I have never been particularly fond of Bourdain, nor have I fully understood the widespread fascination with his jet-setting New York hipster persona.
He played a significant role in popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans: the earnest declaration that "travel is my passion", followed by carefully curated excursions to economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures.
The phenomenon is difficult to admire. It resembles a kind of cultural primitivism - an unintentional revival of archaic rituals in which consuming the body of the enemy was believed to confer insight, power, or spiritual essence. In this modern iteration, wealth functions as the enabling mechanism: privileged travelers fly abroad to ingest cuisines, aesthetics, and experiences, mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy.
One returns, enriched - spiritually, one assumes - having eaten well.
Your snark is misplaced to such an extent that I suspect you have not actually read his books. Bourdain is genuinely obsessed with food, and when Kitchen Confidential entirely unexpectedly became a megahit and shot him from borderline poverty to wealth and fame, he was genuinely delighted to be able to (I quote) "travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want." His admiration for (most) other cultures is genuine and many of his favorite destinations are also places that can hardly be called economically disadvantaged (Singapore, Japan, France, etc).
> popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans
So would it be preferable if they stayed at home, didn't share any of their wealth with less developed countries, and marinated in completely ignorant bliss of the world outside the USA instead?
I think the point is that the attitude of enjoying rather than assimilating is not appreciated.
There’s no equivalent for this feeling in the U.S. We had Japanese tourists in the late twentieth century that were known for taking pictures of everything, but they were respectful and were localized to tourist destinations. Migrants from Mexico and Central America that have moved here but haven’t assimilated are not the same either, as they moved here for opportunity and don’t have the time or resources to learn English, so it’s quite understandable that many stick to themselves.
As an American that has travelled overseas years ago, I understand that others in the world could do without us visiting. They just want to have their normal day to day without an American speaking American English and commenting on things like an American and tipping wait staff, asking for ice, expecting things that aren’t provided, generally acting more entitled, etc.
When I visited, I just didn’t fit in, even though I wanted to. I was taught only a little bit (over multiple years) of a few other languages in school, but primarily Spanish, without any real immersion, which was useless. I didn’t grow up traveling and interacting with people from other countries in Europe, and without that experience or ability to speak in the country’s language, I wasn’t prepared.
> As an American that has travelled overseas years ago, I understand that others in the world could do without us visiting. They just want to have their normal day to day without an American speaking American English and commenting on things like an American and tipping wait staff, asking for ice, expecting things that aren’t provided, generally acting more entitled, etc.
It’s perfectly possible to visit and be aware of local sensibilities. Plenty of Americans manage it and are perfectly charming visitors.
You don’t have to adopt all of culture’s behaviours to not be obnoxious
In the mid-20th century, Americans with sufficient income or sponsorship from their employer would get Berlitz language classes before spending significant time in other countries.
Though it was unrealistic for someone to do this just for a short trip, the following scene of Betty and Don Draper captures attempt at assimilation vs. not:
I hope you aren't saying you traveled abroad years ago, didn't fit in and never did it again. Nothing broadens a person's mind more than traveling. Nobody cares if you speak with an American accent. You just need to be respectful. And in very touristy places they don't even care about that to be honest.
> He played a significant role in popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans: the earnest declaration that "travel is my passion", followed by carefully curated excursions to economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures.
I only dislike these people if they blog about it. None of them are nearly as insightful as they think they are, and most of them aren’t self-aware enough to realize that this whole shtick hasn’t been “cool” since 2010.
> mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy.
This disparaging attitude towards tourists is in vogue among Europeans right now; there’s a group of anarchists in Barcelona that have spent the last year or two scrawling: “TOURISTS GO HOME, REFUGEES WELCOME” on the sides of buildings.
The theory goes that tourists are a net negative to cities because they cause neighborhoods to gentrify and displace those who intend to actually live within the city. The money coming in is a negative because it causes the city to deploy resources intended to cater to tourists, the tourists fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood by their very presence (the cannibalism you are alluding to), the tourists are rude, the tourists look funny, etc.
Disdain for tourists is just a socially-acceptable way for progressives to practice the xenophobia that is now in vogue among reactionaries. They can’t blame all of their problems on foreigners writ large like the reactionaries do, so they “punch up” at the only sort of foreigner that is likely to make a positive contribution to their country.
> so they “punch up” at the only sort of foreigner that is likely to make a positive contribution to their country
Honestly I doubt they are punching up in many cases. Sure, the Americans who holiday in Sicily are probably pretty well off, because that's expensive. But a lot of the tourists who visit the large Spanish cities or coastal towns are working class people from northern Europe for whom it may actually be cheaper to get a Ryanair flight and an Airbnb for a couple of days than to take a trip within their own country. I don't know anything about the kind of person who sprawls this graffiti around Barcelona but I suspect there's a good chance they (or their families at least) are wealthier than the tourists they are raging against.
It may be much more straightforward than you suggest, and not at all related to xenophobia.
A core problem is that an influx of tourists hits the housing supply. Short-term tourism incentivises conversion of local housing to accommodate them (AirBnB, etc.) and long-term tourism results in foreigners buying local housing as their permanent or long-term holiday home.
The result is obviously a relative shortage of housing and rising prices, both of which make it harder for locals (who are often relatively poorer) to live where they need to. This pattern has been repeated from small villages in scenic areas, to big cities (e.g. Barcelona), to whole islands (e.g. Mallorca).
I’m probably one of the people that has contributed to this to some extent over time; and yet I fully understand the frustration of the locals.
It may result in apparent xenophobia in some, but its roots are rational and economic.
> A core problem is that an influx of tourists hits the housing supply.
This is the explanation these activists rely on and it’s cribbed directly from posts I was reading on /pol/ ten years ago. While it sounds plausible, I’ve never found it to have any basis in empirical reality. Tourist accommodation represents a negligible proportion of dwellings outside of resort towns, and in resort towns the whole economy is based around tourism. Some people might object to tourism changing the character of the cities they live in, but their primary objection is cultural, not economic.
If you look at the signs you see in Latin America (“Expat? No! You are an immigrant!” and “Speak my language!”) or the graffiti in Barcelona (“Tourists go home, refugees welcome.”) it becomes fairly apparent that most of these people don’t have coherent objections at all, they just resent people they perceive to be wealthier than themselves; this is why the refugees are not targeted, despite their having had far greater impacts on housing markets in Latin America and cultural cohesion in Europe.
I'm not sure you've looked very hard. Let's consider Mallorca. It's not all a resort town, but no doubt it's an attractive destination.
Estimates of course vary, but there are estimates that 60% of the total housing stock is owned by foreigners [0] and in 2024, >40% of all houses sold were bought by foreigners. [1] (It's also worth noting that [1] suggests foreigners purchased >20% of houses sold in Valencia, the Canary Islands, Murcia, and Catalonia, so this isn't limited to Mallorca.)
If these numbers are even close to accurate, this would be your empirical reality, and such numbers would certainly by sufficient to drive demand, shortage, and price increases.
Tourism comprises 45% of the economy, which is what I was characterizing as a resort town. If you look at cities that have anything else going on for them, you’re looking at figures of less than 2% of housing stock. London is around 2.5%, New York City was around 2% before the ban, Los Angeles is around 2.1%.
The original disagreement was (to simplify) around whether locals' objections to tourists was due to economics (housing becoming more expensive), or other possible factors (including xenophobia).
So we seem to have agreed that, yes, in areas where there's a significant influx of tourists (whether short or long-term), there are likely to be sigificant economic factors that might explain the locals' antipathy?
> So we seem to have agreed that, yes, in areas where there's a significant influx of tourists (whether short or long-term), there are likely to be sigificant economic factors that might explain the locals' antipathy?
Are you seeing these demonstrations in the resort towns or in the cities under the 3% threshold?
I think you're trying to shift the goalposts, or you're just not seeing that we're stuck in circular logic.
----
You originally said there isn't an economic basis to locals' antipathy to outsiders.
I provided evidence to show that an economic basis is plausible.
You then use that evidence, and define any examples where it's happening as a 'resort town', and then require evidence that it's also happening in places you wouldn't define as a 'resort town'.
I can't do that, because you excluded the places I can provide positive evidence for, by defining them as resort towns.
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My basic point remains: there are plenty of places where an influx of short- or long-term tourists causes a meaningful economic shift in the cost of housing (especially) which therefore makes it logical (and not just xenophobic) that the locals might resent the tourists.
While in some cases there may be other aspects at play, it really is the case that turning rentals into AirBnBs for visitors has dramatically increased rent in towns such as Barcelona, and even in Central Sydney where I used to live. (I say this has someone who has rented in the center of big cities, and also as someone who has taken advantage of accomodation which has been “cheap” for me, as an outsider, in cities such as Barcelona).
One can have zero racist sentiments, but if you suddenly get kicked out of your rental, because it’s more profitable for your landlord to make money from tourists, you will be outraged. (And it’s not an insignificant number if inner city apartments impacted by this). Obviously other cost of living factors have led to increased rents, but this is still a big factor in some cities.
“Sydney has 18,000 Airbnb listings, of which 80% are whole homes. This equates to around 3.2 Airbnb listings per 1,000 residents or 0.9% of Sydney’s private homes.” [0]
This is about half of the usual 2% figure I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, which is what the numbers are for London, Los Angeles, and New York City (before the ban).
> Barcelona
Barcelona has 19,410 listings, of which 11,828 are whole-house-apartment listings.[1]
This is just anger about the insane double standard at play - if I as a European move to Latin America, I’m a sophisticated expat and they should be happy that my rich ass is living there - whereas when it’s the other way around they are immigrants and treated like actual scum, working the lowest of low jobs.
The double standard at play makes me sad and angry even if I’m the one on the surface benefitting from it.
> Speak my language
This one i can also understand - I know American “expats” who lived in my country 15+ years but never bothered to learn the language, not even a little tiny bit. I don’t expect you to write a doctors thesis but if you can’t even order food in the local language or have some smalltalk it’s pretty pathetic and disrespectful. Meanwhile non-English speaking “immigrants” get yelled at if they don’t speak the local language perfectly.
Not everything is as easily explained away by “progressives training to be xenophobic”
> Some people might object to tourism changing the character of the cities they live in, but their primary objection is cultural
Is that not a valid objection? I know places in Greecethat have been utterly RUINED by the (mostly Anglo-Saxon) tourists, for example Santorini or Mykonos. These used to be really beautiful and chill places in the 70/80s, now they are horrid
The expat-immigrant distinction is a simple one; an expat lives abroad, an immigrant intends to gain citizenship and stay. This isn’t actually necessarily reflective of how illegals view the country anymore; a lot of them intend to leave after working a few years so that they can retire in their country of origin. The reason Latinos get so upset by this distinction is quite simple: Very many of them move to developed countries and want to stay there. By contrast, hardly anyone moves to to Latin countries, and virtually none of those that do will ever attempt to become citizens. An Australian who moves to Peru and becomes a citizen is still an immigrant, not an expat; this just basically never happens, so a subset of Latinos wrongly assume it’s a race thing.
> This one i can also understand - I know American “expats” who lived in my country 15+ years but never bothered to learn the language, not even a little tiny bit.
It is obnoxious. My point was that the objection these people have to tourists is not rooted in their actual economic impact, but cultural anxiety that they are being left behind or disrespected. These anxieties are warranted, the issue I take with it is that cosmopolitans will chastise Cletus for not wanting to be replaced by Mexicans who refuse to learn English but celebrate Jose for saying the same thing but in Spanish.
I've heard that Norman invasion dealt with them long before Santorini became a tourist hotspot. You probably should decrease consumption of content created by russia today.
> These used to be really beautiful and chill places in the 70/80s, now they are horrid
Isn’t this a bit of gatekeeping? What do you propose the solution is? Ban tourists? Take it another incremental step and now you’re banning immigrants too. “Don’t visit! Stay in your country!” “Go home tourists/immigrants”, it’s the same song and dance. It’s the same sentiment.
There is a solution to the tourist “problem” though, which is to just charge a shitload of money to visit. But then you’ll be accused of being inequitable or hating poor people or something.
Lottery system solves this issue but then people start thinking of reasons that they deserve to visit more than someone else and try to implement quotas affording priority access to their group (e.g. local residents, ethnic minority, etc.)
It’s an intractable problem encountered when dealing with scarce resources; the key is navigating to a point that the functional number of people consider to be fair.
Yea lottery works too though it can be a huge pain for coordinating plans. I think making everything much more expensive at least gives people flexibility in their arrangements. Like say you want to go to Paris and visit Musee de Orsay and also Versailles. You get lottery ticket to one and not the other - bummer.
If you take the current $20 prices and make them, say, $200 that would alleviate a lot of extra visitors. I guess some people say it’s not fair, but based on my visits I don’t think most people really go to these sites to do much more than check a box, which is unfortunate. A higher price at least allows those with interest to have a better experience instead of fighting crowds of selfie-takers, which is the current experience.
On the other hand, maybe some of these artworks should be more spread out to be enjoyed by more people instead of concentrated in a select few prestigious museums.
There is no absolute solution of course and I don’t really have great ideas.
Mostly it’s rich people exploiting a place until nothing is left - I’ve seen it in my hometown; the lovely neighbourhood i grew up in has been transformed into something entirely different by investors and other leeches until the very thing that made it great is gone
There’s been tons of studies in tons of cities. It’s quite clear, for a landlord you make more per month on Airbnb than on a long term rental. So economically it makes sense.
Toronto had to do those studies before city council passed a law to restrict airbnb.
You also saw it through covid when all those units flooded the rental market when international borders closed.
> You also saw it through covid when all those units flooded the rental market when international borders closed.
Toronto had an average of 12,270 daily active listings in 2019 [0]. Toronto had a population of around 2.7 million in 2019. The majority of this impact was caused by people leaving the cities to buy in the suburbs, move in with family, or return to their country of origin.
I suppose the idea is that even if tourism brings in billions of euros, makes up 15% of the economy, and provides 150k jobs in a country where youth unemployment is rampant and jobs are hard to come by...
No, actually, I find it impossible to make sense of that.
In my experience the majority of xenophobia is driven by a fear that one is not being afforded proper respect. Sometimes this fear is well-founded; half of the countries with citizens wealthy enough to engage in mass market travel (e.g. Germany, Israel, Russia, China, UK, etc.) have their own reputations for being Ugly Americans. Not every tourist is respectful, and even those who are polite may be disrespectful inadvertently.
Casual xenophobia is endemic to most societies; it’s quite normal to distrust the unfamiliar, and it strikes me as being a natural topic of conversation, and one that does quite well when sensationalized by journalists. I think most cosmopolitan westerners have this idea that xenophobia is the exclusive purview of a racism that originated in Europe and is now resurging in the Anglosphere, but from what I have observed, most of the world is like this and probably always has been.
I do think a lot of what you are talking about can be traced back to Bourdain, but in fairness I don't think it was his intention, and indeed he was dead by the time it really took off. Instagram is at least as much to blame.
A lot of it is people who like Bourdain's aesthetic and want to replicate it, but they don't know much about food, they've never worked in hospitality in their life and they're afraid to go to the sketchier parts of town.
Like with so many things travel- and tourist-related, it's okay for one person to do it and tell us about it, but when a million people all try to do the same thing it causes problems.
> A lot of it is people who like Bourdain's aesthetic and want to replicate it, but they don't know much about food, they've never worked in hospitality in their life and they're afraid to go to the sketchier parts of town.
I can kind of relate to the GP, I went back and rewatched a lot of Bourdain’s shows recently and I felt a kind of revulsion I hadn’t previously. I don’t think it’s necessarily fairly aimed at Bourdain himself but at the kind of person that has since latched onto his vibe and meme’d it to death on social media. Yet another iteration of the mall goth in a Misfits t-shirt that doesn’t know who Glenn Danzig is, only this time Bourdain is a very clear icon behind the style to cringe at in hindsight.
Bourdain didn’t initiate the cultural practice of going on safari and congratulating one’s self. The Michelin guide was founded in 1900.
Bourdains travels also weren’t the curated tourist jaunts you’re describing. They often showing the grim and lesser known sides of conflicts and situations while presenting genuine local cuisines. It’s what the unconcerned tourist aspire to, not what they do.
I'd like to congratulate you on reaching such a level of empathy and understanding that not only do you dislike Bourdain, you find yourself unable to understand why anyone would think differently!
There's a point worth making about poverty tourism here but I'm not sure the tourist should be our major concern.
> economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures.
There can certainly be a quite shallow "instagram" quality to some traveler's trips, but it's also clear an economically disadvantaged country benefits mutually from this, and if it wasn't they'd be restricting tourist visas, etc
> it's also clear an economically disadvantaged country benefits mutually from this, and if it wasn't they'd be restricting tourist visas, etc
Countries are not a monolithic entity. The people in control of the flow of tourists are a tiny minority, and whatever incentives they have to open or close the borders do not reflect what the people who deal with tourists on a daily basis want.
It depends on the county of course, but in my experience service workers at many “touristy” countries seem to benefit directly from tourism.
For example, some of the workers at resorts in Thailand went to college and studied Tourism, a major I didn’t even know existed, and their wages come directly from the tourist industry.
What countries in particular are you thinking of where the locals are very unhappy to see more tourists? I’ve heard Japan might be in that category, and the United States certainly feels that way, but did you experience this yourself?
Hawaii, Barcelona, and some cities in Latin America like Medellín have had a few incidents to suggest that people are unhappy with tourists there.
A city I have stayed in banned AirBnBs to address an affordability crisis. Tons of locals went wild reporting houses they expected to were circumventing the ban. I remember looking at the press release and finding that all of the AirBnBs in the city amounted to less than 2% of the city’s housing stock.
From what I can gather, these sort of attitudes are an appropriation of reactionary xenophobia directed to an appropriate target in Barcelona, a cultural inferiority complex in Latin America (which receives virtually no tourists compared to all the expatriates they send to the developed world), and a legitimate existential crisis for the Hawaiians.
> The people in control of the flow of tourists are a tiny minority
The people ultimately in control of this policy are usually elected officials, so I’d (idealistically) say they have at least some incentive to make decisions that the general public wants.
Economic benefits by themselves are just one metric by which we can evaluate desirability, but do you have any reason to suggest that existing policy towards tourism is contrary to the prevailing opinion among those who interact with tourists on a daily basis?
> The people ultimately in control of this policy are usually elected officials
Even assuming we are talking about democracies, you still face the same issue: policies regarding tourism are decided at the national or supra-national (e.g. EU) level, while the effects are concentrated on specific neighborhoods of specific towns.
> do you have any reason to suggest that existing policy towards tourism is contrary to the prevailing opinion among those who interact with tourists on a daily basis?
Have you not heard of any popular protests against tourism? Speaking the local language helps here, but sometimes it is also reported in English.
> Have you not heard of any popular protests against tourism?
I mentioned in another comment that I know of vandalism that has occurred in Barcelona, some demonstrations in Medellín, and a long history of nativist sentiment in Hawaii, but I’m not convinced that these people represent a majority opinion even in tourist destinations. Have you seen any surveys or anything of the kind that would suggest a substantial portion of people are opposed to tourism?
> Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.
Then he died alone, in a hotel room in France, supposedly by his own hand, with the belt of his silk bathrobe as the implement--despite being a heroin addict most of his life and thus ever cognizant of the possibility of a fatal overdose, and having friends, like Mark Lanegan, who died (painlessly) from a fatal overdose. But no, instead of OD'ing, he supposedly chose to "unalive" himself with his bathrobe. And he left no note. And he tweeted this out a month earlier: https://x.com/Bourdain/status/998954845146177536
He was a product of his era and environment. Frankly, finding a boomer Jew like him, who grew up in NYC in the 50s and 60s, who doesn't harbor a significant degree of suspicion and animus (along with covert envy) towards white people (and WASPs in particular), is the exception, not the norm, and he was especially vocal about it because he had a "tryhard" mentality and a desire to be seen as a radical, even as his wealth compounded.
He played a significant role in popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans: the earnest declaration that "travel is my passion", followed by carefully curated excursions to economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures.
The phenomenon is difficult to admire. It resembles a kind of cultural primitivism - an unintentional revival of archaic rituals in which consuming the body of the enemy was believed to confer insight, power, or spiritual essence. In this modern iteration, wealth functions as the enabling mechanism: privileged travelers fly abroad to ingest cuisines, aesthetics, and experiences, mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy.
One returns, enriched - spiritually, one assumes - having eaten well.