untourism

This is the practice of seeking out travel destinations not frequented by the majority of tourists in the hope of having some real cultural exchange between the travellers and the locals. It is not adventure tourism or connoisseur tourism, where you tick off one dangerous or remote location after another, but the desire to travel in a way where you avoid the tourist packaging and management of the experience that effectively prevents any real contact between the travellers and the locals, any real experience of the locations visited. Everything is tidied up, glossed over, blanded out by the tourism operators.

 Finding an untouristed location can be difficult – they don’t appear in the brochures, they are not advertised in the travel magazines. But untourists believe they are well worth the effort of research.