In the genre of the “documentary exposé” – following the tradition of Cowspiracy and An Inconvenient Truth – it’s now travel’s turn to go under the lens for a critical review.
*There are scenes of budgie smuggling and an elephant being beaten until it performs as for-profit orphanages offer backdrops to the holiday photos of Western “voluntourists”. “I don’t like to see things in that way,” he says. However he agrees plenty of companies lean into villainising and alienating groups for profit. When you go to these compound resorts they tell you ‘outside these gates the natives are restless, so don’t leave the resort’. It drives all the revenues back into the all inclusive.”“There are tensions when you have thousands of people living in luxury when outside a compound resort you don’t have clean drinking water.
Poon Tip’s outspoken attitudes towards commodity tourism and mass-market cruising have isolated him and G Adventures from the market, even though the film is not criticising a particular company but rather a whole way of travel.