Travel they say improves the mind,
An irritating platitude, 
Which frankly, entre nous,
Is very far from true.
Personally I’ve yet to find 
That longitude and latitude
Can educate those scores 
Of monumental bores
Who travel in groups and herds and troupes
Of varying breeds and sexes,
Till the whole world reels 
To shouts and squeals
And the clicking of Rolliflexes.

Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel,
When the right people stay back home?
What compulsion compels them 
And who the hell tells them
To drag their cans to Zanzibar, 
Instead of staying quietly in Omaha?
The Taj Mahal 
And the Grand Canal
And the sunny French Riviera
Would be less oppressed 
If the Middle West
Would settle for somewhere rather nearer.
Please do not think that I criticize or cavil 
At a genuine urge to roam,
But why oh why do the wrong people travel 
When the right people stay back home
And mind their business,
When the right people stay back home
With Cinerama,
When the right people stay back home,
I’m merely asking
Why the right people stay back home?
Just when you think romance is ripe 
It rather sharply dawns on you
That each sweet serenade 
Is for the Tourist Trade.
Any attractive native type 
Who resolutely fawns on you
Will give as his address 
American Express.
There isn’t a rock 
Between Bangkok and the beaches of Hispaniola,
That does not recoil 
From suntan oil and the gurgle of Coca-Cola.

Why do the wrong people travel, travel, travel,
When the right people stay back home?
What explains this mass mania 
To leave Pennsylvania
And clack around like flocks of geese,
Demanding dry martinis on the Isles of Greece?
In the smallest street, 
Where the gourmets meet,
They invariably fetch up
And it’s hard to make 
Them accept a steak
That isn’t served rare and smeared with ketchup.
Millions of tourists are churning up the gravel
While they gaze at St. Peter’s Dome,
But why oh why do the wrong people travel 
When the right people stay back home
And eat hot doughnuts,
When the right people stay back home
With all those benefits,
when the right people stay back home?
I sometimes wonder
why the right people stay back home?

Why do the wrong people travel, travel travel
When the right people stay back home?
What peculiar obsessions 
Inspire those processions
Of families from Houston, Tex,
With all those cameras around their necks?
They will take a train
Or an aeroplane
For an hour on the Costa Brava,
And they'll see Pompeii
On the only day
When it's up to its ass in molten lava.
It would take years to unravel — ravel—ravel
Every impulse that makes them roam
But why oh why do the wrong people travel
When the right people stay back home
With all that Kleenex,
When the right people stay back home
With all that lettuce
When the right people stay back home
With all those Kennedys?
Won’t someone tell me
Why the right, 
I say the right people stay back home?