Why you should be careful about authenticity

If you have opened a travel article or blog in your browser, your must have bumped into this word at least once. Chances are that in your city or region, there is at least one travel agency that includes “authentic” in its name. This is certainly one of the most widely used adjectives in the tourism industry to attract customers.

Tourists and travellers are constantly in a quest for authentic places and experiences, but pre-packaged tours won’t always be enough to satisfy their thirst for authenticity. A steadily growing number of tourists and travellers need more than organized tours since they want to have a deep understanding of the culture of the country they are visiting.

One can argue that the perception of authenticity can differ from one person to another. Let me give you an example – you are in the northern highlands of No-Name-Country and you are curious to see how local communities live. You won’t have a hard time finding an agency that offers such a tour and can drive you to a nearby rural village to observe how the local families bake bread, breed their livestock or craft the iconic souvenir of that region (that you will be kindly pushed to buy at the end of the tour). Would you consider that as an authentic experience? You might, but I hope your answer to this question is No.*

Not that I have anything against travel agencies who offer such services or people who buy those tours, but the omnipresence of this word in travel materials made me think that we are probably overusing it – and here is why.

Let’s start from linguistics – the definition of authentic is ‘not false or copied, genuine, real’. By extension, something authentic is something pure, not contaminated by external influence.

And whether you like it or not, we live in a globalized world where it has become really challenging to find something truly authentic. There are very few places on earth that have not been explored by humans. There are very few people on this planet who have never been in contact with a member of another family, community, minority, village, city, province, country or continent. Presumably, even indigenous communities living in the most remote areas of this planet interact with other indigenous communities. Exchanges (even if purely commercial) are unavoidably a source of contamination, and usually imply a loss of authenticity. Although the word 'contamination' carries a somewhat negative connotation, I personally fancy the idea of contamination and I tend to view it as a source of enrichment, especially when it’s two or more cultures that get in contact.

To be more realistic, when I travel, I rather look for traditional places or experiences. Instead of authentic, our go-to word should indeed be "traditional". Where to find traditional experiences? Markets and worship places - what's more, they are free most of the time.

PS: If your answer is Yes, I hope this article will boost some reflection about the way we use words :)