Where the foreign tourists are
Virginia Postrel has a great column in the Atlantic Monthly about the decline and fall of airline glamour. Go check it out — if for no other reason than to admire a writer’s ability to justify someone paying for her to fly from Los Angeles to London in Virgin Atlantic?s ?Upper Class? cabin. In a ...
Virginia Postrel has a great column in the Atlantic Monthly about the decline and fall of airline glamour. Go check it out -- if for no other reason than to admire a writer's ability to justify someone paying for her to fly from Los Angeles to London in Virgin Atlantic?s ?Upper Class? cabin. In a follow-up post, however, Postrel makes a rather curious assertion: I suspect that The Guardian's audience is not as well traveled as they think they are. Outside the major cities in the United States, for instance, the only foreign tourists you usually find are Germans, who will go just about anywhere and rent RVs to do it. How many Guardian readers have driven through the desert Southwest or the Blue Ridge? I've traveled a fair amount in the United States, and my casual empiricism suggests that you'll find quite a lot of foreign tourists in the Southwest. They might not be driving RVs, but they will go there to take in one of the features of the United States that is not quite as common in Europe -- jaw-dropping natural vistas like the Grand Canyon, Garden of the Gods, or Zion National Park. In fact, in my experience, I've bumped into foreign tourists more often at non-urban destinations than urban ones.* This could be a perceptual bias, so I'd be curious to hear from readers if this is their experience as well. *If the dollar continues to fall in value, this will change, as even more tourists come to the U.S. for lower consumer prices.
Virginia Postrel has a great column in the Atlantic Monthly about the decline and fall of airline glamour. Go check it out — if for no other reason than to admire a writer’s ability to justify someone paying for her to fly from Los Angeles to London in Virgin Atlantic?s ?Upper Class? cabin. In a follow-up post, however, Postrel makes a rather curious assertion:
I suspect that The Guardian‘s audience is not as well traveled as they think they are. Outside the major cities in the United States, for instance, the only foreign tourists you usually find are Germans, who will go just about anywhere and rent RVs to do it. How many Guardian readers have driven through the desert Southwest or the Blue Ridge?
I’ve traveled a fair amount in the United States, and my casual empiricism suggests that you’ll find quite a lot of foreign tourists in the Southwest. They might not be driving RVs, but they will go there to take in one of the features of the United States that is not quite as common in Europe — jaw-dropping natural vistas like the Grand Canyon, Garden of the Gods, or Zion National Park. In fact, in my experience, I’ve bumped into foreign tourists more often at non-urban destinations than urban ones.* This could be a perceptual bias, so I’d be curious to hear from readers if this is their experience as well. *If the dollar continues to fall in value, this will change, as even more tourists come to the U.S. for lower consumer prices.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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