Low-cost tickets to escape from your discomfort triggers

Hypothesis 01

superficial travel experiences are often used as a coping mechanism for emotional or mental discomfort

Hypothesis 02

social media plays a role in amplifying the need for travel through validation

0) Baseline of facts/stats

According to the United Nations Tourism Barometer1

“International arrivals (overnight visitors) reached 97% of 2019 levels in the first quarter of 2024, reflecting an almost complete recovery of pre-pandemic numbers.”

“An estimated 285 million tourists traveled internationally in the first three months of 2024, about 20% more than in the same period of 2023.”

1. What is an experience?

As is always the case with common simple words, their explanation is often vague and interpreted differently by different schools of thought. Experience, as a word, is abused while used in many contexts that are far from being experienced.

According to Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book I, Part I)

“With a view to action experience seems in no respect inferior to art, and men of experience succeed even better than those who have theory without experience. The reason is that experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the individual.”

As for Aristotle, the experience is the reality check of the theory, or in the inverse, it may also serve as the building blocks of the theory itself.

According to John Locke, Empiricist, (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book I)

“So, at birth, the human mind is a sort of blank slate on which experience writes.” (tabula rasa)

Later claiming that experience is a multilayered action involving senses, perception, and reflection, the latest crucial moment of understanding the knowledge of the experience itself and absorbing it. From many other relevant quotations and definitions, the basis and the common ground of each is to consider experience the active reflection on the perceived or sensed action.

a) How to experience an experience?

To consider an “experience” as an experience, we should be involved in many directions after sensing or perceiving the act or action. Per definition we should reflect, said in this way, may sound limited. A reflection that is followed by a directional change of the events, a self-reflection of past actions in light of the new point of view or modification of inner beliefs, moral or ethical reflections of self or others, creative or critical thinking, learning, studying, problem-solving, language use, appreciation or mindfulness, all those are a non-exhaustive list of what it can consider as reflection and making the “experience” an experience.

b) Superficial Experiences

Superficial experiences are those that are perceived through simple sensory experiences such as eating, drinking, watching, passive listening, having sex, using drugs, etc. All those actions may be considered passive, and contrary to the self-definition of an experience, we can say that superficial experiences are not merely experiences but straightforward activities that do not encompass any increase in knowledge or emotions by doing them.

2. Traveling

By travel, we intend to move physically from the traditional living place to a new area, considerably far from the so-called, home. By travel we also consider breaking the daily routine and by logic, also the habits. Travel generally means not working, or, as it is said plainly, less responsibility. The detachment from everyday obligations gives a sense of temporary freedom. Depending on the type of travel, it may also involve immersion in new cultures, languages, social interactions, and physical locations which can broaden one’s worldview and offer fresh perspectives.

3. Socials, the marketing of the hidden product

Marketing works. Nothing new. Socials are one of the biggest markets for promoting every type of product or service.

Fact check “According to World Advertising Research Center Media, social media is the largest media channel worldwide by advertising investment, with Meta alone representing a 63% share of global social spend.”2

Travel per se or specific trending locations do not distinguish it from other types of products. From the personal perspective of a generally bad social user like myself, I consider a huge contribution from most the user, to document their travels very well. All this can be a self-generated marketing campaign and, to some extent have a measurable effect on the hype of travel.

By logical deduction, socials are a great marketing source, socials have a considerably huge platform of hosting users, so, socials have a considerable effect in selling travel as a concept or a specific destination. Of course, you are not the case babe!

• What’s the effect of marketing on the hypothetical-user behavior?

• What was the story of the campaign that they bought it?

As in each other product, they buy the product not for their own sake, but to fill the need, the desire, to solve the problem. All the previous converge in the story of experiencing pleasure through this movement.

4. Travel as a red flag for emotional/mental discomfort

In the theoretical group of study, I wanna focus only on those who are affected by socials to convince themselves that travel is essential for experiencing pleasure, as well as those who have superficial experiences during their travels. It should be relatively a small group, no?!

After I tried to segmentize each part of the travel and the superficial experience itself, I wanted to understand which part of those activities acts in such a way to sense the feeling of pleasure. As pleasure has both an intrinsic and extrinsic value, we have to see it in two dimensions.

By definition, all activities described in the superficial experience should fall on the extrinsic part of the pleasure. The physical part of the movement of the traveler should fall also on the extrinsic part of the pleasure, while the freedom sensed, the lack of responsibility and obligations, and the change of routine and habits, should by logic fall on the intrinsic value side of the pleasure.

If we see each of the extrinsic activities that cause pleasure, we can clearly understand that all those activities can be easily done in any location and are not closely related to travel.

What is special about traveling, are the intrinsic activities. If freedom, routine and habits, responsibilities and obligations are the devil you want to escape from your daily life, traveling has little to no chance of helping sustainably if always done by experiencing superficially. If freedom, change of routine and habits, lack of responsibilities and obligations are temporary pumping molecules in the nervous system experiencing real pleasure, then this should be considered very seriously about the general emotional and mental discomfort situation the person is living in every day.

5. The unnecessary need to share and get attention

Socials sold the trip. The socials should now authenticate the genuine pleasure obtained.

Each advertisement has a story. In socials, the dominant sense of getting the story is through the visual. As such, again through the visual loophole, the travel should be shared with the simple purpose of getting attention, validation, and improving the virtual-social ranking against those who couldn’t afford this great trip or against those who frequently post their super sunsets.

• When truly immersed in enjoying the moment, does the healthy mind think in that moment to get a picture through the smartphone, to share with others, not merely a comparable view of what is perceived by their eyes, in their private/intimate moments?!

• Is the desire for public approval a clear indication that the experience was driven by a significant degree of vanity? If so, was vanity the need that was fulfilled during this trip?

6. How to deal with your beloved who has red flags

He/she/they may be aware and recognize the emotional or mental discomfort is living in. But he/she/they, may:

• not be ready to face the problem at the moment,

• may not have the tools to face the problem.

If you consider a close person to have compulsive travel behavior and agree with the interpretation that there may be a relation between the need to travel and the current life situation, consider travel as a way of escaping everyday problems. Awareness, openness, and patience may be the must-needed tools to help your beloved.

7. Final remarks

“It is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.”

Hippocrates

Emotional or mental discomfort is not a disease, and each person we can consider has those symptoms is healthy, and generally in control of their situation. Making those people consider this correlation as approximately a risk to consider, should be interpreted as good practice if the logic used above makes sense. In those specific situations, the risk of facing self-deception traits and cognitive dissonance is high, which means also a defensive reaction may occur.

According to Britannica: Self-deception is the act of making yourself believe something that is not true. Cognitive dissonance is the mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. Both those situations, if not changed over time, risk going towards Brief Psychotic Disorder or Delusional Disorder, both classified in DSM-5 Disorder Class: Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders.

References

1. https://www.unwto.org/un-tourism-world-tourism-barometer-data
2. https://page.warc.com/global-ad-trends-social-media-reaches-new-peaks.html