Paige McClanahan Redefines Travel: Embracing the New Tourist

Join us for an enlightening conversation with Paige McClanahan, a New York Times travel writer and author of the upcoming book "The New Tourist". We dive into Paige's journey from a travel guidebook writer to a trailblazing voice in the travel industry, as she shares her vision for transforming tourism into a force for good. Discover how embracing the mindset of a "new tourist" can lead to more meaningful, sustainable, and enriching travel experiences, and learn practical tips for making genuine human connections on your adventures. Get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about travel!

Discussed in this Episode:

• Paige's early career writing the Bradt Guide to Sierra Leone

• The evolution of tourism over the past 50 years

• The concept of the "new tourist" vs the "old tourist"

• Sustainability and stewardship of travel destinations

• Making genuine human connections through travel

• Hiring local guides to gain unique perspectives

• Paige's eye-opening experiences in Saudi Arabia and Hawaii

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Welcome to No Tourists Allowed, a podcast where two recognized travel industry executives with a combined 71 years on the inside of travel and technology give up their secrets to the thing everyone wants to do: travel better, pay less, and see more of the world. Here are your hosts, Mike Putman and James Ferrara.

Mike Putman: Good day, everyone. I'm Mike Putman.

James Ferrara: And I'm James Ferrara. Seventy of those years of experience are Mike Putman's. Just one is mine. But it has been quite the journey and I look forward to even more journey coming up.

You know, Mike, we've had some great episodes this season. We have some great ones coming up, but I would say I have been most excited about this one because we have a very special guest with us this week.

I say that because I think that we're simpatico. In a lot of ways, we are thinking about some of the same things in travel and I think that we're trying to impart some of the same thinking and advice to our respective audiences.

It's really cool to have somebody visit with us who is related in the way she thinks about travel. At least I hope so. I think maybe we are paying ourselves a compliment by claiming that.

Mike Putman: I would say related in travel spirit, just from reading about Paige. I think we're pretty much aligned.

Let's welcome Paige McClanahan, a travel writer, a New York Times travel writer, now a new book author, a host of a podcast, and an all-around very interesting person in the travel space. Paige, welcome. Thank you for being with us.

Paige McClanahan: Thank you so much for having me. I am so delighted to connect with you guys. And yeah, I think you're right. I think we are kindred spirits on this topic. So I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Rapid-Fire Travel Questions

James Ferrara: Good. Now we have a tradition here where Mike treats our guests to a short rapid-fire series of questions about your personal travel preferences. It's a way for our audience and us to get to know you and for all of us to warm up a little bit. With your permission, I'm going to turn it over to the maestro.

Mike Putman: Thank you. I'm excited. I won't get too personal with the travel questions, but first of all Paige, where are you coming in from today?

Paige McClanahan: I am at home in Paris, France right now.

Mike Putman: You don't have a French dialect though. You had to be from the States somewhere, right?

Paige McClanahan: I am very much American. I grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but I haven't lived in the United States since 2008. I've been an American abroad, bouncing around to various places. Sixteen years ago this month I left the United States.

Mike Putman: Fellow Carolinian! I'm in South Carolina.

Paige McClanahan: Nice. Whereabouts in South Carolina?

Mike Putman: I live in Greenville.

Paige McClanahan: Okay. I grew up in Chapel Hill, but I have a cousin who lives in Greenville.

James Ferrara: All right. Well, shout out to the New Yorkers, please. Thank you very much.

Mike Putman: Paige, I'm going to ask you just a few rapid-fire questions. If you just give us the first thing that comes to your mind, and if you want to share why, that's okay. What is your favorite hotel brand or individual property and why might that be?

Paige McClanahan: Oh my gosh, that's a really good one. I probably have to go with individual. Let me think of another one. Where is it?

There was a gorgeous little architect hotel in Barcelona where I stayed when I was there reporting for a story. It was beautiful and recommended by a local architect and urban planner. It had this beautiful rooftop bar, but I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, so I probably shouldn't say that one.

It becomes difficult for those of us who travel so much, right? I'll go with a very famous hotel in Chamonix, France, which is not far from where I used to live in the French Alps. It's the Hameau Albert 1er, which is very chic. They have a very nice spa and dining room and it's right there below Mont Blanc. If you want a chic hotel experience in the Alps, you can't go wrong with the Hameau Albert 1er in Chamonix.

Mike Putman: We'll have to write that one down. What's your favorite destination and is there something you like to do there, like an activity or an authentic restaurant?

Paige McClanahan: My favorite place that I've been to in the last couple of years is actually—and this is going to be maybe a little bit surprising—Liverpool, England. I was there to report for the book last summer and I went in with very low expectations.

I was so impressed by the city, the people, the vibrancy, the cultural scene, the music scene, and the museums. It's just really up and coming. I was there during beautiful summer weather and I met some really fascinating and friendly people. It really captured my heart and my interest. I would love to go back to Liverpool.

Mike Putman: Got a great football team there in Liverpool as well.

Paige McClanahan: A couple of them, actually. But you know, pick your side carefully.

Mike Putman: Very true. Now when you fly, do you like an aisle seat or a window seat?

Paige McClanahan: Typically I have to go for the window seat because I want to see everything that's happening outside.

Mike Putman: All right, and the last question, which divides our audience in half: are you a carry-on or a checked luggage person?

Paige McClanahan: A thousand percent carry-on only. Even when I travel with my kids, we'll each have a little carry-on bag when going away for a couple of weeks. Between the three of us, that's enough to get by on.

The hassle of carrying it, and then you have to pay... I'm taking my two daughters to Paris in July and then we're going up to Germany so they can see Taylor Swift and then back to London. We're going to be moving around a good bit, but I told them: carry on or you're not going.

Paige McClanahan: It's totally doable. Taylor Swift was here in Paris just these last few days. I had dinner last night with a woman who came all the way from San Francisco to watch Taylor Swift two nights in a row. I was very impressed.

James Ferrara: When I die, I want to come back as one of Mike's kids. We debate the carry-on vs. checked luggage thing here every episode. All I want to say is it's all well and good until you're a man with a size twelve foot and you have to bring a couple of pairs of shoes to go with your business suits.

Paige McClanahan: Shoes are the challenge. Especially in winter when you're going somewhere with snow and you need real shoes.

Redefining Travel in "The New Tourist"

James Ferrara: We're really here to talk about some more substantive things. You just completed a book that is due out June 18th called The New Tourist. This is just more evidence that we're somehow connected because we are No Tourists Allowed and you've got The New Tourist. Tell us about the book, Paige.

Paige McClanahan: Thank you so much for your interest. I'm so excited to share this book with the world. The idea really came from the fact that six years ago I moved to a little village in the French Alps with my family. This little village is entirely dependent on tourism.

I had been a travel writer and a journalist who reported on economic and political issues, but I had never taken that journalistic lens and applied it to the world of travel and tourism. Living in this place and seeing how tourism gave life to this whole community was the basis of the economy and the social scene. It's the reason why there's a big grocery store, a skating rink, and a movie theater in town. It really captured my attention.

As a resident of this tourist destination, I also saw the downsides of having a huge number of people come in and then leave. The challenges with crowds, parking, and things kind of overflowing sometimes.

I started asking questions and looking around me more. I had a good relationship with my editor at the New York Times and I started pitching more stories exploring tourism, not necessarily from a critical perspective, but from a questioning perspective. I was really appreciating tourism for the enormous social, economic, cultural, and political force that it is.

I started writing stories about places like Barcelona, Pompeii, and Mont Blanc in Chamonix. My interest just snowballed and I found that the writing I was doing for a newspaper wasn't as in-depth as I wanted it to be.

I got the idea for a book where I could go in-depth and help readers appreciate that tourism is such a powerful force. It can be really positive, but it can also be really destructive if we don't get it right. I want to wake people up to the stakes of what we do when we explore the world and help us navigate these questions in a more constructive way.

James Ferrara: I think it's important that our listeners know what a qualified writer you are on this subject because you have a history of writing really thoughtful articles about travel for the New York Times and elsewhere. Who is this new tourist and how should we act?

Paige McClanahan: I want to encourage people to explore the feelings they might have around the word "tourist" because it's complicated. I came up with this idea of a spectrum.

On one end of the spectrum, we have an "old tourist." The old tourist is somebody who sees the place they're visiting as purely there for their consumption. They want to tick off a box. They kind of close their minds to the fact that they might actually have an impact on the place they're visiting. They don't try to engage with the people they're visiting. It's a transactional, consumerist interaction.

On the other end of the spectrum is the "new tourist." This is where a lot of us really want to go. The new tourist is somebody who opens themselves up to the experience and opens their hearts and minds to be changed when they travel.

The new tourist is aware of and does their best to educate themselves about the impacts of their presence. They do research before they go and use that information to inform decisions in terms of what time of year they're going to go, what kind of place they're going to stay in, and how they're going to spend their money.

It's a mindset shift more than anything between the consumerist mindset and really being more of an explorer. I see this book as my best and biggest effort to really get to the land of the new tourist myself.

The History and Organization of the Book

James Ferrara: That really closely aligns with the virtues of this podcast. We refer to what you're calling the "new tourist" as travelers and what you're calling the "old tourist" as tourists. How did you organize the book?

Paige McClanahan: It took me a long time to figure out because it's such a huge topic. I wanted to start the book by placing readers in the current moment. How did we get here?

We flash back to the early 1970s. To tell the story of how we got from the 1970s, where international tourism was very low level, to where we are today, I tell the story of one company: Lonely Planet.

I tell the story of Tony and Maureen Wheeler and how they had their epic adventure across Europe and Asia and then produced a series of guidebooks that were basically a blueprint for the expansion of tourism.

Fifty years ago, if you wanted to travel around Thailand in the 1960s, the most recent guidebook written in English was published in 1928 or 1929. In South America, there was really very little information.

This group of baby boomers, starting with Tony and Maureen Wheeler, but also Hilary Bradt in the UK, Rick Steves in the US, and Mark Ellingham, who founded Rough Guides, really opened up the world to restless young people.

I tell the story of the rise, then the Lonely Planet effect, and then the shift to digital. After that, each chapter takes up a different question and draws on examples from different parts of the world. It's based around themes rather than places to keep it lively.

I also wanted to bring out the human element. I have a lot of real people who appear in the book who live in or work in areas affected by tourism. The final chapter responds to a very noted philosopher, Agnes Callard, who wrote an essay in the New Yorker called "The Case Against Travel."

I make the case that all of us staying home is not the answer. I finish with an epilogue that I hope touches people's hearts and offers a hopeful vision for the future.

Case Studies in Tourism: Iceland, Saudi Arabia, and Hawaii

James Ferrara: You mentioned Belfast in some of your articles. To me, that's a really good illustrative place. Mike and I were there recently and I was blown away by the architecture and how lovely the people were, yet it has such a troubled past. Now it's the city of peace. There is so much to be said about what we can leave behind as travelers in a positive way. Are there other specific places from the book you would share?

Paige McClanahan: For the New York Times, I did a story in Iceland where I sat down with Eliza Reid, the country's first lady. She has been a UN ambassador for tourism and was actually the editor of the in-flight magazine for Icelandair before her husband was elected president.

Iceland is a fascinating example. I write about a canyon in a remote corner of southern Iceland that was basically created as a tourist destination by social media and geolocation tags. Then Justin Bieber showed up with a film crew and filmed a music video there. Half a billion people watched it and the place gets a lot more visitors now. You have to have the infrastructure there to greet those people.

I also went to Saudi Arabia and write about this in the last chapter. I was actually pretty scared to go because I'd read about the country's human rights record. But I ended up having a very fascinating and eye-opening experience.

I write a lot about Hawaii, where my older sister has lived since 2003. Tourism is so integral to the state's economy, but there have been more issues in terms of resident support. I spent some time with a native Hawaiian guy named Kūʻike who was incredibly gracious to me but is very anti-tourism. He says all tourists should go home. I wanted to understand his perspective and relay that in a constructive way. Other chapters cover Amsterdam, Barcelona, Chamonix, and a little bit of Cambodia and Liverpool.

James Ferrara: Hawaii had a real sea change last year when the longtime visitors bureau contract was awarded for the first time to a native Hawaiian-owned company. That was a significant move. We talk about environmental sustainability, but there is also cultural sustainability—the stewardship of destinations.

The Journey into Travel Journalism

Mike Putman: What's your journey been like up to now? How did you get into travel writing and associated with the New York Times?

Paige McClanahan: My very first travel writing gig was back in 2010. I was living in Sierra Leone, West Africa, working as a freelance journalist. I was hired to prepare the second edition of the Bradt Guide to Sierra Leone. I spent a year and a half traveling all over the country.

James mentioned Belfast earlier; Sierra Leone had a gruesome civil war in the 1990s. When I was there, the country had been at peace for more than a decade, but it was so hard to drum up interest in travel stories about that corner of the world.

After Sierra Leone, I lived in England and was writing for the travel section of the Washington Post while writing about economic stuff for The Guardian. I eventually started pitching the New York Times and my first piece was a "36 Hours" in Cardiff, Wales.

I saw the "fun stuff" and "serious journalism" as two different camps, and this book is really the merging of those two.

The Ultimate Travel Hack: Local Guides

Mike Putman: Is there a little hack maybe you could give to our audience to make travel easier or more memorable? James's hack is when he arrives at a hotel, he sends himself flowers.

James Ferrara: Everybody makes fun of me, but this is true. I don't like sterile hotel rooms. It warms things up a little bit.

Paige McClanahan: I might steal that one, James! My one piece of concrete travel advice would be to hire a local tour guide. Even if you're going to a European city that you're very comfortable navigating on your own, find a local guide with a specialty in history or culture.

Not only are you going to get that person's personal perspective, you'll also have the chance to build a human connection with someone who calls that place home. For me, the way of the new tourist is really looking to make a genuine human connection. If you're just hiding behind your guidebook or staring into your phone, it doesn't really give you a chance for a human interaction that might shift your mindset.

James Ferrara: Excellent advice. Our listeners know that last season we took them point by point through our manifesto here at No Tourists Allowed, and it included things like using local transportation, attempting to speak the language, and creating opportunities for human connections.

It's been wonderful having you with us, Paige. Your new book, The New Tourist, is out June 18th. We really appreciate you joining us.

Paige McClanahan: Thank you so much for having me. I am so happy to have connected with you guys.

Industry News: Luxury Air Travel for Dogs

Mike Putman: Wow, what an interesting guest Paige was. Hopefully we can have her back very soon.

One other piece of news I wanted to share is about a new service that is basically an airline for dogs, believe it or not. In their marketing, they say it's a real "white paw" experience. The name of the company is BARK Air.

They operate Gulfstream G5s out of Westchester in the New York City area and fly to London and Van Nuys. They have designed these flights so that the experience is as much about your dog as it is about yourself. This is going to be a high-cost, high-service option, but they put some really unique things in the service delivery for the dogs, including beverages like bone broth.

James Ferrara: Can I say that they are treating the dogs better than most airlines treat the people?

Mike Putman: Without a doubt. They have pheromones, lavender-scented refreshment towels, and other treats to help dogs get settled in.

Announcing the Jamaica Vacation Giveaway

James Ferrara: Well, we can have this as a goal, Mike, to be treated like a dog on BARK Air. Speaking of being treated with royalty, let's talk about the winners that are going to Jamaica on our giveaway.

Mike Putman: We know we're going to Jamaica. Last week I gave a hint that it's home to one of my favorite restaurants called Scotchie's, which is a roadside jerk center where they make jerk chicken.

James Ferrara: Is this a place where I over-ordered?

Mike Putman: Well, you could fill in any restaurant blank with where you've over-ordered! We are giving away a four-day, three-night, all-inclusive vacation for two in just a couple more weeks. Mike, where in Jamaica did your clue lead us?

Mike Putman: To Montego Bay, the capital of St. James. Flights from the U.S. land there, and you'll be picked up and transferred to your luxury resort. Everything is taken care of: meals, entertainment, and drinks.

There's still time to register. Go to notouristsaloud.com, click on the giveaway link, and give us your email address. You can also guess the mystery destination—which we just gave you—to get extra entries.

James Ferrara: If you know anyone who hasn't heard the podcast, maybe you'd like to introduce them. Share it with your friends. It was a great episode today with Paige McClanahan. Thank you for being here with us. Enter for the drawing, win that free vacation in Montego Bay, and come back with us next week.

Mike Putman: Thanks for listening to another episode of No Tourists Allowed. We'll see you next week.

No Tourists Allowed is produced by Podcast Studio X.