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Enh, I consider travel to be the great equalizer.
When you travel somewhere with an alien language, culture, and customs, and you are forced to engage with that culture on its own terms, your world expands. You learn about your preconceptions and biases, you get to challenge your worldview in a way that brooks no defense because you are literally in it. You could do the same at home, of course, or through a picture, but the layers of abstraction and distance that prevent you from doing so act as defense mechanisms.
There's nothing like it. I recommend everyone do it at least once, to spend an extended amount of time where you don't speak the language. Suddenly what is taken for granted falls away, and it's like rediscovering communication from first principles. What are the critical things, the meaningful things? What is helpful and useful, what is not? What is good - and not just good because I deem it so - what does this culture value, and how did they arrive at that belief?
Whether it is compelling or not is not a factor. You may even hate where you go, an experience I've had in several journeys. But it has left me with a greater appreciation for many things around me and an understanding that we were never going to be ready for the destabilizing effect of near-instantaneous global information transmission. It doesn't take a genius to value clean drinking water, but you will not quite look at it the same way as someone who's worn a stillsuit.
This just isn't my experience with travel, but I also haven't had the opportunity to live somewhere totally foreign for extended periods of time. Unless you have some cause, like a job or exchange program, this just kind of isn't practical. What is practical are a week or two of being a tourist which I have zero interest in and also what people are actually talking about when they say they love travel.
I don't quite get your complaint - you're saying you don't get the point of tourism and then you limit the definition of tourism to one that you personally don't agree with. It's entirely practical to spend a week or even a couple of days being immersed in a foreign culture. There are many ways to get immersed in an alien culture, many of which don't depend on any extended period of time, and best of all, they vary widely in price depending on how much you like yourself.
The point of tourism is to be a tourist. If you don't do any touring, then you're essentially paying a premium to fly in the sky and live in a serviced apartment. Granted, I enjoy traveling alone and not having to make allowances for anyone else, but I consider that part of the experience maintenance or work. Many people do indeed pay a premium to fly in the sky and live in a serviced apartment, but spending a tour with that sort of person for any length of time would give me allergic reactions.
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