The Difference Between Travel and Tourism

 The Difference Between Travel and Tourism

What is the difference between travel and tourism? In short, travel describes a broad activity, and tourism is part of it. This doesn’t mean they are the same, because not all travel is tourism. 

According to Merriam-Webster, tourism describes the practice of traveling for recreation and the guidance or management of tourists. People in a place that is traveled to will set up businesses like hotels, tour companies, and more, to support visitors, creating a tourism industry.

The term travel means “to go on a trip or a tour.” This could include traveling for tourism, but it could also include business travel, travel to visit family, travel for immigration, and other reasons. There are plenty of reasons to travel that don’t involve tourism.  

The difference between travel and tourism is subtle, but it’s there! And it’s important to note it before we unpack the differences between travelers and tourists.

Tourist vs. Traveler: What’s the Difference?

It’s hard to unpack the differences between tourists and travelers because there’s both a perceived definition of these words (this is what we see talked about online) and there’s the formal, dictionary definition. 

Perceived Differences Between Tourist and Traveler

These words are often used to evoke two specific images of a person who travels. The “traveler” is portrayed as someone who is intrepid and goes to less mainstream places. Whereas a “tourist” is wandering around with a guidebook in their hands, going to well-known sights. 

This creates a binary where a “tourist” is one thing, different from a “traveler.”

I don’t think these descriptions are totally fair. There is much more nuance involved, because a tourist can be a mixture of these descriptions, and, participating in “tourist” activities isn’t always a bad thing. 

Official Definitions of Tourist and Traveler

I’ve listed the common perceived ideas around tourist vs. traveler. But what are the official definitions? 

Merriam Webster dictionary defines a tourist as “one that makes a tour for pleasure or culture,” and a traveler as “one that goes on a trip or journey.” 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a tourist is “a person who travels for pleasure,” and a traveler is “a person who is traveling or who often travels.”

By these definitions, there really isn’t much of a distinction between the two. Both words refer to the act of traveling to another location. The main distinction between them is that the definition of “tourist” includes the “why” behind that traveling: for pleasure or for culture. 

That distinction (the “why”) is noted in the definition for tourist, but that doesn’t mean it can’t apply to the traveler as well. Anyone who goes on a trip or journey is going to have a “why” – they are heading out on a trip for pleasure, or for culture, or for both.

So, is there a difference between travel and tourism? Yes, but the difference is subtle. Tourism is a part of travel, but not all travel participates in tourism. Given this, you can definitely argue that “traveler” describes people traveling for a variety of reasons, from business travel to immigration. Whereas a tourist is traveling specifically for the experience of tourism, and leisure. 

The way that the tourist vs. traveler binary is used by some to suggest that some tourists do travel better than others isn’t really accurate. It’s okay to be a tourist. When you look at the pros and cons of tourism, simply being a tourist does contribute toward a positive impact when we travel.

That said, a lot of the perceptions of what a “traveler” is point to responsible travel practices that we should all be learning about and trying our best to do. 

The tourist vs. traveler binary contributes to a superiority complex that seems rooted in a sense of competition. And that competition is focused on an individual’s personal “travel identity.”

Rather than focusing on being a traveler vs. a tourist, I think we can all shift our focus instead on putting conscious effort toward promoting and participating in responsible tourism. 

Traveling in a way that leads to more engagement with local life is absolutely something we all should be talking about, learning about and practicing. But let’s do it so that our travel has a better impact on the world – Not so that we can claim we’re one type of traveler over another.