Let’s Be Honest

Two business travellers, stranded near Erbil.
Another who crossed a war zone for life-saving treatment unavailable at home.
I helped make those journeys happen—not because they were easy, but because they mattered.

This is what travel has become. Not a luxury. Not a holiday. But a negotiation with chaos.

As a travel professional and author based in South Africa, I’ve watched the joy of travel get slowly strangled. Visas have become gatekeeping tools, even in so-called visa-free zones. Systems change overnight, and routes vanish with the stroke of a politician’s pen.

My clients no longer dream of seeing the Statue of Liberty. They’re too busy battling bureaucracy and backlogs. The US used to be a bucket list. Now it’s a burden.

And it’s not just the US.

Thailand. The UK. Even Kenya. Countries once easy to move through now require digital fences: ETAs, ESTAs, biometric data, surveillance tracking. Welcome to modern travel—where every step is monitored, predicted, and sometimes denied.

Meanwhile, Europe prepares for summer. Protesters arm themselves with water guns. Elsewhere, real weapons remain locked and loaded. And the airlines? Qatar Airways recently compared current disruptions to the Covid era. They’re not exaggerating. This isn’t a delay—it’s a slow breakdown.

Let’s call it what it is:

Over-regulation. Fear-based politics. Surveillance culture.
And behind the headlines, symbolic acts once meant to unite us—like France’s gift of the Statue of Liberty—are losing meaning. If liberty ever stood for open arms and open skies, we’ve shut both.

This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about erosion.

Travel is being repackaged as “convenience,” but it’s more like control. Even platforms like X—once branded as tools of free speech—feed curated chaos. And while we laugh at Yetis camping in the woods (cheers, John Oliver, Season 12 Episode 16), the real system is breaking. Air traffic control? Strained to its core. Travel professionals? Still holding the whole mess together with sheer will and sticky tape.

And for what?

A beach with a bottomless buffet? A selfie spot that looks exactly like the influencer’s reel?  No.  We need better. We need different.

So here’s your invitation:

Share this. Talk about it. Travel with your eyes open.
Because even your safest holiday comes at a cost—and if we don’t start making purposeful choices, we may find we’ve travelled so far we can’t find our way home.