Digital nomads are awful. I should know – I’m one of them

Unlike travelling visitors, nomads prefer options such as Airbnb instead of hotels or hostels. In Mexico City, where I’m writing this, the average resident earns $5.50 per hour or $11,000 a year.

The average rent in popular expat suburbs such as Roma and Condesa has ballooned 1.5 times compared to January 2020. It reaches $3500 per month in some areas.

One couple in the middle-class suburb of Juarez was paying 10,000 pesos ($893) per month until their landlord shifted to Airbnb last year. The rent more than tripled overnight to 35,000 pesos ($3126), they told Latin American news outlet Contxto.

Hospitality prices inevitably follow as restaurant owners test how high their prices can go.

It’s noticeable as you explore neighbourhoods. Walk around El Poblado, a popular expat area in Medellin, Colombia, and you’ll observe plenty more poached eggs, hotcakes and matcha teas than restaurants by locals, for locals. Or buildings that should be housing or shopfronts instead advertising “hot desking”.

Facebook groups tell a similar story of detachment from the average local’s life. It took two minutes to pull these out of a ‘Medellin expats’ group, which I naively joined with the hope of making friends.

“Good steak restaurants? Nothing too fancy I still have to pay my Netflix bill LOL,” reads one post.

Another gentleman asked: “Hello ex pats [sic], I am considering living in Medellin. My other option is Guadalajara, Mexico. Has anyone been to both cities? Which has a higher concentration of beautiful women?”

Of course, it’s not all bad. One study suggests the average digital nomad earns $133,000 per year and spends 35 per cent of that on food, accommodation, entertainment and daily essentials. (“Business tourism” contributed $1.48 billion to Colombia’s economy in 2019 – a figure that will grow as more remote workers arrange conferences and events.)

Still, try selling the benefits to the average resident. From Medellin to Buenos Aires to Barcelona the most popular expat areas are plastered with posters and graffiti not so politely demanding: “Gringos (foreigners) go home”.

Evidently, governments will increasingly have to act.

One option is to start extracting more from their new visas. Spain, for example, has set up a website where small or underpopulated villages seeking revitalisation can advertise themselves to new arrivals. The country also offers tax discounts for nomads who opt to pay theirs in Spain.

One Harvard Business Review analysis of 46 digital nomad visas found that only 11 countries collected income tax. One is Mexico, where it’s estimated that attracting just 5 per cent of the United States’ nomads would net $5.9 million per year that could go directly into public projects.

Private operators could also play a role. Hubud, a co-working space in Bali, organises local collaborations where digital nomads can participate in garbage clean-ups or build websites for schools.

I’d love more accessible ways of contributing to whichever city I’m in, as I’m sure others would.

Already I try my best to be different to the average digital nomad. I put in effort to get to know people and their language. I shop at local markets. I’ve volunteered in jungle lodges and migrant refuges.

Is that enough? Absolutely not, and I’m inherently part of the problem.

But if people like me can at least think about balancing the ledger, the world’s most popular new lifestyle could start to address some of society’s problems – not just exacerbate them.