Sustainable travel writing? Exploring the ethical dilemmas of twenty-first-century travel writers

ABSTRACT

There is a paucity of academic literature on travel writing that examines travel writers and their perceived influence on sustainability. This article addresses this lacuna by exploring how travel writers understand their responsibilities and reflects on ethics in their profession, particularly in how foreign destinations and cultures are portrayed. This is significant because some travel writers have been accused of contributing to what interviewees called the “Lonely Planet Syndrome”, the notion that writing about a place will introduce and encourage mass tourism, changing the original state of the place for the worse. In this qualitative, phenomenological study, data were collected from 23 in-depth interviews with twenty-first-century travel writers and analysed using an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Findings suggest that while some interviewees expressed anxiety about their perceived accountability to mediate foreign cultures responsibly, others embraced their role as a cultural mediator. They cared about local cultures and wanted to write in responsible ways by supporting more sustainable outcomes, reflected in the themes of cross-cultural understanding, socio-cultural and environmental advocacy and promoting benefits of tourism to communities. Future studies could include exploring the role of travel editors, travel writers’ professional knowledge and the growing role of travel blogs.

KEYWORDS:

• Travel writer
• travel writing
• ethics
• cross-cultural
• cultural mediation
• sustainability

Acknowledgments

Heartfelt thanks are given to the contemporary travel writers who gave their time and shared their thoughts and experiences for this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Madelene McWha

Madelene McWha is a tourism lecturer in the Faculty of Higher Education at William Angliss Institute, Australia. Her research interests include contemporary travel writers, travel and digital media, ethics and sustainability.

Warwick Frost

Warwick Frost is an associate professor in the Department of Management, Sport and Tourism at La Trobe University, Australia. His research interests include heritage, events, and nature-based attractions. Together with Jennifer Laing, Warwick is a co-editor of the Routledge Advances in Events Research series.

Jennifer Laing

Jennifer Laing is an associate professor in the Department of Management, Sport and Tourism at La Trobe University, Australia. Her research interests include tourist narratives, the role of myth in tourism, the social dimension of events and exploring extraordinary tourist experiences.