Tourist vs. Traveller... Is There A Difference?

Hello again Travellers! 👋🏻,

Happy Tuesday! We hope your week has been great so far. 🤩

It’s business as usual here at SimsDirect, and as we immerse ourselves within October, it’s time for us to wrap things up with Q3 as we transition into the year's final quarter. 🗓

Which reminds us, for those of you residing in the ACT, NSW, SA, TAS, and VIC - Make sure all of those clocks are adjusted! Yep. It’s that time of year again; daylight savings is upon us. 😎

Which makes us wonder, how do you personally feel about daylight savings? We will admit it initially feels strange when the sun is still out at 7 pm! Well, here in Sydney, at least. 😅

While we’re on the subject - did you know that for 76~ days a year, the sun never sets in Norway?! Pretty crazy, right? Also known as ‘The Land of the Midnight Sun’, where the sun never actually sets from May to late July. ☀️🤯

Have you ever been to Norway and experienced this eerie yet captivating sight? 

Anyways, moving on, this weeks topic is:

The difference between a traveller and a tourist

Ahh, yes, it’s an age-old question, one for the history books, and, as a business within the travel space, a question that we get asked a lot more often than you think.

But tourist vs traveller, does it really matter? And why do people care so much? Is there even a fundamental difference between the two?

It seems like almost everyone has an opinion on this one, so, we thought it would be fitting to take it into our hands and really break it down.

By definition, taken from Oxford Languages, both read as follows:

Tourist - a person who is travelling or visiting a place for pleasure.

Traveller - a person who is travelling or who often travels.

Hmm… Strikingly similar, it seems… You could swap the definitions around, and it would still suit the word at hand.

We need to go deeper.

Perhaps we could analyse a quote from Alex Garland’s novel, ‘The Beach’.

“I had ambiguous feelings about the difference between tourists and travellers – the problem being that the more I travelled, the smaller the differences became. But the one difference I could still latch on to was that tourists went on holidays while travellers did something else. They travelled.”

That kind of makes sense; maybe what he’s trying to convey is the fact that travellers care; they have a desire to learn about the history, indulge in the culture, and become a part of the place they are visiting, as opposed to simply needing a break from real life.

Could that be it? 

Did we, SimsDirect, solve one of life’s greatest mysteries? A key question answered that’ll potentially go down as a critical component in defining the characteristics of human existence.

Okay, maybe not. 😂

It’s much of a muchness really. 🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♀️

Tourist, Traveller. Tomato, tomato. (Pronounced: tuh-may-toe, tuh-mah-toe.) 🍅

But if you made it this far, thank you for reading the Simify rendition of Mythbusters.

Adios amigo! 🤞🏻

Have a great day and we will catch you next week. 🥰🧡

Leave a comment

All comments are moderated before being published