Journal
Reports, analyses and features from all 195 countries - the journalism behind the journeys.
Competing on Price With a Container
Twenty metres separate the workshop from the stall, and the workshop is losing. What the surviving crafts have in common, and the export restrictions that put the penalty on the buyer at the border rather than the seller at the stall.
One of Them Has Been to Court
Heritage inscription and geographical indication get discussed as one thing and are not. One is recognition; the other is a property right with a specification, an inspection and a lawyer — and it freezes the recipe at the moment it was written.
Several Hundred Thousand People Optimised for the Same Thing
The same café has opened in every city on earth and nobody franchised it. A feedback loop with one fixed point — plus the case against the traveller’s complaint, and the thing that is genuinely being lost two streets away.
The Plaque and the Tenancy
A World Heritage inscription protects the fabric of a town and advertises its address. The management plan is written about stone by people with no housing budget, which is why so many listed places keep their façades exactly and lose their inhabitants gradually.
The Village Learns at the Premiere
A production spends three weeks in a valley and leaves. What arrives afterwards is set by a release schedule rather than a season, lands on a single hillside, and is captured by the village or by nobody depending on one variable.
It Stops Being True Through Being Said
The most-used word in travel marketing turns out to describe the visitor rather than the place — and to contain a preference for other people staying poor and photogenic that is worth saying out loud.