Should We Warn Tourists of Danger?

After decades of work in the travel industry, death no longer surprises me.

There is no shock over honeymooners falling off a cliff at the Grand Canyon pursuing the perfect selfie. I cannot muster anger for the driver pulling a boat who makes an impulsive left from the right lane. It is Labor Day at Lake Mead, after all, and his kids are in the back.

Families believe “vacation" means ceasing all work, including efforts to insure their own safety. To millions of visitors, a boat trip is an attraction, it is as safe as taking a voyage on the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland.

Officials realize this misconception exists, but little effort is made to change the traveling public’s mind. It is a delicate balance between warning of potential danger and discouraging visitation. Tourism is the economic lifeblood of a region.

The hundreds of glossy brochures and slick photographic guides may pay lip service to “staying safe." Few talk about the inherent dangers of the National Parks and the number of people who die.

When deaths are published, the public relations machinery swings into gear blaming the unnamed accident victim. It is always a careless accident while offering exoneration for the Park Service, an agency tirelessly doing their best to keep stupid tourists safe.

But are they?

Travel Encourages Narcissism

As a travel writer, revealing the dark side of tourism is a hollow confession of hypocrisy. It will be condemned as a betrayal on par with Judas throwing his 30 pieces of silver at the feet of the chief priests in the temple.

I earned a nice living participating in the creation of a fantasy which inadvertently told millions of visitors, “Come spend your money where it is magical and wonderful. You can’t die. You’re on vacation.”

Visitors’ reckless self-indulgence is encouraged by communities with a drive to foster a reputation as a welcoming place with friendly locals. It is another facet of insidious marketing to build an image tourism professionals desire, but it isn’t reality.

It is all a lie, and those who are complicit know this. The locals aren’t smiling. They are gritting their teeth.

Cultural norms are suspended, and a falseness takes over which says, “Yes, we adore your crazy antics. Have another beer.”

People who do not experience consequences for their behavior rarely develop self restraint, and this includes tourists.

We see examples of this narcissism in popular culture as well as business. It manifests in the celebrity who self destructs with a substance-fueled meltdown after crashing their Bentley. The public wonders why no one simply took away their keys and called a limo. Their career ends with a reality show documenting their stint in rehab.

This narcissism is a comorbid condition of corporate sociopathy. It is the alcoholic boss who slurs his presentation to an important client while his subordinates grimace and cringe their way through the fiasco. When no one calls out the company owner for their inappropriate drunkenness, the narcissist views their behavior as endearing or at worst, merely an eccentricity.

The same narcissism takes over when tourists vacation and no expectation of acceptable behavior exists out of a fear of discouraging their spending. In the quest to become a destination, locals and officials inadvertently encourage dangerous and destructive behavior.

It is a Park, After All

We call our rugged wilderness areas America’s National Parks, evoking images of carefully landscaped nature preserves similar to gardens. It sounds as if we are one step away from a golf course. Then trails are paved, signs are erected and we market programs like “nature talks" which create this sort of sedate, wholesome educational experience.

Those aren’t cops with guns, they are Park Rangers. An unmaintained dirt road into the last mapped portion of the US isn’t called Desolation Route, but Scenic Byway 12. It is all carefully crafted in the semantics of an illusion.

We invite millions of Europeans to visit these untamed places, people who live in areas where such vast expanses of wilderness bigger than their home city have not existed for centuries.

Many are only vaguely aware of our roaming mountain lions and grizzly bears in search of a snack. When any danger is acknowledged, it becomes part of the romance of the American West, cut from the same cloth as the Hollywood images of swaggering cowboys and savages, the cast of extras in the theater of tourism.

It is difficult to communicate to a traveler in Amsterdam that on any given day outside my door, there may be coyotes, bobcat or javelina, a type of wild boar with sharp tusks and a bad disposition. This is not a wilderness area or a National Park, but an urban city located in some 200 square miles in the American southwest.

We express surprise when those same Dutch visitors later die on a hike in 110F temperatures because they did not understand the need for a gallon of water. I don’t venture outside my condo without it. We don’t ever hike in summer, but no one tells the tourists not to do so.

We won’t tell them about the 1,600 people who have disappeared from these areas. Officials will cite the numbers as a mere fraction of the visitors to our parks, as if the death of such a few people is an acceptable loss. The statistics are presented as a ratio, “Only one death per 3 million visitors” as a way for the public to frame it as low odds of dying.

This creates a situation where any negativity is concealed, hidden away, and potentially unsafe conditions are downplayed. Over-confident and unaware, the visitor is needlessly exposed to danger.

The desire to of officials keep tourist dollars flowing outweighs their sense of responsibility to protect those who spend them.