Somewhere in the last decade, 'tourist' became an insult. Travel advice is saturated with instructions to skip the landmarks, dodge the crowds and experience every destination 'like a local', as though arriving for four days and being curious about a place were something to apologise for. A recent piece in Getaway South Africa pushes back on that thinking — and it makes a refreshing argument: stop performing authenticity, and simply travel well.
The core idea is simple. You are a tourist, and that's not a problem. There's no prize for pretending you live in Paris when you've just landed. The famous sights — the Eiffel Tower, Table Mountain, the Colosseum, Victoria Falls — became famous because they're genuinely worth seeing. Buy the ticket, take the tour, take the photograph. The real divide isn't between tourists and locals; it's between thoughtful visitors and thoughtless ones.
That distinction matters most in residential areas. A photogenic street is still somebody's home. A quiet beach is still someone's regular swimming spot. A market is where people do their weekly groceries, and a neighbourhood that went viral on TikTok is still a place where people sleep, commute and get to work. Practical respect looks unglamorous: keep the noise down, don't step onto private property for a better shot, ask before photographing people — especially children — dress appropriately at religious sites, and if a sign says no photography, don't take photographs. Learning even a few words of the local language goes a long way too.
Money is the other lever travellers hold. Tourism genuinely powers local economies, and where you spend shapes what a destination becomes. Booking a locally owned guesthouse, eating at independent restaurants, buying crafts from the person who made them, and choosing tour operators that employ local guides and commit to conservation all keep more of your spend in the community. But there's a caveat worth remembering: 'local' isn't automatically ethical. A locally owned business can still treat staff badly or harm the environment, so a little scrutiny beats simply searching the word 'local' on a booking site.
None of this means turning your holiday into an ethical guilt trip. The sightseeing bus, the cheesy souvenir, the overcrowded museum, the cable car instead of the hike — all fair game. The goal is curiosity rather than entitlement. Do a bit of homework before you go (customs, dress codes, park rules, tipping norms, a transit app), then pay attention once you're there: watch what locals do, listen when someone says something isn't appropriate, and don't assume the way things work at home is the world's default.
Why does this matter for travellers? Because dropping the 'local' act actually makes trips better. Instead of chasing an Instagram-worthy illusion of hidden authenticity, you start noticing real things — the history behind the monument, the fruit seller at the market, the reason a street looks the way it does. You arrive as yourself, a temporary guest in someone else's home, and you leave the place in a state that lets the people who live there keep enjoying it. There's nothing wrong with being a tourist. There's everything right with being a good one.