Refusing to visit a particular country has become a popular form of protest in recent years. Don’t go to Russia because of its brutal unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Don’t visit Israel because of its also brutal treatment of Gaza and the West Bank and the mass slaughter and displacement of its people. Stay away from China because of its oppression of Tibetans and of Uigurs in its western Xinjiang province. And most high-profile of all (and injurious to many tourism and tourism-adjacent businesses in the United States), many Canadians are boycotting the U.S. over tariffs and the outrageous and insulting rhetoric which has emanated from its current president. And by the way, in a separate category because it´s state sponsored rather than grassroots, the Chinese régime has been also urging its citizens to boycott travel to Japan in the wake of its prime minister Sanae Takaichi's comments about Taiwan, which has caused a wave of flight cancellations and hammered Japanese tourism-related businesses.
The instinct is understandable: if tourism brings money, legitimacy, and visibility, withdrawing it should send a moral message.
But if travel boycotts feel emotionally satisfying, they are also deeply complicated—and, when taken seriously, nearly impossible to apply consistently.
That´s not to say travel boycotts don´t serve a purpose. At the very least they do work on a symbolic level. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the mass cancellation of tours and the dramatic drop in visitors reinforced the country’s pariah status. Pressure campaigns around Xinjiang have succeeded in pushing global companies to review their ties. Israel’s tourism collapse in the wake of the Gaza conflict signaled widespread concern, even if much of that drop came from safety fears rather than organized boycotts.
Yet symbolic power does not easily translate into political change. Economically, destinations often find substitutes. Russia replaced many Western tourists with travelers from the Gulf. China’s internal tourism market overwhelms any boycott from overseas. Even Israel’s tourism industry, though battered, is not central enough to drive policy.
And then there are the unintended consequences. Travel boycotts typically hurt the powerless before they touch the powerful. Hotel staff, street vendors, local guides and tour operators, and small-business owners feel the pain long before political elites do. That is the uncomfortable irony baked into every tourism boycott: the people least responsible for injustice experience the most immediate harm.
Meanwhile, governments targeted by boycotts often weaponize them for nationalist narratives. Russia framed Western withdrawals as foreign hostility; Iran and Saudi Arabia have long painted international criticism as anti-Islamic or colonial. Boycotts rarely cause political capitulation—sometimes they deepen defiance.
Still, travel boycotts have played a meaningful role when embedded in a larger strategy. Apartheid South Africa is the clearest case. For decades, activists, athletes, artists, and governments refused cultural and tourism engagement. This isolation alone didn´t topple apartheid, but it did contribute to the cumulative pressure—sanctions, divestment, diplomatic ostracism—that eventually forced change. The South African example is often invoked today, even though most modern boycotts lack the same global coordination.
But here is the uncomfortable truth: if we applied travel boycotts consistently to every country engaged in severe human-rights abuses, most of the world would be off-limits.
Take Uganda, where LGBTQ people face one of the world’s most horrifying legal landscapes, recently intensified by the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act. Should conscientious travelers pass on one of the world´s great ecotourism experiences, visiting the country´s mountain gorillas? What about Nigeria, where also draconian anti-gay laws remain on the books? Or Tanzania, a highly popular and appealing safari destinations but also one where crackdowns occur periodically? If we follow this line of thinking, vast swaths of Africa become ethically disqualifying.
Iran’s record on women’s rights, LGBTQ persecution, support of overseas terrorism, and treatment of minorities is among the world’s worst. Saudi Arabia’s record includes torture, surveillance, enforced disappearances, severe discrimination against women, and the assassination of regime critics like Jamal Khashoggi. Even uber-popular Dubai and the United Arab Emirates have plenty of their own human-rights stains. Should we avoid the entire Gulf region?
And then, too, there is the question many travelers quietly ask themselves: What about the countries I want to visit? What about the trips we have dreamed of for years?
I’ll be blunt: I’m not immune to this dilemma. Over New Year’s I took a long-dreamed-of trip to Egypt to explore one of the world´s most splendid and influential ancient civilizations - and it was indeed amazing. Yet Human Rights Watch has described Egypt’s human-rights crisis under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as “one of its worst in many decades,” with tens of thousands of political prisoners, from journalists to peaceful activists, locked up on vague ´terrorism´ charges, many in years-long pretrial detention." In some ways, Egypt’s repression is as severe—or worse—than that of some other countries I’ve supported boycotts against.
Does that make me a hypocrite? How can I justify supporting boycotts of Russia, Israel, China, or even the United States in certain contexts, while choosing to spend money in Egypt?
It’s a tricky conundrum because there is no consistent ethical formula for travel. The world is too morally uneven, too full of contradictions. If we boycotted every country with serious abuses, global tourism would collapse—and many innocent people’s livelihoods with it.
So where does that leave us?
Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Perhaps the honest answer is that travel boycotts are less a universal principle and more a tool—one that works only under certain conditions. They are meaningful when part of a broad, coordinated movement aimed at a specific goal, as in South Africa. They matter when they raise awareness of hidden abuses. They matter when refusing to go feels like a refusal to participate in propaganda.
But they cannot be applied perfectly, and they should not be confused with a full moral accounting. Travel, like life, is riddled with contradictions. Boycotts can be ethical acts—but they are not the only ones. Sometimes traveling to a place, listening, learning, and supporting its people—not its government—can be an ethical act too.
That doesn’t absolve the contradictions. It simply acknowledges reality.
Travel boycotts can remind the world that something is wrong. But they alone rarely fix it—and they will never offer a clean, consistent moral path in a world where nearly every country fails someone.
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