Why We Return: The Rise of Nostalgia Tourism
There’s a strange comfort in walking a road or path you once knew - the one lined with amusement arcades and ice-cream kiosks, or windswept dunes that seem taller than when you were small. You half-expect to see your younger self running ahead, ice-cream in hand, the air filled with salt and laughter.
For me, that road isn’t just a memory. It’s home. I now live in the very place where I spent so many of my childhood holidays - Mablethorpe, a coastal town in Lincolnshire, where my grandparents once owned a holiday chalet. Their simple flat-roofed bungalow, on a holiday park with an outdoor swimming pool that was always freezing cold, no matter how hot the summer sun, was where I learned to love the rhythm of the tides, the call of the gulls, the feeling of sand between my toes, and the joy of sitting in a steamed-up cafe with my Dad on one of our early morning walks. Decades later, I find myself living in a chalet of my own, set back just a bit further along the same stretch of beach.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve been thinking so much about nostalgia tourism - this growing urge many of us feel to travel backwards, toward the places and moments that made us who we are. Since Mark's death, I've also been thinking about many of the places we visited together, especially in the early days of our relationship. It’s a theme I’ll be exploring over several posts here on Happy Days Travel and Crafts: not just where we travel, but why we return.
What Is Nostalgia Tourism?
Nostalgia tourism is, at its heart, a journey through memory. It’s when people set out to revisit the landscapes of their past - childhood holiday spots, family homes, old schools, towns they once left behind.
Unlike typical tourism, which seeks discovery and novelty, nostalgia tourism seeks familiarity and connection. It’s less about seeing something new and more about feeling something remembered. The motivation isn’t to escape life, but to rediscover it - to find the threads that still tie us to who we used to be.
Psychologists describe nostalgia as a bittersweet emotion: part joy, part longing. It surfaces when we reflect on the warmth of the past, especially in times of uncertainty. When woven into travel, that emotion becomes a compass, quietly guiding us home.
Why Nostalgia Tourism is Becoming So Popular
The rise of nostalgia tourism says a lot about our times. We live in a world that moves at extraordinary speed, with constant digital noise, global change, and a blur of images competing for our attention. Amid all that, many travellers are seeking something steadier, something real.
After the pandemic, that pull became even stronger. So many of us spent months confined to our homes, reflecting on where we’d been and what mattered most. When travel reopened, people didn’t necessarily want to go far. They wanted to go back. To their childhood beaches. To family villages. To the places that once held their joy.
There’s also a collective longing for authenticity. Nostalgia tourism isn’t about polished resorts or perfect photos. It’s about revisiting caravan parks and faded seaside towns, sitting on the same sea wall where your parents once sat, or eating chips wrapped in paper from the same shop that still somehow taste just as they did forty, fifty, or more years ago.
And of course, culture plays its part. From TV reboots to retro design, we’re surrounded by a celebration of the past. Travel brings that nostalgia to life. It’s one thing to listen to an old song; it’s another to stand in the place where you first heard it played.
The Emotional Power of Returning
When we return to a place that shaped us, we experience time differently. The past and present seem to overlap, a feeling both tender and strange. We notice the details that haven’t changed at all, like the sound of waves crashing onto the same beach, and the scent of pine from the same dunes. Yet we also see everything through new eyes, aware of the years that have passed.
It can be grounding, even healing. These journeys remind us that our memories are real and that they still exist somewhere outside of our minds. They reconnect us to our own story.
For me, there’s a deep comfort in knowing that the beach that shaped my childhood is the same beach that I now walk on every morning that I'm at home. It’s as if the circle has closed, and in returning, I’ve found a quiet kind of belonging.
Examples of Nostalgia Tourism in Action
Across the world, people are booking trips not to explore new destinations, but to revisit old ones.
Families in the UK are returning to traditional seaside resorts like Scarborough, Whitby, or Blackpool, places layered with generations of memories.
Travellers are tracing family roots in ancestral towns, walking the streets their grandparents once knew. A few years ago, Mark and I made the ultimate nostalgic trip when we went to India to see where Mark's Dad was born, christened, and attended school. It's one of the most meaningful and memorable trips we ever did.
This photo shows Mark outside Lovedale, his Dad's school, with JoJo, the current headmaster.
Others plan 'then and now' journeys, recreating childhood photos in the same spot decades later.
Some even seek cultural nostalgia, visiting heritage craft workshops, vintage railways, or retro-themed stays that evoke the spirit of an earlier time. It’s all part of the same yearning. We want to feel connected to something familiar, something enduring.
The Gentle Art of Revisiting
There’s an art to nostalgia travel. It asks us to slow down, to notice, to remember, and to accept that time has moved on. The magic lies not in finding things exactly as they were, but in seeing how they’ve changed and how we’ve changed with them.
This kind of travel pairs beautifully with reflection and creativity. You might keep a travel journal, collect old photos to compare, or even create a hand-stitched map of your memory places, a tactile reminder that some threads never break. This is something I plan to do at some point. I've bought the book to inspire me. Now, I just need to find the time to create something beautiful.
When we travel back to where our stories began, we don’t just rediscover the past; we rediscover the version of ourselves that first fell in love with the world. And perhaps that’s the real gift of nostalgia tourism - not escape, but return.
✍️ Coming Next in This Series
In my next post, I’ll be exploring personal nostalgia travel. How does it feel to physically revisit the places that live in your heart, and how do you approach it mindfully, especially when what you find isn’t quite what you remember?
Until then, I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever gone back to a place from your past? Did it feel like coming home, or stepping into a memory, or was it disappointing and something you wish you hadn't done?
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