Destinations around the world are found in highly different stages of development. Humans naturally love to discover new destinations especially when they are in the bohemian stage, and voice crushed psychological disappointment as they change. Oddly, we travelers see no relationship between our arrival and the inevitable changes that come over time. We love being there first.
This is a very deep part of the human psyche, likely related to our early migratory behavior that has allowed the human species to spread relatively quickly across the planet as documented in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Sixth Extinction.”
The classic article by Stanley Plog, “Why Destination Areas Rise and Fall,” brilliantly captures the human desire to explore places and leave them behind once they lose their distinctive character. Communicating what we discover, sharing it with others, allows destinations to grow, sprawl and ultimately become overcrowded.
Most of us then seek to move on. The fact that Trip Advisor is the largest travel website in the world speaks volumes about the human need to discover places and share our opinions with others. In 2014, this website received 225 million online reviews annually. The deep human instinct to roam and tell about it is without question a massive and growing social phenomenon, and it may be a human instinct, given our migratory nature.
This is an excerpt from an article originally published by Green Biz.
