I love most ‘Discovering the world, one culture at a time.’. It is amazing how different each country is, even if the countries are neighbours!

Welldone for gathering this list!

I sincerely hope nobody at G Adventures is looking at that post of mine as some sort of attack or slight aimed at them, however. I only used the “I am not a tourist” slogan/campaign to jump start my own discussion about the traveler vs. tourist debate, which has raged on for decades – even into academic literature about tourism, believe it or not! While the slogan still does rub me the wrong way, I do understand why you chose it (I mean, hell, I clicked on the links just to figure out what it was about, too). And I do fully support that G Adventures is trying to change the face of small group travel. The company’s focus on sustainable tourism (and not just the environmental side of it) is fantastic, and I am totally behind you on that.

As for those “narrow stereotypes” about tourists, they actually extend all over the place, though it is definitely interesting to look at them in terms of being perpetuated by the travel industry. They’re often also enforced by locals who aren’t at all familiar with the tourism industry or the traveler vs. tourist debate. Did you know that in many Asian and African languages (and especially in villages that don’t see a huge amount of tourists), there’s really no word for “tourist”? The word associated with “tourist” for most of them is the same word that means “white person.” … Try dissecting that one!

Thanks for this post! I’ll be sure to link it from my own.