The real problem with digital nomad visas?

It's fundamentally a problem with the phrase digital nomad itself. Nobody is agreed on what this means.

Issue 1: Digital nomads can't agree on what this means

When somebody first called me a digital nomad back in 2016, I objected to the label.

I was based in London and had popped back to my hometown of Chiang Mai for a visit. When my favorite bartender asked me what I was doing back in town, I told him I was working remotely.

"You're one of those digital nomads now!"

I was flabbergasted. Can one even be a digital nomad whilst in their hometown?! While I embrace the term now, I'm not the only one who's part of this in-group yet rejects the term.

As a marketer working with remote companies and hospitality startups, I've seen brands shy away from this term more often than not - opting for remote workers, digital professionals, location-independent entrepreneurs and any handful of phrases that allude to digital nomad sans the semantic baggage it's accumulated.

For some, digital nomads are failed travel bloggers, hucksters scamming people with their course on how to become a digital nomad, shoe-string tourists toting MacBooks, or other delinquents engaging in a zero-dollar circle-jerk digital economy.

When I've faced obstacles in my visa advocacy - it's usually to do with this bad rap.

For others, the meaning of digital nomad is far broader and encompasses everyone from billionaire tech-founders to families traveling fulltime, but perceptions can be slow to change, and we don't have centralized representation (yet).

Issue 2: Media can't resist using this phrase for hype

Despite the Marmite quality of the term digital nomad to those within the group, journalists, bloggers, and PR professionals the world over absolutely adore the phrase.

Anything that vaguely falls into the ballpark of digital nomad territory, they'll slap the label on.

Why? Because this is a community largely made up of people who make shit go viral for a living, and because we take the road less traveled, we have a culture of sharing information.

Marketing professionals are all drooling over the chance to get that sexy word-of-mouth coverage. That's why every country wanting to attract remote workers, location-independent entrepreneurs and freelancers, and jetsetting executives alike is slapping the digital nomad visa label on their new program - or even when they don't, some hacky blogger will happily do so for them.

This results in a communications clusterfuck where countries fundamentally do not understand the assignment, and the smart nomads get a little frustrated (it's icky to be used like that).

So we have all of these new temporary residency schemes and golden visas, but to date, still no solution that actually addresses the key pain points of the community.

It's a little bit maddening.

So who or what are digital nomads then? What pain points would a real nomad visa address? Stay tuned - I'll cover that tomorrow and the next day in this series!