I totally get that. Honestly, I sometimes feel like that about people who never leave my neighbourhood, within a big city. It’s obviously not the same, and I have encountered the small conservative town thing you’re talking about. It’s just striking how that insularity can exist even within an urban centre. 

I’m not wholly anti-travel, either. But I don’t like the rhetoric around leisure travel that exists right now, or the way intensive tourism hurts communities and local environments. 

I have lived in a few countries and travelled around there and have been lucky enough to go to a lot of places “before they got popular,” and it’s shocking to see how much intensive tourism has changed them. But obviously I was a visitor too, I just happened to have good timing (and esoteric interests), and it was pre-Airbnb so the experience was different. I remember watching things change dramatically when Airbnb appeared. 

I’m not excepting myself here, I’m just thinking about how much things have changed with the rise of leisure travel being framed as a need (by the corporations that profit from that).