How has the Digital Nomad Contributed to Over-Tourism?
Before you get upset, read on to see what I’m saying
Travel Writing
Before you get upset, read on to see what I’m saying
We didn’t use to have “digital nomads.” It’s a relatively new concept in the last ten years or so when millenials made the push to get out of office cubicles and into the open space of traveling.
They had to support themselves financially, devising a way to work anywhere they chose to travel, provided they had a laptop and a WiFi connection. The rest was history.
“The number of digital nomads in the U.S. has more than doubled over the past couple of years — from 4.8 million in 2018 to 10.9 million in 2020.”
Source: https://www.projectuntethered.com/digital-nomad-statistics/
Think about that for a minute. Almost FIVE million to TEN million in THREE years. If those ten million people stayed home due to working a job locally, there would be that much less tourism. Is that a good or bad thing?
Tourism; that’s you and me when we travel anywhere overseas
Is the tourism sector on overload? When we talk about tourism, we refer to people who take leisure vacations going from place A to place B, usually by flying.
If we look at the statistics in general, we can see that digital nomads account for a percentage of the overall tourism sector. In this case, we refer to outbound travelers, people who fly from their home city in the USA to another city located overseas or internationally. There are other statistics to be sure, such as domestic travel, etc. Still, we are going to only focus on outbound tourism from the United States to an international location. After all, if you look at the average digital nomad’s travel blog, you’ll see that they want to showcase where they have gone internationally while making money to support themselves.
What is the number of persons traveling in general in 2018, 2019, 2020, comparing it to the digital nomad statistics quote? For example, if 40 million traveled in 2018, and of that amount, 5 million were digital nomads, that would mean 8% of U.S. travelers going overseas are digital nomads.
When you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem like much to be 8% of all travelers.
What about the other 92% of travelers? Aren’t they the “regular tourists” who are causing the over-tourism?
I’ve heard people complain it’s all those “boomers” doing the traveling. You know, the ancient older people going on cruises causing all the over-tourism. Grandpa & Grandma should just stay home and let the younger people do their thing.
Let’s not blame anyone’s generation, but let’s look at what is causing the over-tourism in the first place. I discussed that issue here. In short, it’s about the affordability for people to travel. Regardless of age bracket, you are part of the overall tourism sector if you can afford to travel.
Another way we can look at this topic of “over-tourism” is to study where people are traveling to, that they didn’t travel to before.
How many people annually are going to a place that is now overcrowded with tourists? The statistics can be endless depending on which locale/city you choose, looking at the yearly comparisons.
Should we look at Disneyworld, for example? All ages go to Disneyworld. Are those tourists contributing to overtourism? Or is it just the norm for Disneyworld to have 20.8 million people visit the Magic Kingdom in 2018, making it the world’s most visited theme park?
What if all those people just stayed home? Like they did in 2020 due to the pandemic closures?
Speaking of Pandemic closures…
Travel statistical numbers were vastly lowered in 2020. We all know why. We should also note what the effect was of fewer people traveling around the world. Carbon emissions were significantly reduced. But for every gain, there was also a loss in terms of the tourism economy. Travel companies went out of business. Or did what they could to maintain solvency during the pandemic year.
Now that travel is opening up again in 2021, will you be contributing to over-tourism?
I plan on traveling but not as much as before. I also plan on implementing sustainable travel practices. I’d like to continue freelance work as I travel, but I don’t consider myself a digital nomad. I’m not living on a shoestring budget, staying in hostels, dragging an old dirty backpack around, bragging about the number of countries I’ve visited. I don’t want to stop you if that’s your thing to do. But consider your travel actions in terms of overtourism. Better yet, let’s discuss it in the comments.
Bottom line: Tourism just wouldn’t be the same without all of us travelers exploring the world and sharing our travel stories. Oh, and don’t forget, we’ve got GenZ, and future generations are pissed they might not be able to travel due to climate change threatening our world. Some may get in some LCT (last chance travel) before 2030. Whether they’ll be working digitally when they travel is another question.