chazzarelli

Well at some point everyone is a tourist. What I mean is that if you have never been a place before, you are most likely to tour around the area and scope it out. You might be visiting museums or sights. After a few trips to the same location, you become more familiar with the surroundings. You may still visit some of the museums, but now you are doing it because you want to see it, not because it's your first time there and you've never done it before. Once you start travelling to the same location over and over, I'd consider you to be a traveller to that location (ie - I travel to Rome frequently or I'm travelling to Rome again next week).

I think that makes sense? If you've never been to a place before, how could you call yourself a traveller - you're touring the place for the first time!!!

MissPrism

.....
Tourists want to "hit" all the "must-sees" in a town before they leave......

To be fair, if you've come all the way from the US or Australia, you can't go back and say that you missed a major site, especially if you will never return.
I went to Rome for the first time this year and didn't visit the Sistine Chapel.
I told an American friend that it is unlikely to go away and she said that I'd look really silly if it did.

I suppose that I am a visitor.
I think of tourists as being organised by somebody else. Typically, you see them in large groups behind somebody with an umbrella. Still, live and let live.
On a first visit to a strange country, people might be happier to be in a group and to have a tour representative to help with any problems.

isabel

Well according to Webster's dictionary:

tourist: one that makes a tour for pleasure or culture
traveler: one that goes on a trip or journey

It appears the only real difference is the tourist is going somewhere for pleasure or culture whereas the traveler could be doing it for any number of mundane reasons.

I love this forum but frankly the number of people here who use the word tourist in a negative and demeaning way are just showing they don't have much grasp of the English language

travelgourmet

I'd say that travelers are those who are self-conscious about admitting they are a tourist. I'm sure that many people that use the term come up with some grand justifications for why they are different (and, let's be perfectly clear, many also think better) than 'tourist' x, but I'm pretty sure that anyone can do that. At the end of the day, though, I find the way most people choose to assign people to one or the other label to be pretty much picking flies out of horses**t.

I'm a tourist or a traveler or whatever you want to call me.

Aduchamp1

Dictionary definitions are not often nuanced and, of course, there are multiple defintions as well which do not show relationships. Dictionaries are often just starting points.

Very much like the words tourist and traveler.

ira

I am a Traveler.

Everyone else is a mere tourist.

BigBlue

One of the great travel writers of our time, Peter Theroux, said that a traveler doesn't know where he is going and a tourist doesn't know where he's been.

DeborahAnn

Neither a tourist nor a traveler, I choose to be an Adventurer---as long as it doesn't involve snakes or bugs!!! Deborah

weber6560

"a traveler doesn't know where he is going and a tourist doesn't know where he's been" - Theroux. Well said bigBlue!

danon

"and a tourist doesn't know where he's been""

Balls!

BigBlue

First, in a senior moment, I said Peter Theroux and not Paul which it is. Second, I agree with Danon and call to mind an acquaintance of ours who knows my wife and I travel constantly. He, on the other hand, abhors travel and has probably never been outside the US except for Canada (he lives on Long Island). We were visiting him and his wife, a high school classmate of my wife, and discussing a particular spot to which my wife and I had been.

When my wife and I had trouble recalling the name of the town where a particular incident has occurred, our host jumped all over that and said, "Ha, you're just tourists if you can't even remember where you've been." To this day, whenever my wife and I have difficulty recalling the specifics of a trip we blame it on the fact that we're just tourists. And, in total candor, even after visiting all 50 states and far more countries than states, we learn the most and get the maximum benefit from our trips when we put our tourists hats on and open our minds.

nytraveler, I'm with you. My wife's idea of roughing it is hotel without room service and mine is a television set without a remote control.

mr_go

They are merely two stops along a broad continuum...

Daytripper -> Sightseer -> Tourist -> Traveler -> Voyager -> Adventurer -> Sojourner

LucieV

Paul Theroux is not somebody whose observations I would quote about anything. Talk about a pompous a$$. He can write, I'll give him that: he's just a jerk.

PRLCH

What is the difference? TIME! A tourist visits 10 cities in 14 days racing from sight to sight. A traveller visits one or two in 14 days - he sees some sights, but he "feels" the city...... shops with the locals, eats where locals eats, and finds the soul of the destination.

maitaitom

I asked Tracy, "If I sit at the Buza Bar for four wonderful hours gazing out at the lovely Adriatic as the sun sets, all the while waxing poetic about this incredible place, does that make me a Traveler or A Tourist?"

Tracy replied, "I think it makes you a drunk."

Luisah

What happened to the posts between Ira's at 10:19 and BigBlue's at 1:53 pm?

I wrote one during that time in which I agreed with the definition Isabel posted:

tourist: one that makes a tour for pleasure or culture
traveler: one that goes on a trip or journey

I gave a couple of examples of writers (Theroux and Matthissen (sp?) whom I consider "travelers" and wrote that although I've taken a variety of transportation and stayed in a range of accommodations, I consider myself a tourist since I travel for pleasure or culture. How I travel has depended upon my budget but it's always been for pleasure.

I assume there was more than one post wiped out in those three plus hours and am wondering why the editors struck.

Until this thread, I didn't give much thought to putting a label on my travel style and .

colduphere

I have never even felt the soul of the city I live in (for 46 years). Is there a trick to feeling souls? I figure I have 20 years of travelling/touristing/sightseeing/daytripping left to feel a lot of souls.

Luisah

I asked Tracy, "If I sit at the Buza Bar for four wonderful hours gazing out at the lovely Adriatic as the sun sets, all the while waxing poetic about this incredible place, does that make me a Traveler or A Tourist?"

Tracy replied, "I think it makes you a drunk."

LOL. Thanks, I think I like Tracy.

Judy

Luisah, I am a drunk as well. My children know that some of my ashes are to be flung into the Adriatic from the Buza Bar!!

specs

I just read a review of a book on British travel writing during the 20s and 30s. It is the author's opinion that since the 1930s "travel" has degenerated into "tourism".

Apparently, those of you who rubbed elbows with the "smart set" in Antibes, shared gin and tonics with Lord Berners in Rome, and travelled up the Amazon with Waugh are the only ones entitled to the honorific title of traveller.

The rest of us are degenerate tourists (no doubt rubber necking our way thru Europe whilst wearing large white athletic shoes).