Oprah’s irresponsible Italy post is everything that’s wrong with modern travel

Oprah may be a queen of empowerment, but she's also a terrible tourist.

"We were in and out of the Coliseum in an hour!"

Oprah talks a big game about values and responsibility. But thanks to her latest Instagram post, she is being accused of being a thoughtless tourist.

Ah, Oprah. Queen of empowerment, of living your truth, searching one’s soul, of living in harmony with yourself, those around you and with the world. “I am merely a steward on this land,” she once wrote melodramatically of her feelings towards the environment in one of her notorious ‘What I Know For Sure’ columns. “It’s a treasure no person could ever own.”

You’d imagine someone with Oprah’s high-minded values – and virtually limitless financial resources - might have some idea about the importance of responsible slow travel.

Yet the daytime TV queen’s latest Instagram post from Italy, where she’s recently been holidaying with her BFF Gayle King, would suggest that she’s the very worst kind of irresponsible, tick-the-box tourist.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Oprah (@oprah)

“We were in and out of the Coliseum in an hour! Same with the Vatican!” she announced to her 22 million followers under a pic of herself and three tour guides in front of the Coliseum in Rome, as though racing in and out of big-name landmarks with barely enough time to take a selfie is on par with scoring a sale special at J. Crew.

Commenters were far from impressed. 

“Spending only one hour in the Vatican is not something to brag about. It is impossible in that time to see, let alone take in, all there is to admire there,” wrote one appalled follower.

“Culture [isn’t] like eating a hamburger,” added an Italian fan, adding that she ‘loved’ Oprah but that a sugar-rush approach to her country’s rich history wasn’t the sort of tourism Italy wanted to attract. “In Italy we have a big problem: fast tourism. Fast tourism [doesn’t] help the people to understand a magnificent of the eternal art.” 

Oprah attempted to defend her drive-through culture hit by replying to one commenter that it was her fourth visit to the Vatican. 

But somehow that feels even worse. 

Oprah also posted photos of her brief visit to the Vatican, and of her time hanging out in the sunny streets of Rome, too. Images via Instagram (@oprah)

If you’ve been four times, Oprah, why not go somewhere else entirely rather than doing another ‘been there, done that, got the t-shirt’ drive-through?

Why not get your specialised tour guide to take you to an off-the-beaten path church containing a hidden Van Dyck? Why not try a Roman food you’ve never eaten before in a tucked-away osteria? Or why not get out of Rome entirely and immerse yourself for a week or two in a small village in the Dolomites or Emilia-Romagna, to really get a sense of the country? Italy is full of treasures like this and Oprah – who is reportedly worth USD$2.5 billion and has no employer doling out stingy annual leave - has every possible resource at her disposal to discover them.

In 2020, Alfonsina Russo, the director of Parco Colosseo, the archaeological park incorporating the Colosseum, said that this sort of thoughtless tourism is suffocating Italy’s most precious monuments. She decried what she called “selfie tourism” tied to tours of “less than two hours” and hoped that post-pandemic visitors to Italy would make an effort to get more ‘nourishment’ from Rome’s spectacular locations.

It would seem her wishes have gone unheeded.

Oprah had such a precious opportunity and platform to promote slow tourism to her millions of fans worldwide. And instead she chose to behave like just another mindless, bungling interloper. What an awful shame. 

Originally published as Oprah’s irresponsible Italy post is everything that’s wrong with modern travel