Auf social media (facebook / instagram) poste ich in der Regel auf Englisch. Ich erlaube mir, hier den heutigen Post zu kopieren:
Good morning.
Fake or real?
Some of you might know, I was once working in advertisement business and this means, your job is to fake reality – make a product or service look a bit brighter, better, more useful or give it an image to catch custumers by the „me too“ effect.
My everyday life now – as a farmer and host – is quite the opposite. I feel it in my bones every evening, I see it in the outcome: No chance to fake this life. If I don’t care in summer to make hay for the donkeys, they’ll starve in winter. If I don’t make enough fire wood before winter comes, I will freeze. If I don’t water the vegetables, I will not harvest. If I don’t make fences, my dogs will be out and hunt the chicken of neighbours, if I don’t care for an energy supply backup, my frozen vegetables will be rotten whenever there’s power failure.
So, a question, which I ask myself on repeat is: how much „fake“ is allowed when offering services to tourists?
Language used in tourism mostly is „advertisement language“: „authentic experience“, „sustainable travelling“, „make vacation with friends“, „see the unadulterated village life“, „watch wildlife“…
Most of what is offered here in reality, doesn’t match the promise. As soon as you „prepare“ some special happenings, comfort, meetings with locals (or even deer or bears), it’s not an authentic experience anymore. Even a bathroom in the restored old farmhouse, which you made a holiday home, is not authentic.
When I look around, most service providers in tourism don’t care about, how far to go. They try to give the customer, whatever they desire. If tourists are used to have a TV in their bedroom – give them that. If tourists love to see the last horse waggons of Europe – offer them horse waggon rides. If tourists love to eat truffles, offer them truffle huntings and take care that they really find them – even in spring. If tourists want to see bears, you feed them on a place in the forest and offer bear watching. Who cares, that this will change their behavior and even make them become dangerous.
Travelling – for me – was always the idea of exploring. When ever everything is well prepared and adapted for tourists – it’s not worth going there anymore. So, a traveler is someone who is looking for „real“, a tourist is a consumer, he doesn’t have problems to get offered „fake“. They don’t even care, if something is really authentic or only named so.
What I’m trying is to keep the number of visitors small and selected. Those, who are really looking for authentic experiences, may only find them, when they are able and willing to „dive in“. For this, you have to bring time and openess. Those, who want to „just have a good time and take as many pictures as possible“, in reality get nothing. They are only going on with their daily practice to consume, earn money, consume, earn money, consume…
Many of my instagram posts are the attempt to tell „behind the scenes“ stories. There are real people, who do the job, real tasks, a real life. Have a deeper look!
And: Have a great day.
