Travel is the perfect product.

It can be luxurious, yet is affordable enough for most people in some form. People love to tell everyone the places they’ve visited; some people, given the chance, will talk about nothing else. It’s endlessly novel and requires little physical investment. It’s literally impossible to run out of places to visit. There are practically no limits to how much money you can spend on travel.

That is to say, it’s consumerism dressed up as virtue.