Mass tourism is a con. We keep going back anyway.

Why mass tourism keeps winning, and what changes when you set down your suitcase somewhere else, in Provence.

Every summer, millions of travellers crowd onto the same beaches, queue in the same lines, and photograph the same monuments from behind a forest of outstretched phones. We know this. We complain about it. And the next year, we do it all over again.

What mass tourism is really selling

The true promise of mass tourism is not a place, it is a guarantee. A guarantee that the experience has already been vetted by others, that the photos will look right, that no one can fault the choice. Airbnb rated 4.9 stars. TripAdvisor number one in its category. 12,000 reviews. This pooling of taste pushes everyone toward the same destinations, the same restaurants, the same framings. Choice stops being an act of curiosity and becomes an act of conformity.

The paradox of packaged authenticity

Tourism operators have grasped the demand for authenticity perfectly, and turned it into a product. The typical village with its market staged for coach tours. The boutique hotel with locally themed decor ordered in bulk. The regional menu signed by a chef who arrived from Paris last season. Authenticity sells well. You recognise it by the fact that it costs more than the original.

The other path: accepting uncertainty

Bédarrides is not Gordes. No hilltop castle, no boutiques selling olive oil at 30 euros a bottle. A village that genuinely lives, a Wednesday market, the Ouvèze flowing down toward the Rhône, and the Golden Triangle within easy reach: Avignon, Orange, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, almost within cycling distance. Choosing here means choosing an anchor point rather than an attraction point. The setting does not make the journey. The pace you adopt within it does.

The tourist looks for what he already knows. The traveller looks for what he cannot yet name.