"It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar," said the American writer Henry David Thoreau in 1854, and views on travel and travelling have varied down the years. Dr Johnson said of the the Giants' Causeway, "Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see." Queen Victoria was unimpressed by accounts of her eldest son's visit to India: "Bertie's progresses lose a little interest and are very wearing—as there is such a constant repetition of elephants—trappings —jewels—illuminations and fireworks." The Roman poet Horace clearly also had doubts about the value of tourism, commenting that, "They change their clime, not their frame of mind, who rush across the sea." Fanny Burney in the 18th century saw another danger: "Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking a building here after seeing Italy." A century before, Robert Burton had provided the 17th-century equivalent of the modern, "been there, done that, got the T-shirt", writing in his Anatomy of Melancholy, "See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see them all."

"Travel broadens the mind" is recorded as a proverb from the early 20th century; in 1921 G. K. Chesterton added the comment, "They say travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind." The constant note in quotations about travelling is often the approach taken to it. As the 17th-century courtier and scholar Francis Bacon warned wisely, "He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel."

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