Resident Tourists - Watch Out for this Trend

This will be something new, yet starting to be quite prevalent in the travel industry. And before writing this piece, I google and bing searched whether the terminolgy already exists as regards the topic of tourism. And it actually does. Well, sort of. One would be about a book that is totally unrelated to the topic of tourism, while the other is all about resident and tourist relationship which is a mile away from this topic.

To get to the point this early, the concept of resident tourism is all about tourists who stay for long periods of time and try to behave like the locals. They come into the destination as tourists but acting like one would just be a by-product of their primary purpose of travel, which is to live or spend a good amount of their existence in an environment they prefer.

One could argue that it is nothing but a digital nomad where individuals who have online jobs and businesses would opt to change locations as they follow their wanderlust. But that’s where the similarity ends. A resident tourist may also be a digital nomad, but he can also be a retiree, a student, or a financially stable individual who cannot be burdened by the need to hustle while on travel.

Try to imagine your recently-graduated daughter who plans to stay in Singapore or South Korea for many months without any intention of finding a job. She would just want to savor the convenience of existing or take in the ambience of her desired “temporary residence.” Many like her from other countries would use the excuse of studying the local language or culture to justify their travel. I see you grinning!

Or you may have recently-retired relatives who realized that they don’t have to leave all their hard-earned wealth to their kids when they die and decided instead to live most of their remaining years in a place like Tokyo or somewhere in Europe, renting a condo and eating out like the locals, then moving on to other places when the visas are maxed out. This trend has become a reality because of the convenience of both international and internal travel (hello, Uber and Grab! Oh, and hello also to subways, trains and reliable buses and taxis) and how affordable it has become now to rent airBnB and condo units on a long-term basis.

So if you encounter foreigners who speak decent local language and have sort of adapted to the nuances and indigenous cultural quirks, chances are, you may be looking at a resident tourist. And they are increasing in numbers.

What is the significance of identifying this relatively new (i say relatively because it has been existing but not really recognized for decades) travel market? A lot. They have their own sets of needs that are more in tune with the needs of the locals, like they have become part of the organic population without the privileges of state-subsidized social services. The way they travel would hardly be noticeable as they would hardly contribute momentum to passenger turn-overs. But they do, actually… only that they stay in the shadows of the local commuters. However, they can provide good manna to local service providers such as restaurants and goods sellers as resident tourists tend to spend more and with higher frequency than the locals.

Watch out for this resident tourist travel market, they may influence the overall development of a country down to a far-off community.