourist information to reference, and filled with anxiety about how popular media portray these destinations only in the clearly negative context of war, economic stagnation, social restrictions, and political conflicts.

The locals, of course, would be cooperative. After all, it is only logical that, for countries starved of positive headlines abroad, opportunity for direct interaction with foreign cultures, and tourist dollars, the arrival of the intrepid "frontier travelers" is welcome. And that welcome will surely encourage more people to go off the beaten path. There is no fun getting sprayed with water and constantly told to go home while sitting at a cafe in Barcelona. There is nothing fun or relaxing about visiting somewhere new when constantly combating hostility.

Yet, over time, that welcome gradually gives way to dismay. The initial welcome leads to global exposure, with influencers enticing casual travelers to visit as well. Obscure villages suddenly become home to thousands upon thousands of visitors, overwhelming the few local businesses that existed mostly to cater to limited local demand. Entrepreneurial types start investing in improving tourist infrastructure, the money flowing in raising the price for everyone and crowding out the locals in favor of the tourist traffic.

In the end, no one is happy. The locals withdraw their welcome as prices increase, even though most see no direct financial benefit from the tourist traffic. The tourists who show up increasingly find themselves disappointed by the lack of rustic authenticity that they came to see on social media, their expectations shattered by the typical tourist shops and restaurants they see everywhere. And as the tourist flow ebbs, the entrepreneurs who invested so much find themselves unable to recoup what they built based on much higher demand. 

The cycle repeats itself, as more off-the-beaten-path destinations become famous, people come in and then leave, while the next hot new destination rears its head. The continued cycle of "discovering the new" leaves behind a path of destruction, physically shaping more and more of the world and giving more and more people a real-life reason to hate the tourist traffic. Still, as the world becomes wealthier and intercontinental transport becomes cheaper, the cycle continues. There are simply so many unexplored, unknown corners of the world that even influencers haven't gotten to.

There is a reason that major cities like New York, Paris, and London continue to attract visitors even when social media is overfilled with their videos and photos. Many people, wealthy enough to travel for the first time, want to minimize risk. They want guaranteed satisfaction that headline sights provide, while also wanting the peace of mind that a city with developed urban resources comes with, sometimes centuries of experience catering to visitors with little direct local knowledge. Barcelona may hate tourists, but its tourist infrastructure knows how to handle the discontent with class and normality.

Surely, the same will befall China. A small location, no matter how beautiful, quickly becomes too dense for anyone to be comfortable. The reality of the crowded Maltese summer I have the misfortune of witnessing every year is too obvious a cautionary tale. As much as everyone wants to be different, they can be different within major cities where urban transport can handle tens of millions. Underexplored neighborhoods in those locales are a much easier way to be different than a remote village in the middle of nowhere.