Arnie Weissmann
Michael Brein was pursuing a doctorate in social psychology at the University of Hawaii in the early 1970s when he began to feel some cognitive dissonance. He had taken a summer vacation in Europe and was, in his words, "bitten by the travel bug." He began to doubt that a life devoted to serious mental disorders was really for him.
His studies and work had intersected with other activities related to travel. He had taken a summer job as a research analyst for the Hawaii Visitors Bureau (now the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau). He worked in a Peace Corps training program and took language courses with the trainees. While still a graduate student, he published "Intercultural Communication and the Adjustment of the Sojourner," about traveler psychology, in the prestigious Psychological Bulletin.
He picked up an MBA degree after receiving his doctorate and discovered a way to blend psychology, business and travel by hitting the road, interviewing travelers and then self-publishing books based on what he learned. He has written books about safety and security as well as destination-specific titles (his books can be ordered at books2read.com/michael-brein).
Brein believes security issues are especially important because travelers arrive in a state that makes them susceptible to victimization.
"Everything is so ordered at home -- you don't have to think about being targeted for pickpocketing," he told me. "But after you've gotten off a long flight, you're not running on all cylinders. Almost without exception, people I interviewed who got into serious trouble had brought their American mosaic of cultural tiles with them and were not being careful and cautious."
Shattering the mosaic has other benefits, as well. "When traveling, you open up to learning at a pace that is unequaled in any other human activity," he said. "You're responding to new stimuli and getting rewarded for your behavior; you feel great satisfaction, a sense of achievement."
And, importantly, you're likely speak with strangers more than you would at home.
"The single most fulfilling aspect of travel is connecting with other people," he said. "It becomes a reward mechanism."
Brein acknowledges a connection between social media and overtourism but overall sees phones as a positive. "There's an international computer culture that we're all members of," he said. "The overlay of the internet helps people interact and have common ground."
Many travelers find the airport experience particularly stressful, but Brein said there's a very straightforward way to lessen anxiety. "Allow more time to get through the airport. It's simple, but so important."
Recommending that travelers give themselves more time at airports has likely become routine guidance from travel counselors. I asked Brein what else he would tell advisors to help ensure successful trips.
"I consulted with some people years back to see if we could determine experiences to recommend based on personality types," he said. "The idea was to come up with a psychological measuring instrument to design experiences.
"I looked at things like introversion vs. extroversion, active vs. passive. But it was difficult, in part because every psychologist has a different sense of what the main characteristics of personality are," he said. "In the end, we couldn't find an inventory of personality aspects that everybody could agree upon.
"But I still think it could be done," he continued. "There are probably people who, given their knowledge and experience working with travelers, are really good at matching activities and designing travel experiences."
Those people, of course, are called travel advisors.
The late travel researcher Stanley Plog did come up with a survey that sorted travelers into six personality types -- venturers, pioneers, voyagers, journeyers, sightseers and traditional -- and then linked them to destinations in the book "Vacation Places Rated" (Fielding Worldwide, 1995). Around the time of publication, I had, in partnership with Plog, developed and hosted a web version of the survey.
That site is no longer active, but the survey can be found on BestTripChoices.com, which Plog had developed with industry veteran Bahir Browsh, who died in 2021. It's now hosted by Quenzel Marketing Agency and includes a booking engine powered by Kayak.
I suspect an experienced advisor can suss out where to recommend without a survey, but I was glad to see that advisors can access the survey for counseling a particularly enigmatic client. I retook the survey and found I'm (still) a venturer, and its advice seemed sound; I'd been to all 15 of the domestic destinations it recommended and 14 of the 15 international ones (the exception, Guatemala, is on my target list).
I've always thought a high emotional quotient was critical to a travel advisor's skill set. They must be expert interviewers, pick up mood and personality cues, read between lines of verbal statements and, at times, engage in marriage counseling.
Add knowledge and experience, as Brein notes, and you've got a recommendation approach that would indeed be difficult to reduce to a science.