Holidays are always popular and we are travelling to ever more exotic and faraway places. In the last two decades, a globetrotting trip in the ‘gap year’ between school and university has become traditional. We like to think that travel is good for us, not just because we relax and soak up the sun, but also because it widens our intellectual horizons. We encounter different cultures, experience new languages and absorb the local history. Or so we like to believe. But does travel really broaden the mind? Tourism is one of the biggest and fastest growing industries in the global economy. It has a massive impact – both positive and negative – on the environment, national economies and indigenous culture. At its current rate of growth, it is consuming natural resources and creating pollution (chiefly in the form of carbon dioxide) at an unsustainable rate. Are we destroying the planet while we are enjoying our holidays?