The quiet shift from vacation to performance
It began with a sentence in the Wall Street Journal: an article about travelers returning from vacation exhausted. Not tired from work, but tired from travel itself.
“Overworked travelers seeking rejuvenation in retreats and tours that focus on connection and creativity.”
The words linger: overworked travelers.
How is that possible? Travel is supposed to be the opposite of being overworked. It stands for freedom, adventure, discovery. It is what makes us pack our bags weeks in advance with anticipation.
And yet, for a growing group of people, it seems to have become exactly what it was meant to escape: a form of performance.
A vacation increasingly resembles an itinerary. A sequence of experiences that are not only lived, but must be optimized. A route to be efficiently completed, with highlights that must not be missed.
And somewhere along the way, the space that once made travel meaningful disappears: the unexpected, the slow, the empty.
From experience to performance
The curated itinerary
Holidays are becoming more tightly planned, more intense, and more optimized. A city trip to Barcelona or Rome is no longer a moment of rest, but a carefully curated three-day program in which as much as possible must be achieved.
The rise of the experience economy only reinforces this. Travel is no longer just about moving or staying somewhere, but about collecting: special moments, unique activities, perfect images. What matters is not only where you are, but what you can show you have done.
Social media accelerates this process. Travel is not only experienced but also narrated through images. This creates a subtle pressure to constantly do something remarkable. Silence and stillness disappear from view — and often from the experience itself.
The paradox of modern freedom
Productivity without borders
Here lies a paradox. Precisely because travel has become so accessible and free, it has become harder to truly rest. We carry the logic of productivity with us wherever we go.
The result is a vacation that feels more like a project than recovery: a succession of impressions that, however beautiful, leave little room to truly land.
A counter-movement
Slowness as resistance
At the same time, a clear counter-movement is emerging. Slow travel, walking holidays, nature retreats, and places of silence are gaining popularity. Not because people want to experience less, but because they want to experience differently.
There is a renewed appreciation for emptiness, for slowness, for not knowing. For travel that is not about ticking off places, but about reconnecting with oneself and the surrounding world.
This also aligns with the growing thinking around regenerative tourism: travel not as consumption of places, but as a way to restore connection — with landscape, community, and time.
Perhaps the real question is not how much we can see in a short time, but what we are still able to experience when nothing is required of us.Travel was once a form of escape. Perhaps it is becoming, once again, a form of return.
Not to home, but to a slower way of seeing.
And perhaps that begins not with traveling further, but with needing less while on the way.
Also interesting
Rotterdam: Not Perfect, Just Real
Ellen Beekmans’ Hidden Gems: A Dutch Experience (ADE) of Style, Art and Slow Travel
Four Dream Weekends in One: My Perfect Dutch Escape
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