It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but a lot of people travel for sex. This has been true for generations, no matter how puritanical our grandparents or great-grandparents my have seemed. While sex tourism has long had a secret, shameful side to it, because it was assumed that people were travelling in order to indulge in things that were unacceptable at home, these days people are more open to, and safer about, traveling for sex.
In 2015, sex tourism brought in about $20 billion worldwide, as people traveled around the globe for consensual experiences. Swingers’ resorts, sex parties, or even nude beaches all bring in tourism dollars, not all of which are spent on the events themselves. France, which has around 500 “libertine clubs” throughout the country, generated $1.2 billion in sex tourism alone.
“The naughty journey is finding a place in tourism,” says the French newspaper Le Monde (by way of Forbes) in an article in its Economy section. “The rogue trips are in full swing,” it adds
Some people might still be traveling specifically so they can go to events or meet people they wouldn’t otherwise get to back home, as some communities are more or less liberal about sex. Others might simply want to fold sexual experiences into their otherwise standard vacation plans, while yet others might simply know people across the country or the world that they enjoy being with, but have to go out of their way to see.
As with human sexuality and sex acts themselves, there are a myriad of ways in which different people can experience sex tourism, and some places, like France, are jumping on the bandwagon. There are certainly some cultural barriers in various countries that might make actively pursuing sex tourism as a way to supplement an economy difficult, but that just means that other countries will pick up the slack.
As long as everything is safe, sane, and consensual, there are, frankly, much worse ways that people could be spending their vacation time.
