THE WORLD IS A BOOK: WE MUST KEEP READING

Of all that I’ve learned through a life shaped by the power travel, one truth stands out: at its best, travel makes us better people.

It asks us to step beyond the borders of our familiar and engage with the world as it is; layered, complex, often confronting and yet deeply interconnected. It reveals that the common threads of humanity, our hopes, our fears, and our desire for dignity can far outweigh the differences we so often allow to divide us.

To taste unfamiliar foods. To navigate unspoken customs. To hear a language not our own. These aren’t just passing experiences. They’re lessons in humility. Travel teaches us to observe before judging, to listen before speaking, to recognise that our way is not the only way. A passport then not simply a document, it’s a key. A silent emblem of possibility.

And people are moving more than ever. In 1995, just 8% of Americans planned to travel abroad within six months. By 2023, that number had more than doubled. In 2024, international arrivals hit nearly 1.4 billion, returning to near pre-pandemic levels. Critically, travel contributed $10.9 trillion to the global economy, equating to 10% of global GDP and supported 357 million jobs, or one in every ten worldwide. In 2025, that’s expected to grow to $11.7 trillion and 371 million job, and international visitor spending projected to exceed US $2.1 trillion.

These aren’t abstract numbers. They reflect livelihoods through which families, communities, economies are building on the promise of people moving, connecting across borders.

And yet, increasingly, this ideal is under threat.

Over the same years, isolationist and nationalist politics have surged. The U.S. twice elected a president who championed walls over bridges. Germany, one of the world’s most mobile nations saw the far-right AfD rise to become its second-largest political force. In Austria, where over 76% of citizens travelled abroad in 2024, nationalism now dominates. Britain chose Brexit. Italy, Poland, even parts of Asia all have turned inward, despite rich histories of outward exploration.

Even the unprecedented movement of Chinese students and tourists to the West has done little to soothe the friction between East and West.

What does this tell us?

Perhaps Mark Twain was too optimistic when he wrote, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”. The modern world is proving him not entirely wrong, but incomplete.

For years, I too believed that more exposure would lead to greater empathy. That seeing more would mean understanding more. That a window to the world would soften hardened hearts. 

But the headlines and the geopolitical realities tell a different story. Prejudice has not faded. In many places, it has deepened.

One part of the problem is the difference between tourism and migration. Tourists visit. Their presence is fleeting. Migrants stay. They live, work, and raise families. It is not the passer-through who provokes anxiety but the unfamiliar that becomes permanent. A foreign language in the queue at the pharmacy. A prayer call echoing in the suburb. These are the differences populist leaders exploit, spinning discomfort into division.

And yet, such resistance is not only narrow, but also perilously shortsighted.

In ageing societies with declining birth rates, immigration is not a burden. It is a lifeline. Germany needs 260,000 new immigrants a year to sustain its workforce. Immigrants in the U.S. contribute nearly 17% of GDP and helped build nearly half of the Fortune 500. Migration is not a threat to economic prosperity; it is often its foundation. 

Migration therefore isn’t a threat. It’s a lifeline. Without migration, sectors from healthcare to hospitality will begin to break down.

There is, too, a more uncomfortable truth. Those who travel are often already predisposed to openness. The cosmopolitan classes fly far, stay long, and reaffirm a worldview they already hold. Meanwhile, those whose perspectives may benefit most from new exposure are least likely to travel or do so within insulated bubbles: consuming the familiar, avoiding the unfamiliar, and returning with little changed.

Sometimes, instead of challenging bias, travel reinforces it. A single negative experience becomes a sweeping generalisation. A frustrating experience becomes proof. And in the age of social media, these micro-moments metastasise into collective judgement. Whole nations, whole cultures, become caricatures reduced to hashtags.

In those instants, travel ceases to be a bridge and becomes a mirror, reflecting not the world, but our own biases.

And as the world has grown more unsettled, through pandemics, wars, and rising geopolitical polarization, travel has taken on a new and heavier emotional weight. I now hear far too often, “I’d love to go there, but I’m not sure I’d be welcome,” or worse, “They won’t treat me well because of where I’m from.” But a newer, more insidious fear has also emerged: the once unthinkable worry of being arrested or detained, not for breaking a law, but for something posted online, written years ago, or said in a different context entirely. 

In a world where surveillance stretches across borders and dissent is increasingly criminalised, the boundary between freedom and risk has blurred. It’s no longer just about visas or language barriers. It’s about safety in the digital age, how identity, nationality, and even past opinions can become vulnerabilities. Such fears are reshaping not just where people go, but whether they go at all.

And just as political and social anxieties tighten around travel, another force is reshaping the journey, less visible at a border checkpoint, but no less consequential.

Climate change is redrawing the map of global tourism.

Southern Europe, once the Northern Hemisphere’s summer paradise, is burning. Across Spain, Italy, Greece, and France, rising seas, choking heat, deadly floods, and wildfires have transformed dream destinations into danger zones. In 2024, entire regions became nearly unlivable for both locals and visitors. This past June, as temperatures once again shattered records, experts warned that the next heatwave would arrive before the damage of the last had even been repaired.

The sun is no longer a symbol of holiday. It’s an adversary, burning away the future of both communities and economies.

Cities and towns once filled with tourists are being forced to adapt, not to push tourism away, but to redesign it. Smarter, more sustainable, more humane. Because a decimated tourism industry doesn’t just reduce foot traffic. It collapses livelihoods.

So yes, we must think differently now. In how we travel. In how we welcome. In how we plan for the future.

Because even with its imperfections, travel still matters. Not because it guarantees understanding. Not because every trip is transformative. But because face-to-face encounters with difference are still one of the last powerful tools we have to change minds and hearts; to learn from each other, to trade ideas, to find common ground in solving problems that no nation can face alone. In a world tangled in complex, urgent challenges, from displacement to climate disruption, connection is not a luxury. It’s a necessity.

Travel won’t save the world. It won’t reverse rising seas or dismantle authoritarianism. But it can humble us. It can remind us how little we know, how much we share, and how deeply we need one another. And in that humility lies the seed of something better, not just personal growth, but the quiet beginnings of collective change.

Let’s therefore not fall for the cynicism that says travel does nothing. There is immense value in movement, in curiosity, in choosing discomfort over complacency. Even when change is slow or incomplete, it is still real. It’s not just personal, it’s structural. It keeps entire nations afloat.

So perhaps the lesson is this: Travel is not a cure. But it is a catalyst. It opens. It softens. It challenges. And sometimes, it changes.

So, I turn not to Twain, but rather to St. Augustine:

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”

Don’t give up on travel. Keep reading. Keep turning the pages.

Travel not with certainty, but with humility. Not with expectation, but with openness.

Because even if travel can’t change the world on its own, it can still change us. And that may be how the world, slowly, bravely, begins to change too.