It is conspicuous leisure and a game of status in a time-poor world.

Or, as we used to call it, 'keeping up with the Joneses'. The odd thing is that most people that go to the overly-touristy places have very little to say. Sure there are the pictures for social media, however, these are of what the food is like and what the beverages are like and these could be taken anywhere.

There is no adventure involved in tourism, and adventure satisfies in ways that tourism never will. With adventure there is no knowing what to expect, there are logistics problems to solve and there is purpose, namely to get from A to B, preferably in one piece, which is not a given.

With tourism there are no such problems, people have 'slaves' wait on them for the duration of the trip. There is no need to interact with the actual natives, just the hospitality workers, as in the 'slaves'.

In the past, a lot of work went into getting time off for the working man, with local-ish tourism to take people out of the smog filled cities and to the seaside (in the UK and elsewhere). A few generations on and this has been baked in, nobody takes their time to enjoy the house they pay to live in, there is this default action of going on some type of package holiday.

The typical package holiday is for the time poor, with so many big sights that have to be packed in, always the same tourism trail. For example, Brits visiting the USA might imagine this road trip, to hire a car in LA, to drive to Vegas, on to spend 20 minutes at the rim of the Grand Canyon and then on to Flagstaff, as if there is anything to see there.

They get back having seen nothing except car parks and the Interstate. The mad dashing around means they get the required photos but there is no adventure. So they have to go on another trip. How about Machu Pichu, next time round?

So, off they go. They come back to their normal life and have nothing to say, apart from what the hotel, flight and food was like.

It is an industry made possible by cheap flights and cheap rental cars, with none of them being that cheap if externalities are to be included. Given where the world is going regarding the 'war for oil', this tourism is going to vanish quite quickly.