Oxford Dictionaries (through a Google search) describes a tourist as ‘a person who is travelling or visiting a place for pleasure‘ ;

and a traveller is defined as ‘a person who is travelling or who often travels’.

Wikipedia defines a tourist as:

1.’someone who travels for pleasure rather than for business’; or

2.’one who visits a place or attends a social event out of curiosity, wanting to watch without commitment or involvement‘.

It describes a traveller as ‘one who travels, especially to distant lands‘.

I believe that when I’m en route to an exotic destination I’m a traveller and when I get there, I’m a tourist.

In this discovery of definitions, I was surprised by Wikipedia’s description of a tourist as:

‘one who visits a place …….. out of curiosity, wanting to watch without commitment or involvement’.  

This definition makes a tourist sound like a cold and indifferent individual, doesn’t it?  A far better description would be:

‘one who visits a place ……. out of curiosity, thereby increasing their knowledge, understanding and empathy by the observation of different spaces, places, faces and things’ .

Tourist or traveller? You decide.

’til next time…