Slow Travel: What It Is and Why You should Embrace It

This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Lynn Smythe

Imagine you have a week of vacation, so you decide to travel to Europe. Instead of staying in one city like Copenhagen, in Denmark, and exploring it, you decide to allocate each day to a different city in a different country. This might seem like a great idea at first because you’ll get to see seven cities in seven different countries! Well, not quite. The truth is, you’ll barely get to truly enjoy your travel — you’ll end up feeling burned out at the end of your trip, rather than refreshed, and spending so much. That’s why slow travel is slowly but surely becoming the new way of traveling. 

What is Slow Travel?

As its name suggests, slow travel is about staying longer in the places you visit so you can immerse yourself in the culture, food, people, and way of life in general. So instead of visiting just the popular tourist sites of a place and leaving immediately, you stay back for a couple of days or weeks and explore its lesser-known attractions.

The concept of slow travel goes back to the 1980s in Italy when locals retaliated against the rise of fast food. Local demonstrations erupted with farmers, chefs, and food artisans protesting against building a McDonald’s at Piazza di Spagna. This move was in a bid to preserve their culture and local cuisine. Soon after that, the idea of slow travel emerged, which at the time was known as “slow movement.”

Benefits of Slow Travel

There are so many benefits to embracing slow travel, the most common being sustainability. Yes, slow travel contributes to conserving the environment in several ways. 

For instance, traveling by air and private cars leaves a lot of carbon footprint in our atmosphere, which then causes climate change. With slow travel, you reduce pollution by either using public transport, walking, or cycling to explore the local area.

Additionally, slow travel helps reduce the problem of mass tourism, which leads to overcrowding of destinations like Santorini, Venice, and Bali. The results? Social disruption, damaged ecosystems, and strain on resources. 

Besides being sustainable, slow travel provides you with several benefits as an individual:

  • You save money
  • You get to relish the destination to the fullest
  • You build real connections with locals 
  • You stress less because you don’t follow a set itinerary

Conclusion

The whole point of travel and tourism is to relax. But more often than not, you usually go back home after every trip, mentally and physically exhausted. The reason? A fully packed travel schedule with no room to just breathe. How about you embrace slow travel the next time you want to go on vacation? You might just end up loving it.

Written by:

Lynn Smythe
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<p>Lynn Smythe is a freelance content writer specializing in healthcare, addiction treatment, behavioral health and health and wellness. Her work has appeared on many online sites and in magazines, and other print publications, including Thrive Global, VeggieLife, BackHome, The Herb Quarterly, The Old Farmer&#39;s Almanac, Llewellyn&#39;s Herbal Almanac, The Crafts Report, Beadwork, Jewelry Crafts and Lapidary Journal.&nbsp;</p><p>When she&#39;s not busy researching topics and writing articles, she enjoys swimming, biking, running, standup paddle boarding and training for long distance endu...
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