Transformative travel: A mobilities perspective

Physical travel has traditionally been viewed as an agent of transformation. The research conducted on this topic, however, is surprisingly narrow in scope. Few studies have attempted to look beyond a particular tourism/travel segment or discipline and most utilise a restricted range of methods and analysis. These investigations have also failed to consider the long-term impacts of corporeal travel and how changes continue to evolve over time. Drawing upon a holistic and interdisciplinary study of transformative travel, this article argues that in a mobile world, it becomes increasingly difficult for individuals to distance themselves from elements that maintain a particular way of thinking and acting. While a traveller may physically remove their body from a specific geographic location, contemporary and historic flows of people, ideas, information, objects, memories and symbols create mobile spaces, places, landscapes and identities, where both familiarity and difference abound. Transformation through physical travel becomes a complex social phenomenon.