Chapter 16 From Tourism to Encounter

This book has criticized tourism as currently practiced. It has not argued for the abolition of travel, the sealing of borders, or the end of human movement. People will continue to move across the planet, to visit places that are not their homes, to meet people who are not their neighbors. The question is not whether this movement will occur but under what logic it will be organized. This chapter proposes replacing tourism with encounter as the governing concept.

Tourism is a commercial framework. It organizes movement around the provision of services for payment. The tourist is a consumer; the destination is a product; the host is a provider. These roles structure the relationship from the start, determining what becomes possible and what is foreclosed. When we call travel tourism, we have already framed it commercially.

Encounter is a relational framework. It organizes movement around meeting, connection, and mutual presence. The traveler is a person; the place is a home; the host is also a person. These roles structure relationship differently, opening possibilities that tourism forecloses. When we call travel encounter, we frame it humanistically.

The difference matters. Commercial frameworks emphasize transaction: what do I get, what do I pay? Relational frameworks emphasize connection: who do I meet, how are we changed? Commercial frameworks are efficient; they minimize friction and maximize throughput. Relational frameworks are inefficient; they require time, attention, and vulnerability that efficiency would eliminate.

Tourism has triumphed because commercial frameworks scale better. You can organize mass tourism. You cannot organize mass encounter. The infrastructure of tourism (booking platforms, chain hotels, packaged tours) processes millions of transactions with minimal friction. Encounter has no comparable infrastructure because it resists standardization.

But the triumph of tourism has come at cost. We have created a system that moves unprecedented numbers of people around the globe while often preventing genuine connection. Tourists pass through places without encountering them. They see attractions without meeting people. They consume cultures without understanding them. Movement substitutes for encounter.

What would encounter-based mobility look like? It would be slower. Encounter takes time. You cannot meet someone in a day, understand a place in a week, connect across difference in a hurry. Encounter-based travel would involve longer stays, deeper engagement, fewer places visited more thoroughly.

It would be rarer. If encounters are deep rather than superficial, there can be fewer of them. A lifetime might include a handful of genuine travel encounters rather than dozens of tourism visits. Quality would substitute for quantity. The encounter would be significant enough to sustain a lifetime of reflection.

It would be deeper. Encounter requires moving past surfaces. The traveler would need to learn language, understand history, build relationship. They would not remain a stranger passing through but would become, at least temporarily, someone known. The place would not remain a destination to consume but would become somewhere lived, however briefly.

It would be governed by mutual obligation. The encounter is not a transaction completed when payment is made. It creates bonds that persist. The traveler might return. The host might visit. At minimum, each would carry the other in memory, transformed by the meeting. These obligations cannot be specified in advance or satisfied by formula. They emerge from the encounter itself.

Encounter-based mobility is not new. It is very old. Before tourism, people traveled for trade, for pilgrimage, for diplomacy, for curiosity. They were received by hosts according to elaborate protocols that specified obligations on both sides. Guest and host were bound together by the encounter in ways that commercial tourism has dissolved.

The dissolution was not inevitable. It resulted from specific historical developments: the commercialization of hospitality, the massification of travel, the rise of tourism as an industry. These developments served certain interests but undermined others. Recovering encounter means reversing some of what has been done.

Practical mechanisms could support this reversal. Longer visa stays would encourage extended engagement. Host family programs would embed visitors in households rather than hotels. Language requirements would ensure some communicative capacity. Community consent would give places control over who enters. These mechanisms would reduce volume while increasing depth.

The transition from tourism to encounter would not be simple. Infrastructure would need to change. Expectations would need to shift. Economies dependent on tourism volume would need alternatives. The transition would take decades and would require political will that does not currently exist.

But the transition has already begun in small ways. Slow travel movements reject the acceleration of tourism. Home exchange networks bypass commercial hospitality. Workaway and similar platforms facilitate reciprocal engagement. These are minority practices, but they demonstrate possibilities.

The critique of tourism is not that people should stay home. It is that movement should produce encounter rather than consumption. The beautiful human capacity for connection across difference has been subordinated to commercial extraction. Encounter-based mobility would recover what tourism has lost.

The title of this book is Tourism After Growth. The argument is that growth-oriented tourism has reached its limits and must be replaced. Encounter is what might replace it. Not the end of travel but its transformation. Not the closure of borders but the opening of relationships. Not fewer people moving but more meaningful movement.

Encounter cannot be mandated or manufactured. It can only be enabled. The task of post-tourism institutions would be to enable encounter by removing the barriers that tourism has erected. This is negative work: removing obstacles rather than building structures. But negative work can be transformative when what it removes has been oppressive.

Tourism is not an industry. Travel is not consumption. Hospitality is not service. When we recover these truths, the encounter becomes possible again. Not guaranteed, but possible. That possibility is what tourism after growth might create.