On this card, are the players required to perform the action on the card to travel there? Or is it completely optional. Because if its optional there's almost no reason to ever use that action unless there's a potential that I'm not realizing

On this card, are the players required to perform the action on the card to travel there? Or is it completely optional. Because if its optional there's almost no reason to ever use that action unless there's a potential that I'm not realizing

It helps when you have a Ruined Tower in the staging area that you want to travel to.

So, what exactly is the action on this location ? What is meant and how is it used?

To Ruined Tower is possible to travel even if it is not active location.

You are right. You do not have to trigger it to travel to West Gate and it is fairly useless. The only real benefit or use I can see is being able to travel (or at least make West Gate the active location) outside of the travel phase like during the planning phase for example which on the first turn of the game is actually not bad because it means you can clear West Gate during your first quest phase even if you do have to add another location to staging to do so.