[imagesource:thelasttourist/hulu]

If you book a cruise to ride on a go-kart track in the middle of the ocean, does it still count as travel?

That is one question that Bruce Poon Tip’s new documentary The Last Tourist discusses as it forces us to confront some uncomfortable truths about the direction the tourism industry has gone.

Travellers may have returned to trotting the globe post-pandemic, but they might give it a break, or step on a plane more lightly after watching what The NZ Herald has dubbed “The Inconvenient Truth for tourism”.

In the genre of the “documentary exposé” – following the tradition of Cowspiracy and An Inconvenient Truth – it’s now travel’s turn to go under the lens for a critical review.

The watch can be harrowing, revealing all the ways tourists behave badly, how the demand for entertainment and unique experiences leads to animal cruelty – trigger warning* – and how tension boils with gated luxury resorts on the edge of some of the world’s most deprived communities:

The film’s executive producer Bruce Poon Tip says that the idea came to him over half a decade ago. Running a company leading guided expeditions and travelling to every continent on Earth, his team has encountered many of the problems and contradictions featured in the film. The G Adventures founder said that it grew out of an idea that they would make their own guerrilla documentary and it bloomed into a professional feature-length film.

*There are scenes of budgie smuggling and an elephant being beaten until it performs as for-profit orphanages offer backdrops to the holiday photos of Western “voluntourists”.

The 1-hour-41-minute exposé features cameos from naturalist Jane Goodall, animal rights activist Lek Chailert of the Save Elephant Foundation, and the CEO of National Geographic, Gary Knell.

Shot over 16 locations, the doccie covers a lot of ground, revealing the flaws of industrialised global tourism:

“The heroes of the film are the destinations,” says Poon Tip. When asked about who the “villains” of the story are, he is a bit less glib.

“I don’t like to see things in that way,” he says. However he agrees plenty of companies lean into villainising and alienating groups for profit. When you go to these compound resorts they tell you ‘outside these gates the natives are restless, so don’t leave the resort’. It drives all the revenues back into the all inclusive.”

The Canadian businessman continues:

“There are tensions when you have thousands of people living in luxury when outside a compound resort you don’t have clean drinking water. Locals not benefitting from tourists being there is used against them in the wider tourism industry.”

Cruising, he reckons, is on the surreal extreme of the trend of distancing tourists from real-world experiences:

“I think it’s a very dangerous place to be when the destination is no longer relevant and as an industry we’re promoting the amenities above the place.”

Poon Tip’s outspoken attitudes towards commodity tourism and mass-market cruising have isolated him and G Adventures from the market, even though the film is not criticising a particular company but rather a whole way of travel.

The villains are clearly us, the mindless travellers who are just after a good time, no matter the true cost.

“If there’s one goal that we have for The Last Tourist, it would be for people to understand the privilege they have when they choose to travel. So few people on this planet have that opportunity,” says Bruce.

“It’s also about the power you have when you decide to go on holiday. By being a little bit more conscious you can do so much good from that decision.”

You don’t have to suspend your beliefs or values when you book a holiday, he clarifies.

[source:nzherald]