Beyond the Holiday: What Travel Reveals About Us and Who We Really Are

What Travel Reveals About Us

Growing up in a busy tourist region, I saw early how visitors treated locals as inferior. In the 80s and 90s, Spain was seen as “poor.” Northern Europeans trashed terraces, littered beaches, started fights — some even committed sexual acts in public.

Over time, places like Magaluf in Palma de Mallorca, Benidorm in Alicante or Playa de Los Cristianos in Tenerife  became synonymous with excess. Young women walked through the streets in nothing but underwear. Teenagers drank to the point of collapse. And I always wondered: if you don’t do these things at home, why do them abroad?

Those images stayed with me. They made me question whether such behavior was just a holiday release — or whether travel reveals something deeper about who we really are.

If you asked most people, they’d say: I’m myself, always. The truth is, yes, we bring ourselves along — but often not our best selves.

Some travelers carry their baggage with them, including their titles, frustrations, and rigid expectations. When things don’t go according to plan, they blame the country and its people for “ruining” their holiday. Online reviews say it all: complaints about weather, food, or late buses. Yet none of these really control how we feel.

We generate those feelings within. Rain? Change plans — there’s always something to do indoors. A late bus? Explore where you’ve landed. If you stay open, you might discover there was a reason: something you were meant to see, do, or someone you were meant to meet.

Other travelers let ego take over. They feel superior because they’ve managed to afford a trip — whether to a cheap paradise or an expensive destination saved up for years. They look down on those who live there year-round, forgetting that true privilege is belonging, not visiting. Away from friends, they posture wealth while treating others as insignificant.

I even saw this in my grandmother. She wasn’t rich, yet on holidays she would act with the posture of nobility. Strangers might have believed she was born into privilege.

So who are we when we travel? I doubt those same people behaved with such disrespect back home. And it wasn’t only Spain — the same patterns appeared across the world, especially in Asia. For centuries, people have gone abroad to do what they wouldn’t dare at home.

And that made me wonder: do people still travel this way? Are some secretly traveling to reveal their “true” selves, too ashamed to show them at home?

In Mauritius I watched men and women performing sexuality for their phones. Was it for social media, or just to impress friends? Outfits were so revealing that those nearby looked visibly uncomfortable.

Why this sudden urge, since the rise of social media, to pose and strut as if the camera demanded a performance rather than presence?

Mauritius is 75% Hindu, a culture where modesty shapes daily life. I’ve seen local women enter the sea fully dressed, and right beside them, tourists strip down to almost nothing. That clash speaks more about us as travelers than about the culture we’ve entered.

Is this urge to let loose a way of becoming who we really are? Or are we simply performing for the algorithm?

Or perhaps our society demands so much of us that, when we finally escape, we abandon restraint altogether.

Yet travel does not always bring out the worst. I have also met people who changed profoundly on the road. For them, material possessions lost their grip. What mattered instead was connection — with people, with new cultures, and with themselves.

This shift allowed them to transform their lives. Many returned home as someone their families barely recognised — softer, freer, more aligned. I don’t think travel turned them into someone new. I think it uncovered who they had always been at the core, beneath layers of expectation.

Others never returned at all. They knew they no longer aligned with the place they were born, and chose to build lives elsewhere.

And now, with online work, more and more people live permanently in motion. Some seek true discovery. Others, perhaps, chase visibility — the curated “someone” they can become online.

But that leaves us with the same question: when we step outside the life we know, and no one is watching — who do we truly become?

Perhaps the answer lies in our biology. Neurologically, the brain craves novelty and even a touch of fear — it’s how we grow. Yet the same brain also fears the unknown, which is why many choose the safe comfort of all-inclusive hotels and guided tours. They remain tourists, sheltered and entertained. Travellers, by contrast, lean into uncertainty. They stay longer, learn the language, immerse themselves in culture, and their brains adapt — reshaping how they think, behave, and face challenges. These two paths lead to very different selves. 

Take Bali, for example. The tourist books a week in an all-inclusive resort in Nusa Dua, rarely stepping outside the hotel walls except for a guided day tour to “see the highlights.” Their experience is curated, safe, predictable. The traveller, meanwhile, rents a simple room in Ubud, learns a few words of Bahasa Indonesia, eats at warungs with locals, and stays long enough to feel the rhythm of daily ceremonies and the hum of the rice fields at dawn. 

The traveller will explore and experience parts of the island that the tourist doesn’t even know exist. 

Both stand on the same island, yet they carry home entirely different stories — one of entertainment, the other of transformation.

So when we ask, Who are we when we travel? Perhaps the answer lies in which part of our brain we choose to follow.