Wouldn’t it be great if you were at the beach? Your answer may have formed before you even really thought about it: Yes, I would much rather be at the beach than wherever I am right now.

Why is that? Sarah Stodola has some ideas. Stodola, travel and culture writer and founder of Flung, a digital travel publication, is well versed in the“always-sunny disposition required of destination coverage,” endorsements that have contributed to the massive growth of international tourism, making it the world’s third-largest export. International arrivals totaled almost 1.5 billion passengers in 2019, up from 25 million just seven decades prior, and seaside resorts are a major attraction.

In The Last Resort: A Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach (Ecco, June 28), Stodola takes a critical look at the beach tourism industry and its impacts on ecosystems and economies worldwide. Based on research and trips to locales across the globe, Stodola explores how the beach resort came to be a titan of tourism and yet one that faces an uncertain future. A reviewer for Kirkus calls the book “a thorough and appropriately alarming analysis of how we made paradise and how it might be saved.” Stodola spoke to us over Zoom, and the interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

You talk about an essay by Zadie Smith in which she describes a two-story beer ad on the side of a building bearing only three words: “Find your beach.” How did this idea of the beach gain so much cultural power?

I think it was centuries in the making. Before the 17th and 18th centuries, people feared the beach and the ocean. Then there was this gradual shift, starting in the 1700s, that had a lot to do with spas and convalescence. Ocean water and air came to be seen as health-giving. The first resorts, in England, weren’t really meant for leisure; they were meant to improve one’s health. From there, there was this gradual incorporating of fun and leisure into the experience. Monte Carlo was kind of the first place where the health-giving aspects of beach and seaside resorts were combined with decadence and fun. Even then, it was more of a winter activity: People would go to the south of Europe, where it was warmer and more pleasant. In the U.S., people were using these destinations to escape the heat of the cities for the first time. When Americans brought that back over to Europe, that’s when we got the full, early-20^th-century idea of hot weather, having fun on the beach, R&R, the whole beach-as-paradise.

You talk about the cycle of development: how, when a destination first becomes popular, it's like a hidden gem, then overdevelopment eventually leads to its decline. You also write, though, that some destinations experience a “rejuvenation stage” when they come back into favor. What’s a destination that has experienced a successful rejuvenation, and why?

I think some really good examples are the original seaside resorts in England that fell into bad times when air travel became ubiquitous for the middle classes—people weren’t staying at the shores near them in England, they were going further afield. A lot of these resorts have pivoted to offering attractions that aren’t completely focused on the beach, though the beach is still an attraction. I talk about Brighton in the book, which has become a countercultural attraction—they have the biggest Pride weekend in England now—as well as places like Margate, which opened a big art museum. There’s also a couple of other destinations [like Bournemouth] that focus on attracting tech workers. So there’s been a series of rejuvenations in the English seaside towns based on pivoting to attractions that aren’t necessarily just beaches.

In hindsight and in light of Covid-19, we can see just how precarious it is for the bulk of a country’s economy to rely on tourism, especially foreign tourism. Do you think the pandemic will promote considerable, long-lasting change to how people vacation?

Obviously, some of that still remains to be seen. But I do think that, generally speaking, a lot of countries are reexamining their reliance on getting foreigners into their countries to boost their economies. I think a lot of countries are starting to pivot their focus more to domestic tourism and looking to diversify away from tourism—not altogether, but to diversify.

Would you consider expanding The Last Resort in the future to include even more insights we’ve learned about travel through Covid-19?

Yes. I think that this is an ongoing development that definitely bears monitoring and further research.

What’s one travel trend that you would like to see become less common, and what’s one that you hope becomes more common?

I would like to see travelers focusing less on long-haul trips, especially when you’re talking about beach resorts. You don’t necessarily have to go to the other side of the world to get a great beach. I would love to see a focus more on the best beach destinations in a region and maybe even figuring out different ways to get to them, such as more train travel or more road trips. I would love to see resorts become less excluded from the communities and the cultures around them. I think incorporating them into the local culture has a big benefit for both the locals and the travelers, and there’s only upsides to doing it.

You talk about St. Kitts and Nevis, which was one of the first places—if not the only place—where you felt like you were coexisting alongside the local population and the culture rather than being excluded from it.

Yeah, that’s exactly right, and going to bars and restaurants there just felt very different from most other beach destinations. There, you felt like the local bars and the tourist bars were the same bars, and it doesn’t always feel that way.

Do you have your next trip planned? And if so, where?

I don’t. I mean, we’re obviously in a strange time for travel in general, but no, I do not have my next trip planned yet.

Was that a conscious decision after taking so many trips for this book, or is it something you just haven’t gotten around to?

It’s really funny—in March 2020, when the pandemic lockdown started, I had two research trips left to do for the book, and one was scheduled for the end of March. At that point, I had been traveling so much that I was telling everybody, ‘I just want to be home for a while. I’m so sick of traveling.’ And then the joke became to be careful what you wish for, because now we’ve all been home for two years. As soon as I was vaccinated, late last spring, I was able to complete those two final trips I needed to do. And I’ve done some small trips since then, but no travel travel. It’s not my focus right now.

Nina Palattella is the editorial assistant.