Nomadic Spirit is a weekly newsletter for travelers who care as much about the why as the where.
In this issue
This week, our Dispatch takes on the phrase turning up in every European tourism office, “quality tourists,” and finds a tax code that quietly rewards the traveler who stays longer. In A Chosen Place, we make the case for Antigua, Guatemala, a city that decided fifty years ago what it would not become, and we take its safety question head-on. Our Vantage is an open letter to the European Travel Commission about the one thing its slogan gets wrong. In The Journey, reader Elaine Krugman packs a suitcase of swim caps for Iceland and finds that the country’s real town squares are its public pools. And Further Afield gathers five worth your time, from Spain saying the quiet part out loud to a book that could have been called The Thoughtful Traveler.
Dispatch
Where Travel and Life Intersect
Europe is looking for “Quality Tourists.” Stay Longer or Pay Up
New tourist taxes reward travelers who slow down. Here’s how to be one of them.
“We want quality tourists.”
Spain’s tourism ministry says so. Barcelona’s council says so while raising a levy. The European Parliament adopted a resolution this spring embracing many of the same ideas. The numbers tell the story. The European Travel Commission reports international arrivals to Europe rose 3.2 percent in 2025 while travel expenditure climbed 9.7 percent. Spain’s figures run the same way, spending rising far faster than visitor counts.
In practice, a quality tourist is one who spends more. No minister has to say it aloud, because the spreadsheets say it for them.
What this means for us
Here is the part worth a Nomadic Spirit reader’s attention. These policies reward slow, settled travel, the kind we’ve always made the case for. The traveler who settles into one place and takes her time comes out ahead under the new rules; the one racing between capitals pays for the privilege.
Understanding why turns a wave of new tourist taxes into something we can plan around instead of dread.
Read the tax code
Look at how the levies are built, and a clear pattern appears. In Barcelona, the tourist tax stops after the seventh night; the eighth is free, while a four-night stay is charged for every one. Venice’s access fee falls on day visitors and spares those who sleep in the city.
Book in October and the charges drop almost everywhere. A month in one small apartment is taxed less than four nights in each of three different cities.
Whatever officials say about spending, the rules themselves track something else. They tax speed. And they do it by design because a city’s costs and revenue do not come from the same place.
The expense of tourism comes with the tourist. Every visitor who steps off a ship or a plane draws on the same airport, the same streets, the same crowded square, the same afternoon at the same cathedral. What pays for it are the nights.
The cheapest visitor a city can serve is the one who unpacks, learns the bus route, and buys groceries at the corner shop. A tax that rewards the long stay is a city billing for what truly costs it money.
The tradeoff
We made this argument in the spring, in an issue titled “You’re Not Staying Long Enough.” The case then was about what a traveler gains: stay past the second week, and a place opens up, the market vendor knows your face, the trip becomes a life briefly lived somewhere.
That case still holds, and now it has a second leg. The tax code has priced the short trip and discounted the long one.
So take the discount. Where a levy stops after seven nights, book eight. Where a fee falls on day visitors, stay the night. Where the shoulder season is cheaper, go then. One base, one apartment, day trips outward.
The window is open now, and it will not stay open; Barcelona’s surcharge alone is set to climb toward eight euros a night by 2029.
Watch where the public money is heading, too. Brussels intends to steer visitors toward rural and mountain regions and is prepared to fund the effort, which amounts to an official forecast of where the crowds will be in five years. Go before they do.
The rule is simple enough to carry in your head. When the calendar allows it, stay longer. Book the week instead of the long weekend, the month instead of the two weeks. Sleep in the city rather than passing through it. Let one place be the whole trip.
Not every year will have the room for it, and not every traveler does, but in the years that do, the tax code and the better trip now point in the same direction. For once, the cheaper trip and the better one are the same trip.
by Paul M. Rand, Founder and Editor, Nomadic Spirit
A Chosen Place
Destinations worth traveling for — and understanding once you arrive
Antigua, Guatemala
The slow heart of Guatemala
Walk Antigua for an afternoon, and you will notice something missing before you can name it. There is no Marriott. No Hyatt, no Hilton, no glass tower of any kind. In a UNESCO city that draws visitors from every continent, the largest hotel brand on earth is nowhere to be found. Even the Starbucks is hidden inside a restored colonial mansion, its furniture made by Guatemalan artisans, its sign so discreet you could walk past it.
Antigua is one of the most beautiful cities in the Americas, and it sits inside a country under a serious travel advisory. Start with what the city got right.
A decision made fifty years ago
In 1969, Guatemala passed the Protective Law of La Antigua and created a council, the Consejo, to enforce it. Its job was to govern how the city could change: what could be built, what could be torn down, what a facade could look like. Every restoration, every new door, every coat of paint on the historic center passes through it. The rules are strict, and they are the reason Antigua still looks like Antigua.
Europe is now scrambling to manage tourism with hastily improvised lodging taxes and day-tripper fees. Antigua made its choice half a century earlier, and it was a choice about what the city would look like and who could build in it. The missing hotel chains are the result. You can see the policy in what is not there.
Why it rewards the way we travel
Antigua is a city to stay in, not pass through. The historic center is small and walkable, laid out on a grid, and you won't need a car. It sits at five thousand feet, so the days are warm and the nights are cool, and the weather never turns extreme. There is a settled community of people who came for a week and stayed for years.
Mornings of Spanish class, because Antigua is one of the greatest places in the world to learn the language. Long midday lunches. A Wednesday hiking group, a Saturday market, a Sunday when half the town closes. Private hospitals handle routine care, and a real international airport is ninety minutes away.
What the law could not protect
The preservation has come at a price. Guatemala drew a record 3.3 million visitors in 2025, and Antigua now has more than 1,500 short-term rental listings. Traditional family homes have become boutique hotels. Prices in the center have climbed beyond what many Guatemalan families can afford, and a good share of the people who cook, clean, and serve in Antigua now commute from villages outside it. The law kept the buildings beautiful. It could not keep the town affordable for the people who made it what it is.
On safety
Now, the part many readers may be wondering about. Guatemala sits under a United States State Department Level 3 advisory, Reconsider Travel, and in early 2026, three areas were raised to Level 4, Do Not Travel. None of those areas is near Antigua.
Antigua itself is among the safest places in the country. It has a dedicated tourist police presence and a 24-hour assistance line that operates in English and Spanish, and the State Department clears its own personnel to visit. The sensible precautions are ordinary ones. Fly into Guatemala City and leave it promptly by arranged private transfer rather than lingering. Use registered taxis or rideshare after dark. Do not drive the intercity highways at night. Inside Antigua, the daily reality is a walkable tourist town, watched over and calm.
We want to hear from you
Two ways to be in Nomadic Spirit
Elaine’s piece this week (below) is a reader submission. The Journey is open to readers who want to write about a trip that mattered. Personal, specific, in your own voice. Length is flexible. We edit lightly and leave your voice intact.
Fork First: One dish, one place, one reason to go. 200 to 300 words. The test: would you go back for this dish? Would you tell everyone heading to that city to find it? If yes, write it up.
If you are interested in sharing your story with our 10,000+ readers, please write us at [email protected] and we’ll send along submission guidelines.
We read everything that comes in.
The Vantage
What the travel industry is getting right — and wrong — for Nomadic Spirit readers.
An open letter to the European Travel Commission
You named them “quality tourists.” You could have just asked us to stay.
There are more of us than you think. A quarter of overseas visitors to Europe now travel slowly, up from a fifth the year before, and that number is yours; your own barometer found it. We are the ones who pick a single town, rent the apartment, learn the market, and stay long enough to be recognized at the café. You have a name for us, and it is the wrong one.
Call one kind of traveler quality, and you have defined all the others by what they lack. You sorted your visitors into two groups and gave only one of them the flattering word. Some of the rest are the same people on a shorter trip in a harder year.
The strange thing is that a fair request is hiding inside the bad name. Stay longer. Come when it’s quieter. Eat where the menu isn’t in four languages. None of that grades anyone. It is an invitation, and it happens to describe a market already growing without your help.
So tell your members to build for staying, not to rank the guests. A seventh night that costs nothing should be something we can plan around, not a surprise on the bill. The two-week visitor should get the library card and the transit pass. The museum should sell a month as easily as an afternoon. Do that, and more of us will extend the trip, and the traveler with only four days this year will see the reason to come back for two weeks the next.
We were already walking toward what you say you want. You had something generous to offer and reached for a rope instead. Put the rope down. Ask us to stay.
The Journey — Voices of the Nomadic Spirit
Stories from travelers who have been changed by where they went. If you have one to share, please reach out to [email protected]
Selfoss, Iceland — credit: Elaine Krugman
She went to Iceland for the swimming.
What she remembers is the swimmers.
Before traveling to a foreign country, I enjoy doing research on the places I will be visiting, the photographic highlights, and the local food. Most importantly, I learn about the people, their culture, and customs.
Two of my passions are travel and competitive swimming with U.S. Masters Swimming, and if I can combine them, all the better. Three years ago, I had the opportunity to do just that on our small-group tour of Iceland. In the tour company’s travel itinerary, visiting the local public swimming pool in each town was one of the suggested activities during our free time in the late afternoon.
“There are public swimming pools in Iceland!” I told my husband. He knew at that moment where I would be headed each free afternoon. I learned there were 121 public swimming pools in a country roughly the size of Kentucky with less than 10% of Kentucky’s population. Even the smallest towns have a public pool with spas, which serves as the daily meeting place for the community, especially in the geothermal-heated spas where spirited conversations commonly take place. Pools are a vital part of the typical Icelandic small-town community, and children are required to learn how to swim in early childhood. Looking for the town mayor? Head to the local pool at the end of the workday, and the mayor will probably be there talking politics in the spa.
Packing the caps
When I travel, it’s the people I meet more than the places I see that leave lasting memories, so I was determined to meet other swimmers who shared my passion. I packed my U.S. Masters Swimming cap with the hope it would be a conversation starter. Then I remembered my stack of unused caps collected over the years at Masters swim meets and events. Perfect. I tossed them in the suitcase.
I got in four late-afternoon swim workouts in three Icelandic towns during our two-week tour. I approached every swimmer I saw wearing a swim cap, greeted them in Icelandic, and asked if they would like to have a free cap from the U.S.A. Fortunately, they all spoke English, because Icelandic is a difficult language to learn and speak. A few were skeptical, but once they understood there wasn’t a catch, they were glad to receive the gift. Many took their own caps off so they could wear the one I gave them. I had some fun conversations.
The swimmer in Akureyri
As it turned out, one of the swimmers I met in Akureyri, Gudrun, served on the board of the Icelandic Swimming Association, the very organization I had contacted to inquire about Iceland’s Masters Swimming program.
Swimming in Iceland and giving away my 21 caps made the trip so much more memorable. I have my photos to remind me of the beauty of Iceland, but it was the people I met along the way who have stayed in my heart.
Elaine Krugman is a U.S. Masters swimmer who writes about her three passions, travel, swimming, and chocolate, at ElainesTravels.com.
Further Afield
Reading worth your time.
Spain says the quiet part: quality over quantity
The Associated Press
The source text for this issue's Dispatch. Announcing a record 96.8 million visitors, Spain's tourism ministry said its goal is to build a model that prioritizes quality over quantity. Income rose faster than arrivals, which is the whole strategy in one line. Read more
The travelers Europe is courting are already here
CNBC
A counterpart to the Dispatch from the traveler’s side. A Vrbo survey found that 91 percent of travelers now want a slower, simpler trip built around rest and time rather than a packed itinerary. The habit we argue for is becoming a market. Read more
Antigua tests whether heritage and growth can share a city
UNESCO
Last November, UNESCO held a three-day workshop in Antigua on a question our Chosen Place raises: how a place can keep its living culture intact while continuing to draw visitors. A useful look at the machinery behind the pretty facades. Read more
A twenty-room hotel inside a restored Antigua mansion
Michelin Guide
Proof of the Chosen Place's point that Antigua has no hotel chains. Good Hotel sits in a restored colonial house in the protected center, with local staff, local coffee, and bathroom tile made by a man named Juan José. Read more
Trapped by Tourism
Larry Krotz, Rowman & Littlefield
A Canadian journalist and filmmaker on the double-edged nature of the thing we all love. One reviewer said the book could have been called The Thoughtful Traveler, which is about the highest praise we can imagine. From the old cities of Europe to Indigenous communities and Cuban towns, Krotz asks what our trips cost the places that host them. Read more
“Travel was once a way in which the world changed us. Now it is a way in which we change the world.”
— Larry Krotz, Trapped by Tourism
