While you’re not completely wrong, one of my main reasons for travel is exploring and understanding other cultures. That requires immersion, granted, and concerted effort to avoid the “TripAdvisor lists” unless you have no other ideas at present, but the opportunity for spontaneous interaction with someone wholly different from yourself is something that is harder to get at home.
That and the feeling of scale; every time I visit Iceland, I find it difficult to describe to others just what about it is so beautiful. The problem is that pictures can’t capture the feeling of scale, and feeling like a small speck on the planet when standing in front of a massive waterfall or inside or on a glacier, etc. That feeling is hard to capture.
I agree it is hard to capture that feeling. I've had it a few times, like being in Yosemite it felt majestic, I can't think of a better word for it right now.
But there is beauty in nature everywhere. It is harder to find in populated areas, but it is still there. In some ways, viewing something majestic, while nice and awe-inspiring, is like being smacked in the face with a baseball bat. Do I really need to be awestruck to remember that nature can be beautiful?
As far as cultures, I get it, but I find it uninteresting at this point. These people queue up different. Those people stop and chat different. These other people view time and lateness different. It is mostly surface level stuff you observe when traveling. Like you write, immersion is required to get a real understanding. IMO that's not travel any more, it's living somewhere else for several months and knowing the language. But I'll accept competing definitions of travel, I just don't think it's what people mean when reading an article like this one.
That and the feeling of scale; every time I visit Iceland, I find it difficult to describe to others just what about it is so beautiful. The problem is that pictures can’t capture the feeling of scale, and feeling like a small speck on the planet when standing in front of a massive waterfall or inside or on a glacier, etc. That feeling is hard to capture.