The Appeal of Mass Tourism in the Age of Authentic Travel

Although slipping into a local routine in a strange and foreign city has never been easier, most tourists are confounded by their basic need to know that they have indeed seen and experienced a place as they imagined. To discuss what draws a supposedly independent-minded traveler into the vortex of commercialism and parody that Times Square, Las Ramblas and Trafalgar represent, podcast host and Skift reporter Samantha Shankman and Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali sat down with Fred Dixon, CEO of NYC & Company, and Pegi Vail, an anthropologist at New York University.