Mindful travel should be more than mere transactions

“The main mistake made by pro-tourist planners is that they see tourism only in traditional economic terms as a new kind of industry (it is called the tourist industry) and they try to build tourist factories, called ‘resorts’ and ‘amusement parks’, through which people are run assembly-line fashion and stripped of their money. Some Caribbean resorts come close to imprisoning their visitors by making a trip to town almost impossible to arrange or even more prohibitively expensive than the inflated charges for services within the resort compound. This kind of tourism is exploitation on both sides: the tourist gets little for his money and the local people do not see the money that is generated.”
–Dean MacCannell, The Tourist (1976)