Who among us doesn’t like the idea of a vacation? And more specifically, travel to a vacation destination?

I love where I live — a small resort town that in itself is a vacation destination for other people. But for six months out of the year, it can potentially be gray and slushy, and that’s when I want to go to more exotic destinations. Not exactly as a tourist — I went to Tulum, Mexico, this last winter, and I had a hard time staying in the tourist spots and doing the tourist things there. I infinitely preferred Cuba, where I had to fake my way through conversations with locals, navigate power outages and pay cash for everything.

Because if there’s one thing tourists hate, it’s other tourists clogging up the view and making everything just like back home. Of course, if there’s another thing tourists hate, it’s being lost and uncomfortable in unfamiliar territory. So it’s a fine balance.

The linguistic theory of how to attract tourists by alluding to novel, authentic luxury is something Anna Maya Tomala covers in her article on touristic discourse and Fiji. Other articles cover more practical, on-the-ground realities of travel and tourism localization: expanding digital markets, the need to constantly update, the realities of user feedback. Yasin Steiert outlines the emerging market of medical tourism. Angela Sasso takes a different approach by casting the globe-trotting professionals who have to uproot frequently as a new kind of tourist class.