What is the difference between a tourist and a traveler

Difference Between | Descriptive Analysis and Comparisons

Key Difference: According to expert travellers, a traveller is a type of person that likes to live in the now, he likes to experience life as it passes by and has a whole different outlook on life. On the other hand, a tourist is usually short on time. He has a specific amount of time in which he has to plan his whole trip.

The terms traveller and tourist are often confusing for many people as they can seem the same. It seems to be similar to two sides of the same coin. Many will claim that there is no difference between the two words and both refer to a person who goes to visit another country for a particular time being.

However, in today’s world the words have come to become significantly different from each other. Each word has garnered a significance that is now attached with the word. A tourist may be called a traveller without any problems, but a traveller will be gravely insulted if they were called a tourist.

A tourist and traveller differ in many aspects including likes, dislikes, travelling habits, places they like to visit, the way their experience a place, the people they like to talk to, etc.

According to expert travellers, a traveller is a type of person that likes to live in the now, he likes to experience life as it passes by and has a whole different outlook on life. They prefer to travel light, and live each place that they visit. They do not like to visit the tourist places, but rather to take the beaten path and find small places with great cultural significance. They prefer to travel in small groups of usually one or two people and prefer to walk or take the local transport.

They can usually be seen carrying a translation booklet in order to be able to talk in the local language. They prefer to shop on the street and will bargain with the shopkeepers, just like the locals. They love to try the local cuisine by eating on the street and love to listen and share stories with the locals about their culture. The travellers usually take their time to get to know a place and do not rust. They can sometimes spend months in a country, without having any inclination to leave. The traveller really gets to know and understand the root of the country they are in.

On the other hand, a tourist is usually short on time. He has a specific amount of time in which he has to plan his whole trip. A tourist is usually a person that has to see the gist of the country they are visiting in a short time. Hence, they usually prefer visiting the tourist places of significance. They usually carry a lot of bags, in order to cover things they might need. They do not have time for the locals and prefer to stick to their tourist groups. They can usually be found in large groups, along with a tour guide leading them around the country.

Tourists are usually people that prefer to interact very little with the locals and do not have the time to sit and converse with them. They do not listen to their stories and prefer to share very little about themselves. They are usually seen taking photos in almost every tourist spot in random poses. They also prefer to speak in English and do not like to converse in the local language. Tourists usually prefer to reside in hotels that have pools and spas, which allow them very little interaction with the locals and their housing manners.

Tourists and travellers are very different when it comes to interacting with a country. However, each are best suited to a particular type of person. A tourist has very limited time to incorporate all the things of a country into a small time consumed package and hence he must cover all the tourist places. On the other hand, a traveller has ample amount of time and money in order to admire the city at their own leisure. Being a traveller or a tourist can sometimes also depend on the country and its people.

Difference Between Tourist and Traveler

October 6, 2012 Posted by Admin

Tourist vs Traveler

Making a trip, going on a vacation, touring, and travelling are some of the words and phrases that are common with the concept of moving to different places. History is replete with renowned travelers like Christopher Columbus and Hsuan Tsang but not tourists. Why? Is there a difference between a traveler and a tourist? Let us find out in this article.

Tourist

The word tourist comes from tourism that refers to travel for pleasure and recreation. People going to distant places for pleasure, business, or any other business and staying there for a period of not more than a year at a time are labeled as tourists. A tourist is, therefore, someone who goes to far off places with no intention to stay in these places permanently. He may go for a vacation or on a business trip. At times, a tourist is visiting his relatives and friends and, on others, he is seen attending cultural or musical events held in other countries. A tourist may be interested in just sightseeing, or he may have gone abroad to attend or participate in a sports meet or event.

Tourism today has become a commercial activity with many countries depending upon foreign exchange that they earn with their tourism industry. In 2011, nearly 1000 million tourists arrived in different places of the world.

Traveler

Traveler is a word used for a person who travels. Travel is more of a verb than a noun as it is the activity of moving from a place to another. A traveler is a person who travels for the purpose of traveling as if traveling is a vocation. A traveler does not plan his destinations and places of attraction in advance and does not make arrangements like a tourist. He just sets off with a one way ticket as he does not have a set date for departure and arrival. Travelers do pay visit to tourist attractions and historical landmarks, but they at times just pass locations as against tourists who plan every detail of their trip and often take a guided tour of the place, to save on time and make it to see everything of importance in the place they are touring.

What is the difference between Tourist and Traveler?

• Whether a tourist or a traveler, both travel to far off places.

• A tourist plans his visit in advance and has the exact places of attraction in his mind.

• A tourist travels for recreation and pleasure (sometimes business), but he may also be visiting friends and relatives or attending cultural events and sporting meets.

• A traveler is a person interested in traveling by instinct, and he passes through locations rather than collecting souvenirs for folks back home like a tourist.

• Famous explorers of the past are referred to as travelers and not tourists.

• Travel is more of a verb than a tour which is why traveler connotes image of a barefoot man roaming from one place to another.

The difference between a traveller and a tourist

A few days ago, I stumbled on an inspiring quote.

Andrew’s thought hit me hard, just after I finished my previous blog post ( “Paris is more than monuments”). In the end, all this comes down to one question :

Note that, even if I consider myself a traveller now, I’ve been a tourist in the past.
And since early Septembre, I have met more than 30 travellers* coming to discover Paris, so I think I have started to get a clear idea of these differences.

[Edit : *it was from September to December 2017. Now, in October 2017, it’s more than 100.]

The main difference is curiosity

And being curious also means making an effort.

The second difference is effort

In my opinion, there are two basic behaviors.

Tourists are passive.
They don’t make any effort to immerse themselves into the local culture. They stand out from it. Sometimes it’s on purpose : when you fly to the Maldives just for the beaches and cocktails, you don’t want to see any poverty around you.

Travellers are active.
We make an effort to have the chance to immerse ourselves in the local culture. We “ do our homework” : search a lot of informations, ask contacts, learn a bit of the language… Everything is focused on enjoying every minute of the trip living genuine experiences.

Even taking the time to buy a good travel book, read it entirely, and using it as a base once arrived (with some improvisation to meet local people in addition) makes you more a traveller than a tourist.

In Paris and in many other parts of the world, tourists are now considered a plague.

Locals see tourists at best like a herd of sheeps encumbering the streets, at worst like walking wallets to empty as much as possible.

Tourists see locals at worst like thieves that only want their money, at best… they see them from accross the street.

One thing is sure : we don’t really like tourists… But we love to meet travellers.

It’s never too late to switch to a traveller mindset

I can testify that it’s only a matter of months to switch.
Happened to me at the beggining of the year, thanks to a lot of changes in my life, including my girlfriend.

You just have to learn how to keep an open and positive mind, allow yourself to be curious, do your homeworks before you go, meet people when you’re abroad and… Enjoy the simple things.

“I became a traveller because of the magic of all the small invisible things you can only discover in a foreign city with a native host.”

Lenka, from Czech Republic

It’s better for you, for locals, for the others travellers… For everyone 🙂

See you soon in Paris,
JB from the Welcom’ team.

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Difference Between Tourist and Traveler

Primary Difference

Generally, people assume a tourist and traveler to be the same person but technically speaking these two words are worlds apart. These two words have major differences. A tourist is a person who will visit other country or city for his or her and his family’s relaxation and comfort away from the usual routine life. A traveler is an individual whose routine work is to travel, to visit different and unique localities and learn about their culture and living. A tourist will firstly pack tons of clothes and carry a lot of luggage and visit famous places and go for sightseeing of major spots, indulge in a variety of expensive foods, visit beaches and other recreation spots, take tons of pictures as memories, enjoy their stay in hotels, do a lot of shopping and enjoy their stay. On the other hand a traveler will pack his necessary clothing in a small backpack which he can easily carry and go to his destination to discover new cultures with his camera and a map for directions, he will firstly travel alone and search for adventures and climb mountains, do trekking on rough roads, capture beautiful and natural sceneries an landscapes, live in camps, eat meals which are local specialties, meet people of different cultures and learn their local language, gain information about their lifestyle and capture photos of it. A tourist will be on vacation for a specific period of time while a traveler will have no time limit, he will travel and explore for as many days he pleases. Tourists will buy lots of branded clothes and other things which are luxuries while a traveler will spend on small culture representing items such as postcards and key chains or landmarks as keepsake items.

Comparison Chart

Definition of Tourist

Tourists are people who travel other countries or cities for their vacation and enjoyment. Most of them are families or friends who travel together for some time off and relaxation from their usual work routine life. This vacation freshens up their mind. Tourists usually travel for a short period of time from seven days to fifteen days and have already purchased return tickets. Tourists pack a lot of clothes and other accessories for daily use and carry a lot of luggage. When arriving on their destination, they prefer to stay in expensive hotels, visit a lot of different sightseeing spots and other enjoyment places like amusement parks and water parks, museums, gardens, notable spots of that city and beaches and they prefer to travel by taxi mostly. Tourists live life to the fullest when they are on vacation and visit different famous restaurants and eat exotic meals. Also they go to a lot of malls and shopping centers to buy branded stuff for themselves and loved ones back at home. They prefer English as the only medium for communication and are not interested in local cultures or their language. Lastly they carry a camera to capture a lot of pictures and videos to save the beautiful moments of the vacation.

Definition of Traveler

A traveler is a person who will travel alone and considers travel as his job and routine work. He will only pack stuff that are necessary for travelling which are two to three comfortable clothes, a map for directions, walking shoes and socks, sunglasses, a digital camera and stand, a water bottle and some food. He will travel for as much time as he pleases and it will be an adventure for him. He will visit different localities and shady cities and learn about their history, talk to the locals about it, visit their historic sites, learn their local language and communicate with them, learn their lifestyle and try their local specialties. A traveler will capture beautiful scenery and natural landscapes and beauty of nature. He will trek in areas where there is no entry of vehicles, climb and explore mountains, visit lakes and jungles. A traveler is not interested in hotels but will love to camp in a jungle or in a mountain and spend the night. He will walk around for days and months carrying his backpack till is satisfied with the information and all the sites. A traveler never has enough because after some days he will again set to travel to a different destination and to explore new culture.

Differences in a Nutshell

Conclusion

All in all, the main points related to the differences between the two terms and the way they are similar to each other have been explained properly so that people are able to know more about them, tourist and traveler are such terms which can be confusing but hopefully after reading this article that won’t be the case.

Aimie Carlson

Aimie Carlson is an English language enthusiast who loves writing and has a master degree in English literature. Follow her on Twitter at @AimieCarlson

What is the difference between tourist and traveller?

Posted on Last updated: January 10, 2022

It’s time for that age old debate – what is the difference between tourist and traveller? For me, it all comes down to one very important thing.

Tourist vs traveller. Is there any real difference between the two? Does it really matter? And why do people care?

I don’t know why, but arguing the difference between tourist and traveller is something that happens a lot more than you’d think when backpacking and travelling.

Everyone’s got an opinion on this one, and after years of being on the road myself, I thought I’d finally break my silence and wade into the debate. I’ve always found this such an interesting topic, and I’m really interested to hear what you guys think too.

Quoting Alex Garland, author of The Beach, he said:

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

That quote has always resonated within me, but the more and more I travel myself the more and more I believe it boils down to one fundamental difference; travellers care.

Tourist vs traveller – is there any difference?

Travellers care more than you’ll ever realise

Travellers care about the culture and societies they are visiting. Travellers care about the people they are meeting, both locals and foreigners alike. Travellers care about the way they travel, they want to discover and explore but in a sustainable way. Travellers just care.

A lot of people argue one of the main fundamental differences between a traveller and tourist is education. Not in your own personal education, but the education of travelling. People use travelling as a way to learn about themselves as much as about their surroundings, whereas tourists use travelling as an escapism, a way to forget about themselves as much as the surroundings they’ve left behind.

The way I travel is I completely immerse myself in a country and a new culture. I make the effort to learn as much of the language as I can, I speak to the local people and ask about their background, the local history, the local politics. I try and leave as good of an impression of myself and the country I come from as possible while not being quick to judge theirs.

I do all of this not because I need to but because I want to, because I care.

It’s a pretty broad brush to tarnish all tourists with by saying they don’t care, but I just don’t think a lot of them do.

Travelling has this way of keeping you in a particular moment at a particular time

Is there really a difference between a tourist or traveller though?

This isn’t some pretentious middle class debate, and this isn’t travel snobbery.

I, personally, do think there is a difference between travellers and tourists (unlike a lot of people out there).

Gary Arndt from Everything Everywhere, one of the biggest professional travel bloggers out there, once responded to the same question stating:

There is no difference. It is a distinction used by pretentious people to make themselves feel superior to others. To the locals, no matter how long you’ve been traveling or whatever your mindset is, you are still a tourist. After two years on the road, I’m still a tourist when I show up somewhere new.

This isn’t about feeling superior to anyone. I actually agree; travellers often get high and mighty about being a ‘traveller’, and to a degree this itself is anti-travelling.

However, if there is a difference between travellers and tourists, then it is down to personal perspective, what the individual thinks. Obviously this is my opinion, this is what I believe.

Travelling is such a personal experience, so what other people do, what they see, where they go, it shouldn’t affect what you do or how you feel about travelling. So long as they care.

For me, it all boils down to one thing; travellers care

Tourist and traveller difference: My life as a traveller

In my opinion, more often than not tourists are only ever interested in seeing a country’s sites and attractions as opposed to seeing the people within it, often just to say they’ve been to a particular place, and I think that’s sad, and at times completely contradictory to what tourism is supposed to do, what tourism is supposed to be about.

As I write this I have just come from the beautiful and historic town of Kotor on the coast of Montenegro. It’s a place teeming with tourists and travelers alike.

The town is so small I feel I could kick a football over its walls, yet every single day a new cruise ship moors up and thousands of passengers swarm within the walls, cluttering and clogging up the small side streets of Old Town.

At one restaurant I asked the waiter what he thought of the cruise ship passengers. He said: “They do nothing for the restaurant culture in Kotor. 99% of passengers have already eaten before they’ve left the ship, and they are all told to carry water with them, so they are not interested in restaurants. If anything, the large groups of them walking around Old Town put people off from dining outside.”

Walking around, you will see clusters of passengers all with a guide from the ship. They don’t use local transport, they don’t interact with the local people, and they rarely spend anything of notable worth. All in all, they just don’t care.

Kotor in the early morning and evening is a completely different place compared to the afternoon. Without the tourists, it is tranquil and charming. With them, it is something else entirely. I know which one I prefer.

Cruise ships spew out pollution in the beautiful Bay of Kotor

The real impact of tourists

One night, after everything had closed down, including all the bars, I found a group of locals celebrating the opening of a new shop.

Confident on rakia, the local fiery spirit, I finally asked them what they all thought of the type of tourists Kotor attracted.

One guy, Nikola, said: “They do more harm than good, but it is not their fault, it is the local council’s for allowing them to come in the first place.

“10 years ago, we were all happy. Everyone stayed up late and interacted with each other; a part of that culture has died.

“The local council was only interested in making money, and then the cruise ships came.”

According to local fisherman, fish stocks and with it their way of life and earning a living are down 10 times than what they were just a few years ago.

Also, a particular type of fish has become so rare it is thought to be extinct. It doesn’t take much to deduce the correlation coinciding with the arrival of the cruise ships and the pollution they bring, both in the forms of human pollution and environmental pollution.

This is a problem for both travelers and tourists.

So what are you, a tourist or a traveller?

Traveler vs tourist quote

If there’s one quote to sum all of this up, it’s this one by Andrew Zimmern, a famous food writer:

Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.

Perhaps the hardest thing to deal with is as travellers there is very little we can do about tourists.

I guess the only thing we can do is to keep on being ourselves, to keep on travelling, to keep on caring. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter…

What do you think is the difference between a tourist and a traveller? I would love to hear your opinion so make sure you let me know in the comments below.

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Friday 10th of June 2022

‘Tourist’ comes from the word ‘tour’ which is something which is organised. Package holidays and excursions are for ‘tourists’, where meals are provided for, or a local representative is available 24/7. A traveller is willing to step outside of his/her comfort zone and to immerse themselves in a different culture. Mass tourism (there’s that word again) has a negative impact on it’s environment and very often no positive impact at all (think Venice for example), whereas travellers contribute more to local economies by eating at local restaurants and staying at independent hotels. As author Robert Louis Stevenson once said. “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” Travellers love the feel of motion under their feet. Tourists can’t wait to arrive at their destination.

Wednesday 22nd of June 2022

Sunday 30th of July 2017

Thursday 10th of August 2017

Oh I agree with you. I was being extremely facetious when I wrote this post (a couple of years ago now!) There’s such blurred lines between being a traveller and a tourist and I think fundamentally they’re the same thing. Expanding on your point, you get just as many annoying travellers as you do tourists! Always a good debate though!

Wednesday 19th of October 2016

«There is no difference. It is a distinction used by pretentious people to make themselves feel superior to others.» I don’t think that tourist is something humiliating. It is just two different meanings of the describing of someone who is going to the different city, country, anywhere. You may feel the difference only in the comfort that someone has and another refuses.

Thursday 20th of October 2016

Yeah, safe to say we agree with this one completely! As mentioned, we feel this is perfectly summed up in «The Beach» by Alex Garland. Always an interesting debate though!

Monday 7th of July 2014

Kudos to a nicely written article. I agree with you that there are differences between travelers and tourists. But I don’t think that these differences are as clear cut, black and white. There are tourists who care, and travelers who don’t. There are many ‘travelers’ here in Southeast Asia who come to get drunk, and have ‘tourist’ mentality you’ve described. I’ve been traveling for over 10 years and lived in many countries; I enjoyed learning about new culture, picking up new languages, and growing with each experience. I don’t think I’m a tourist, but I’m not a traveler either, as ‘travel’ connotes a destination.

Friday 11th of July 2014

Thanks for the comment Noel; I really appreciate it. I completely agree with you and it is not clear cut black and white. At the end of the day, we’re all people doing the same thing, we’re all trying to see a country in our own way. It doesn’t really matter whether that’s for a few days, a few weeks or a few years, as long as we’re doing it, you know?

Monday 7th of July 2014

Yes this is your opinion and of course your entitled to it, but Gary is right. Here is the problem; you say your are not pretentious but you certainly sound pretentious.

To be pretentious is to make a claim or put on an act to:

A) Fit into a group.

B) Appear «better» than you are or than others.

So you are a «traveler» not a «tourist» and travelers «care» and tourists don’t. Kind of nails the definition, doesn’t it?

Friday 11th of July 2014

Fair play Rob! I can’t really argue with that definition. I really didn’t mean to come across as being pretentious; it was just a point of view that I wanted to express and to spark (another) debate. This is a subject that is quite close to my heart and I have found people’s comments fascinating. At the end of the day, there really isn’t much difference between the two. As long as people are travelling and they are enjoying it, who’s to say they’re one thing over the other.

Hi travellers! I’m Macca & I run the multiple award-winning blog An Adventurous World. Nothing makes me happier than capturing the world one destination at a time so make sure you follow me on my adventures!