There’s no industry spared from the perils of our dangerously warming planet—and travel is no exception. Not only are popular destinations being walloped by extreme heat, wildfires, and flooding, but also tourism, including air travel, contributes mightily to the problem. Gisela Williams is a freelance journalist based in Europe who writes about places where sustainability and community meet culture, art, and design. As a contributing editor to T Magazine, Travel + Leisure, and Harper’s Bazaar US who also writes frequently for the Financial Times, she has a front row seat to the nuances of modern tourism.
“Travel for travel’s sake—flying halfway across the world to sit by a pool—does not make sense anymore,” she says. Gisela has made personal shifts in how she travels—preferring to report stories from her desk mostly and to take the train, not planes, when possible, though, she notes, there has been some advancement in terms of air travel with sustainable aviation fuels and hydrogen-powered aircraft.
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Despite record temperatures and magical destinations decimated by tourism, Gisela believes in the power of travel. She notes it can even inspire people to take on the climate crisis—for example, witnessing single-use plastics polluting marine environments. “If you are benefiting a community that needs it or someone—an innovator, artisan, environmentalist—that deserves it, then I think it can be worth it. Traveling to learn about and understand the world outside one’s bubble is helpful and worthwhile,” she says. Here’s more on what Gisela thinks about travel writing in this tenuous moment of global warming.
Photo courtesy of Gisela Williams.
How does someone become a travel writer? Or is it always a unique path?
In college, I had an incredible professor who suggested I go to Bali, Indonesia, for my semester abroad instead of Paris. That experience—learning Indonesian, living with a Balinese family, and experiencing firsthand the incredible culture of Balinese Hinduism, a fascinating mix of animism and ancestor worship, was life changing and shaped the way I see the world and the stories I like to tell. We could all learn from how the Balinese live. Unfortunately, what everyone thinks is Bali at the moment is a destructive construct created by Western expats and obscures the actual living culture of the Balinese.
After graduation, I worked in New York City for magazines, like Interview and Allure, as an assistant and in the fact-checking department. I am glad I learned about journalism through being a fact checker; it was so much more of a realistic training than going to graduate school. It made me understand how to and how important it is to verify your facts and to recognize what a real source is. In the early 2000s, I moved to Madrid, Spain, and then from there to Germany, becoming a freelancer and reporting for several magazines from Europe. It was good timing because at that time publications were starting not to send people from New York to Europe to report a story—for financial reasons. But it also made sense in terms of carbon footprint.
Has the climate crisis changed how you write about travel? Do other travel writers take climate into account?
Obviously travel, specifically air travel, is a big producer of carbon. Hotels can produce tons of waste. I like to write stories that give examples of people who are trying to solve those issues. Like a piece I wrote for Departures magazine about how hospitality innovators on Bali are trying to reduce plastic waste or featuring properties that are regenerating land and landscapes. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of travel writing that is not taking in the climate crisis … although there are some who focus on it. I look at sustainable travel from the point of view of someone who really still believes in travel and its importance but thinks it should be really considered and measured.
In your work, what are your typical battles about climate? What are the roadblocks that come up with assigning editors? How do you thread the needle?
One thing you won’t find me doing is writing about places like Mykonos or St. Tropez or Tulum—places that have in many ways been destroyed by tourism. There are now many communities protesting about the number of tourists crowding their streets and beaches and public transport. I do think the most effective way for locals to deal with that is to change local legislation, like shutting down Airbnb and fighting cruise ships.
I almost never write about big cruises. When I have, it was to cover one that was highly efficient. I write about independent hotels rather than big chains. I plant trees at my parents’ house in Connecticut every year to make up for some of my carbon footprint. I try to write about places and people that might help raise someone’s awareness about how the way you travel can be transformative and inspiring. I think the world would be a more healthy place without airplane and cruise travel, but at the same time, I think certain inspiration and thoughtful journeys are worth their carbon footprint.
Why is travel writing necessary?
To inspire and spark thought, to push people to leave their phones and explore the world so they know it is worth protecting, to give readers honest information about what they should experience and why. Instagram influencers are mostly promoting trips they get for free; real journalists work to give honest and trustworthy information in order to write with freedom about original, noncommercial, and independent ideas and visionaries.