Tourism Is Overwhelming the World's Top Destinations
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Yosemite is hugely popular and we need to find some just way to limit the number of people going in. There are three ways to visit Yosemite. PATRON ticket, MERIT ticket, and LOTTERY ticket. All are non-transferable.
The PATRON tickets are auctioned off. This raises a huge amount of money to maintain the parks and make the other tickets completely free.
The MERIT tickets are earned by visiting the less popular parks. You get park-points and eventually you earn enough to earn access to the really cool stuff. And you've also learned to appreciate what you're going to be looking at. If you've climbed some of the less popular climbing spots in the US, it should be easy for you to get access to half dome.
The LOTTERY tickets are free and open to everyone. Enter as often as you want. The lotteries are far enough out that you'll have time to plan around winning.
There are a lot of persnickety details, but I trust the Parks Service to be competent.
The same basic system could be used to fix basically any over-accessed place (famous galleries, Everest, Galapagos, etc). I think that everyone can get behind at least one of these principles (patronage, merit, persistence) and the vast majority of people can get behind the idea of needing the balance all three.
What you seem to argue for with this is the privatization of our public spaces. Otherwise how do you ensure access to the publicly funded public good? Or am I way off base with this?
The auctioned tickets would probably still feel unfair as the rich would be more likely to enjoy the benefits of public funding. So you're not that off base.
This obviously doesn't apply to certain areas of police stations and other publicly funded goods. Maybe elaborating a bit more will clear up the distinction.
Shutting off the park limits access to a public good. It would be like the city police not responding to one part of town, and in this case (lotteries or patronage) ensures that the rich get served first. That would rub people the wrong way, I think.
Does that clarify?
As far as "whenever I want it" public access, I think that most parks, and even some parts of every park, would be open to car traffic. So if you're willing to pay with your time, under this system (same as under the current system), you can go whenever.
Some more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2018/04/0...
There are days that I needed to be recharged emotionally and could drive to Yosemite Valley and sit on a rock and listen to the wind. Yes, there we lots of people, but the quiet and calm was respected and maintained.
Perhaps a better solution would be stronger consequences to those who violate trash, light, and sound pollution or those who damage the wildness intentionally.
But people need to have the freedom to visit these places on a whim.
The "zero limits" model you appear to be advocating for does not exist. The "lock the gates" dystopia you're arguing against is not what I'm advocating for.
I'm talking about using a more holistic approach to access limit where access limits are already in place and having a frame work for extending access limits when and where access limits are the best way to preserve the experience.
Other than the entry fee, and a campsite fee if you're camping, there are no other fees.
If you are just day hiking you don't need to pay a fee. The back country is not limited by anything other than the amount of work involved in reaching the back country, which varies from as little as 2-3 miles in the High Sierra portion of Yosemite or 5-6 miles from the Valley.
The Donohue restrictions were intended for the primary purpose of maintaining access to back country trails for Yosemite visitors, who were being crowded out by JMT hikers using non-traditional trailheads to get around capacity limits on the traditional JMT trailheads in Yosemite (i.e., Happy Isles).
I like the idea - asshole tax. Littered in your own city? That's another few months wait for that vacation. Vegetarian, or vegan? Cheaper flights. It'd force people to be "pious", which would be great in some respects, but mostly police-statey...
When I was a kid, you would go to the educational programs at the park and they teach you about the history of the area, the ecosystem, and the amount of damage that people can do to the ecosystem. Lots of locals will go through this kind of thing. But now there are so many tourists, people stomping through meadows that grow back very slowly. Feeding wildlife. Etc. How do you educate people if they’re only visiting for three days out of their entire life?
Make them site through a brief permit course before they are allowed to hike. The Georgia state parks system requires this before one can hike certain trails, Tallulah Gorge[0] for instance.
Here in PA too many stupid selfie drones were falling off the waterfalls of Glen Onko (straining/exhausting rescuers). It’s A great place to hike up alongside fairly huge waterfalls. It’s now shut down unfortunately. It was the 1st to 2nd most popular hike in PA.
Oh goddammit, I went there when I was a young child and always wanted to go back but didn't know the name (and my parents forgot.) Now I finally learn the name and find out I can't go back..
I definitely ignored the barrier and the signs, and it was definitely wildly unsafe to do it alone. It was well worth it even so e.g. glacial blue ice looks very different from snow.
Though without Glen Onko being open I won't be visiting Thorpe.
[1] https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/pennsylvania/glen-onoko-f...
I think I saw an article here a couple months ago comparing the relative wealth of Jane Austen's 1813 bachelor "Mr. Darcy" with a modern millionaire, call him Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith can afford to hire contractors and laborers to work on his house for a home improvement project, or hire a caterer, DJ, and event planner to host a big party. But these are relatively significant events; each one of these companies he's hiring cost on the order of 1/10th his income. Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, makes 10,000 pounds a year from guaranteed investments, and can be expected to have dozens live-in servants on staff in his home, each earning just 25 pounds a year. Mr. Darcy can afford to travel, but the other 95% of his household cannot.
Conversely, even Mr. Smith's son, working a minimum wage job, can (assuming he lives under Dad's roof) buy an old car and drive it on a big road trip on a teenage whim. Smith's mileage card means that he and his family can fly to another continent for a weekend for a quick vacation for a friend's wedding. Darcy can hire his carriage to take him to London, but an expedition to California or China would likely be a year-long endeavor; to go around the world in 80 days could not be done for any amount of money. His servants could maybe make a transatlantic trip in steerage of a sailing vessel, but they'd be buying one-way tickets with a significant fraction of their savings.
Mr. Smith has a smartphone which contains communication and entertainment from as many sources as a human can possibly consume. He can tweet a message to millions before his morning coffee. Mr. Darcy may receive handwritten letters, or a newspaper, and has the money to publish a circular if he desires, but among his servants information travels mostly by word of mouth, even if most are able to read and write.
Finally, Mr. Smith's trash service takes away a 96-gallon-rollaway cart full of plastic packaging each week. A tourist trap contains souvenirs at 500% markup that cost him pocket change. Mr. Darcy can buy handmade wooden, brass, or fabric trinkets to his heart's content, but each of his servants likely have a single chest of treasured belongings. Mr Darcy is described to have a fabulous array of beautiful clothing which represents incredible wealth, though Mr. Smith's wife made a donation of some old totes of clothes to Goodwill that would give the same wardrobe a run for its money.
Technology and progress means that people have a much larger impact on each other and on the environment. Technology that makes travel, information sharing, or affecting one's environment easier and cheaper has an exponential effect that speeds the development of future tech for the same purposes, and we're rapidly climbing that curve. However, discernment and empathy need to climb in lock step, and while education is improving those cultural and societal improvements are happening through different processes at a different rate.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20171003-proof-that-peo...
> “We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.” - 1925
> “Parents themselves were often the cause of many difficulties. They frequently failed in their obvious duty to teach self-control and discipline to their own children.” - 1938
> “They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.” - 4th Century BC
No. Every generation says "babies are small"; it's not evidence that babies are getting smaller.
We've got plenty of scientific evidence that brains continue to mature well into the 20s, and that things like good decision making are part of that development.
> We're definitely in the getting worse territory.
By what quantifiable metric are you able to make that claim?
thank you for articulating the behavior I continually see in my day-to-day. It's the little things: walking slowly 3 and 4 abreast on a sidewalk at a snail pace; suddenly stopping to take a selfie in the middle of a busy place; parking a bike/scooter/etc in the middle of a path; parents prioritizing their kid's experience like everyone else isn't even present (blocking / taking inordinately long time / hogging use)... It really seems like a lot of people fail to recognize they actually take up physical space in the world, and in doing so affect everyone around them. I really try to be aware of the impact my personal physical behaviors have on the greater world.
Perhaps it could be measured if we can find an activity that affects others, and that doesn't change too drastically over time - maybe driving behaviour?
Which was inevitable. Rule enforcement (all kinds, not just the police) works on the premise that most people will be reasonable and follow the rules, or social pressure will handle it.
But then you throw in "no one likes a snitch!", "This rule isn't enforced so why should I follow it?", "They're trying to enforce this rule I don't like, they have better things to do!", and you end up with a perfect storm: We shouldn't care about anything that won't get you in trouble, and you shouldn't get in trouble for anything. Push that to its limit and you get some extreme case of individualism.
You mention schools, but schools are basically no longer allowed to enforce anything else they get sued by some entitled parent.
Police, please!
And not because you were driving, but because you let someone else borrow your car.
Or you end up in some bureaucratic black hole where the law says you can go to either of these 2 agencies for a service, and both agencies (in)directly tell you to go to the other.
Essentially we're in a world where we have rules, but how they are enforced, used, interpreted, is a huge judgement call. I mean, there's always going to need some level of interpretation, because those who author the rules aren't perfect. But the rules are frequently written with a heavy disconnect when it comes to said enforcement. So each and everyone of us is taught to start interpreting them in our own individual ways (and "us" includes the cops). That doesn't scale so hot at several hundreds million people+
And in the latter, the agencies investigate themselves, so unless it’s big enough to sue them in court, you won’t create change. And they know that: create lots of little problems for the public, and you can get away with it.
When I went to the Falkland Islands the trails have clearly marked signs telling tourists not to leave the path under any circumstances because the area is covered in land mines. The signs had skull & crossbones on them and everything. It was very clear that leaving the path would risk life and limb.
And in the hour or so I was on the trail I saw several people leave the path to take a closer picture of the penguins. The things people will do for the perfect Instagram photo are unbelievable.
There were efforts to clear mines after the war, but the nature of mines means that it's best to play safe in the [many] decades after.
There's a reason people have tried to get mines banned - they're a pain in the ass.
Apparently Argentina used plastic land mines (I believe they were new at the time) which are difficult to detect. After the war Argentina gave the British military a map of where they had placed the mines but because the mines had mostly been placed in sandy or swampy terrain many of them had shifted so they’re difficult to locate safely even with a map.
This was maybe the most interesting part of visiting the Islands for me because it’s a very contentious topic among locals. Some want the mines removed (and I was told they are working on that with a specialized company from Africa but it’s apparently a slow, expensive and of course dangerous process). There has been at least one death in the removal process so a lot of the locals feel its better/safer to just leave the mines were they are and things are fine with the clearly marked signs that show which areas of the islands are off limits.
Also, in case you were concerned for the safety of the penguins like me, they don’t weigh enough to trigger the mines so they walk over them all the time without issue.
Supposedly the only way to know with 100% certainty that an area is free of land mines is to remove them individually without detonating them. I guess I understand the logic but I also can’t help but think there has to be a better way that’s both cheaper and doesn’t involve humans risking their lives.
Perhaps one day.
Sounds like the perfect setup for penguins then - hard(er) for humans to destroy your nests if they can't safely walk over to them. Sort of like Chernobyl.
The idea that someone would deploy land mines to keep people from straying off of a nature trail is a bit dystopian, no?
I did some volunteer trail maintenance over the weekend, and we deployed logs and brush along the side of the trails to provide visual cues to stay on the path and block off “social trails”. The mental image of volunteers/rangers laying mines for this purpose is...quite hilarious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demining
>As of 2017, antipersonnel mines are known to contaminate 61 states and suspected in another 10. The most heavily contaminated (with more than 100 square kilometres of minefield each) are Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Iraq, Thailand and Turkey.
>A 2003 RAND Corporation report estimated that there are 45–50 million mines and 100,000 are cleared each year, so at present rates it would take about 500 years to clear them all. Another 1.9 million (19 more years of clearance) are added each year.
>Demining is a dangerous occupation. If a mine is prodded too hard or it is not detected, the deminer can suffer injury or death. The large number of false positives from metal detectors can make deminers tired and careless. According to one report, there is one such incident for every 1000–2000 mines cleared. 35 percent of the accidents occur during mine excavation and 24 percent result from missed mines.
Some people are seriously self centered.
Heavy fines might be a good start, since asking them politely doesn't seem to be working, as mentioned by other comments here
Whilst the volume of tourists is a problem, the behaviour of booking a week (or less!) off work to fly halfway across the world and back is of course going to concentrate tourists around "hot" destinations.
I predict that long, slow, possibly "eco" trips will become fashionable as a new way to signal wealth (much in the way that travel to far-flung corners of the Earth used to).
Perhaps but that’s a minority of the tourist pop., so the problem will remain and only slightly diminished.
There is also the possibility that electric planes will become a thing
There is also the possibility that people will spend half a year working in an exotic place to avoid travelling too much
Not all of them, can't do much more eco friendly than sailboats. Besides walking or cycling, but that won't take you across oceans/seas.
yeah bummer. what about balloons?
Of course, we've been becoming increasingly more efficient and we're not getting more time off, so you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.
Same goes with regulation - there are definite corners of society who would like that, but those who are in power, who are in power because of the people, clearly don't.
Just to be clear, I want these things, I just don't see society turning that way.
As far as unionization, there seems to be a trend of newsrooms organizing, I've seen a burger place trying to unionize where I live, and more and more people are talking about unionizing in the games space. With tech workers, we're not there yet, but efforts like the anti-ICE stuff could be a first step down that path.
As far as regulation, all the senators running for president support the Green New Deal, and so do a handful of congress members. And locally, several cities have passed laws providing paid sick leave, including in Texas.
These are frankly all pretty small, but taken together, I think they show that things could change.
This is already kind of a thing. See gap years, find yourself trips, etc.
Add digital nomadism, at least, in many of its forms.
the way to signal wealth now is taking ur yacht to obscure places and not telling people where these places are located to combat congestion.
The top 250 million adult Americans are richer than the top 250 million adults in Europe, Asia, Latin America, or Africa. So what are you talking about?
The median American is far richer - with a far higher income and disposable income - than the median in Europe, Asia, Latin America or Africa. It's not remotely close in fact.
The median in Europe for example, pegs you down toward an income of just $12,000 and a net worth of only a few thousand dollars.
The US is a country of 330 million people where the median person is wealthier than Germany or Sweden. The US is by a considerable margin the wealthiest per capita large population in world history.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-house...
Just look at garages. They are often so packed full of junk there is no room to park a car (and then end up filling driveways and the street bumper to bumper). Once you start paying attention to this you notice it a lot.
I'm pretty sure this is due to some really poor surveys, not the actual state of things. There's a number of debunkings, too. [0]
> America might have the greatest level wealth inequality in the world.
According to Wikipedia, the gini wealth coefficient list (as of 2000) goes Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, the world as a whole, Switzerland, and then the US. [1] Most people would not consider Denmark to be a particularly unequal country. For more recent numbers it seems that Russia, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil and China all have a higher proportion of wealth in the hands of the 1% than the US does. [2] That's as of 2016, and I don't think the US was able to 'catch up' that much in the past 3 years.
0: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-04/the-40...
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribut...
2: https://www.statista.com/chart/6908/the-worlds-most-unequal-...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/11/digital-n...
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
About 3% of the US workforce seems way high not to be including a bunch of stuff one wouldn't expect.
Anecdata but I can see this already happening in my circle of Friends in a big German city. Friends telling of weekend trips by plane are increasingly met by snarkiness, and I personally dream of doing the Interrail trip I never did in my teens!
This is very much still a thing. Personal hunting trips in Africa, sailing through the artic, flying your private plane to islands regular jets can't reach, cruising your yacht across the Atlantic.
The best way is to buy your own island. That way nobody else can go there, the ultimate exclusive travel destination
I stayed in Bletchley Park this weekend to see the both the code breaking museum and the computer history museum. It was amazing. There was hardly anyone else in the computer history museum while I visited. I was able to talk with the guys who restore the computer equipment and spent some time listening to the hams in the national radio centre talk about the hobby. The few other people seeing the museums were deeply into it, trying out the codebreaking challenges or asking for nuances on how they were able to break Enigma. I felt like I was with kindred spirits and I had a helluva time.
Venice even during the day when loaded with tourists is a maze of places unencumbered by tourists. I had loads of fun wandering around there, getting lost, discovering random small plazas, etc.
Is Barcelona like this at all or has the whole city been inundated with tourists?
Once we get near the peak we find an... amusement park!? And then just a bit further up finally the church, which is best from a distance, but had really great 360 views of everything else. All stoke, 0 tourists.
Last time I went, I visited those places, but I stayed in a tiny hotel in the gothic quarter and walked from there to Park Guell instead of using the tube, stopping to get ice cream or coffee, letting my four year old play on the park and so on. Step away, slow down and enjoy it.
I try to sell to my spouse, family and friends that this is what we’re doing when I buy the 29” pitch seat flight tickets, but they’re not buying it.
Although I'm slight worried for the coping ability of highly touristic places, I think it's great that tourism is becoming more accessible to everyone.
There's no reason why visiting famous cultural places should be reserved for the wealthy only. The wealthy have found new places to hide away from the great unwashed anyway.
Maybe it should be reserved for nobody at all? Or some lottery system determining who gets to play tourist? All this jetting about to take the 1000,000th identical picture of some landmark just to say you've been there too is a very high cost to both the destinations and the planet as a whole.
Maybe it’s a well known fact, but I didn’t personally know this before I started working at a municipality, but there are entire departments who do nothing but plan. The best description of what they do, is that they play really complicated real world sim city, and at some level they draw “residential area”, “industry”, “commercial area”, “hotel” on a map, and those plans determine what we’re allowed to build on those locations.
If they plan correctly, there is a finite amount of hotels or holiday homes available in an area, and once those are full, the town or city can house no more tourists. This means that you could actually regulate how many people could physically visit London at any given time by limiting the amount of hotels and the amount of rooms a hotel was allowed to house with city planning.
Private rentals and popular apps to handle it, broke this system. At least until regulation catches up.
Here is a NY Times article from 1987 talking about the overcrowding problem and limiting the number of tourists in Venice.
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/08/world/venice-moves-to-lim...
Maybe this is just an American thing, but city planners in the US generally do not do any of that -- they exist solely to help property developers and landowners generate as much wealth as possible, as quickly as possible, so that the city can capture as much of the tax-base growth as possible.
Effectively zero thought is given to people, how they could live, work, transport themselves, utility infrastructure, schools, or anything of that nature. Affordability especially -- how real people are supposed to afford any of this -- is never ever planned for.
Planners talk about this all the time, of course, and love the illusion that their work somehow solves these problems. But in truth, they don't. And usually, the results of their effort are slightly worse than prior.
The only things planners routinely accomplish, are things that privatize urban core's wealth for the wealthy and/or increase taxable value of acreage -- things that make cities more expensive and less hospitable to human life.
> If they plan correctly, there is a finite amount of hotels or holiday homes available in an area, and once those are full, the town or city can house no more tourists
Is there any city that actually follows this? In the US, any idea of capping growth like this would get you labeled "anti-business", "NIMBY", and "economically illiterate". Capitalism demands infinite growth forever indefinitely (literally every facet of the whole world is just a commodity to be 'supply vs demand-ed', dontcha-know?), and any plan that limits that in any way would be immediately be rejected by every professional planner in the nation.
Yes? Many European cities are quite busy banning private rentals and requiring owners to actually live in their apartments. In my country it’s even illegal for foreigners to buy vacation homes.
Legislation moves a lot slower than the market though.
I'm very interested in planning best practices and not sure how to google this.
Those all seem like really great ideas. I wish we had anything as strong/effective as that in the US.
N=1 here, but that's nonsense where I live. Both the city and county have 10 year plans which describe how the area looks, feels, how people live, etc. Any significant changes (such as re-zoning residential to industrial, whatever) requires changes to both the city and county plans to be approved. These things simply do not happen willy-nilly or just because it brings in money.
Keep in mind that this is not a particularly liberal / progressive area. Maybe there are some places like you describe, but in my experience that's been very much the exception, not the rule.
Yes, they do. It maybe often be true that parties with intense financial interest like developers pay the most attention to, and provide the most input and pressure on, things like city/county General Plans, but those plans almost always address all those areas you suggest are not considered.
Growth is already capped in the U.S., your last paragraph doesnt make much sense. It’s also not government but the residents themselves who are to blame. Look at LA. Most of the city is low rise apartments or single family homes and there is a housing shortage pushing rents to astronomical levels. Developers want to make money by building supply to meet demand. They want to build towers. They want 2000 units in a parcel. They dont want to have to build 5 stories of subterranean parking. But the councilmans ear who can make these projects possible doesn't listen to the developers. A developer doesnt vote in the councilmans district. The NIMBYs who vote in council elections are the ones suing these projects for vaguely racist and myopic reasons, suing transit projects, suing infrastructure projects, burning precious public money in litigation hand over fist, and they get treated like princesses in council meetings because renters do not vote in LA, and who votes runs this city.
Oh, and the government here is doing just that.
Then what are you complaining about?
Now it is stay home, don't travel, don't eat meat, don't have kids, don't buy experiences or things. Ain't progress wonderful?
Note that the number of people that make meaningful connections with the locals compared to the number of tourists is vanishingly small. You just can't do that when you fly in on Sunday evening and leave again a few days later. All you get to do is to rush from one photogenic site to another, maybe visit a museum and eat at the local versions of the chain stores from somewhere else.
Slightly disagree with this. There's a lot of places where tourism should happen but doesn't. I've known a few people who raved about Syria, now obviously that's out of the question for tourists. Lots of African countries would make great tourist destinations but aren't safe enough to visit. In a world where every single person is able to take a two week holiday each year, we probably won't have as many poverty-stricken areas which aren't safe to visit.
Pollution caused by actually getting to places is another issue, but one that's slowly being solved.
There's a huge difference in ecological impact and cultural impact of package tours where you have ~30 people following one guide with a flag sticking out of their back vs one person spending month+ in a place and minimizing their ecological impact. The one thing I haven't been able to do yet is stop flying, it's required both for work and for pleasure, but I do buy carbon offsets for air travel.
I just don't know how to clearly separate the types of activities I'm talking about without it automatically coming off as elitist when these types of discussions happen... it's not really fair, but the reality is that the Western world had enough various constraints that helped make tourism if not perfectly sustainable, relatively so. With Asia coming up we've added literally billions of potential new tourists to the pot and that's just not scalable. It's even very obvious to me, as I try to visit places which are not tourist destinations... and I visit off-season. I don't really care for tourism itself, I want to meet people and discover food. I go to these places to find not English dual-language, but Mandarin Chinese...
These will all broaden your horizons equally well as flying to another country. It's showing you your own country as an infinite fractal of human experience.
Like everything else, motivations for travel are many and varied; most people probably have several. Reducing them all to bragging rights is an overly reductive and unhelpful view.
That's only one reason for tourism and is not a motivation we all share. That said, this is perhaps another externality of social media that we should seek to redress, alongside the concerns with privacy and manipulation.
Instagram doesn't really help anyone when it sends thousands of people to a landmark, so they can take photos of themselves in front of it.
Some people travel to meet locals, some people travel to watch sports, some people travel to just lay at the beach and feel the breathe, some people travel to try the food, some people travel to jump around museums and sights.
Nothing wrong with any type of travel, unless you're trying to brake local laws or disturb locals (those who try to meet locals no matter what could do that and not even see what they're doing).
For some reason westerners are not able to take easy loitering. Maybe because it's illegal in some states or countries, but in most places around the world it's perfectly legal. If you want to just walk around San Marco square, there's no one stopping you, even if you live in Slovakia or Mexico, or Canada. And there should not be anyone stopping you. It's a public place, it's there for everyone to enjoy. If local authorities think they're unable to maintain infrastructure, they still will be fine after implementing a city tax for visitors. But the nature of public spaces should and will be untouched.
As some who just had the dubious pleasure of sharing a vacation with his 19yo cousin, I can tell you that for her it was exactly like that.
They would sell the tickets, and we'd be back where we started, unless they have to travel alone and can't bring any companion.
IATA forecasts that by 2037 Asia-Pacific will have more air travelers than North America and Europe combined.
Source: https://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2018-10-24-02.aspx
Where?
A single roundtrip from New York to Los Angeles a year offsets the combined effort of going vegetarian and recycling for example - https://shameplane.com/?fromCity=New%20York&fromCode=JFK&toC...
I've gone to many of those places: The Egypt Pyramids, Paris, London, Austria, Amsterdam, Crete, Cuba, Japan. After a while it becomes all the same, it all feels like a tourist trap everywhere you go, most likely because it is.
Seeing natural wonders like the canary islands, it's probably still worth it, but visiting man-made cities with their tourist trap monuments? No thank you.
And, for what it's worth, travel is already pretty expensive and taxed like crazy. If you can take a week long vacation to Europe and don't think you're elite and/or wealthy, I have some news for you. :)
I don't think even with taxes we can prevent it to be fair, it's going to get ugly. But I for me I've stopped traveling as my kids are now still small, and I don't plan on resuming it once they grow up, at least to visit man-made cities.
Flying across the globe just to visit a tourist trap monument like the Eiffel tower is just not worth it, neither for the experience or for the environmental impact.
But the idea of traveling is still very romanticised and associated with wealth and status, so I don't think people will stop doing it anytime soon unless some measures are put in place.
As for the elites, quite frankly I think things private jets should be literally forbidden due to environmental impact.
I think you instead need to combine a strategy of making it more expensive in progressive ways with building more infrastructure and finding technology to support low-carbon travel.
I guess you could combine both with something like a lottery ticket?
You can’t be flexing about the place you’ve been while making the point of travelling doesn’t matter.
Though, perhaps we read the Parent's message differently.
The only reason tourism has increased so much is because it's become affordable to the middle class.
The economy will adapt. There will be more tourist destinations to cancel out the increased crowds, with time.
Flying is a great way to travel in an environmentally friendly way. It's far less wasteful per mile than driving.
Fuel economy is about 75 mpg per passenger. This is nearly twice the average mileage as busses, and better than nearly any other realistic form of travel https://afdc.energy.gov/data/mobile/10311
(Other sources give 75mpg for airline average but this may be for a full plane)
It's a huge misconception that flying is a wasteful means of travel. It's practically the most efficient means there is
Thanks for the info.
For long distance travel were going to be using fossil fuel for a long time, at least until batteries double or so in density.
So yes, if I'm traveling solo, a plane beats car. But with multiple people, car wins.
The notion that jetsetting should be a right of the masses is a myth built on future generations paying for the damage mass flying does today. Thinking ubiquitous travel should be cheap and trivially available may actually be the elitist view, as the elite or wealthy will be the only ones able to protect their way of life as the natural environment changes and cities become more difficult to live or work in.
Edit: I used https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx, who describe their methodology here: https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculatorfaqs.html
While trains and fully loaded buses may be superior it is still far from the worst evil for long distances.
Cabron density of kerosine vs gasoline isn't that different.
Maybe the carbon footprint website doesn't consider average occupancy? Cars and busses usually cruise around at far less than their passenger capacity, not so for planes
Good thing these aren't the only ways to travel then. The fact that driving is insanely wasteful doesn't mean flying is environmentally friendly.
https://www.thoughtco.com/flying-driving-which-better-for-en...
putting the environment before humans will always be an "-ist" point of view to somebody.
> Taxing will only serve to make travel a luxury for the elite, as it once was.
sure but why not use older technology such as sail boats for everyone else? If you want to travel across the world, it will take you months.
>The economy will adapt. ...with time.
We're out of time. Social justice takes back seat while we get back on track environmentally.
That may be true but both driving and flying are unfriendly.
Not sure if "just add more taxes" is the solution to everything.
We can, many people are already campaigning against air travel, and this is a new (2019) thing .
> I've gone to many of those places: The Egypt Pyramids, Paris, London, Austria, Amsterdam, Crete, Cuba, Japan. After a while it becomes all the same,
Yeah, see, everyone wants to get to that point where they ve seen enough that "everything becomes the same". You wouldn't say the same if you hadnt been to any of them.
And I’ve been to those places too and it looks like you missed out on something. I really don’t feel like they were anything alike.
> To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience, It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.
That has always stuck with me and made me realize the delicate and potentially destructive nature of being a tourist.
[0] https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazi...
Edit: I misremembered which essay this quote was from. It is actually in a footnote on page 3 of this one http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
Leaving the original link up because it is still a great read about some of the potential horrors of mass tourism.
I think the DFW quote is actively damaging because it paints a picture of certain places as belonging to a certain group of people by natural right rather than by a more contingent or accidental mechanism.
I think it's only a very short distance from that kind of argument to the argument that many use to suggest that immigrants fleeing dangerous and awful places are an infestation to be eliminated.
Both legally and practically speaking there are ample reasons both to limit tourism and to limit immigration in reasonable, fair, and thoughtful ways. Some resources are more limited than others. The fact that some groups of people find themselves in possession of a place or a resource that others appreciate or even covet does not convey on them some kind of moral superiority over the rest of humanity.
Having an intelligent conversation about the practical limits of tourism and immigration is important and welcome. Demonizing those who want to experience different cultures, different climates, and different geography is completely unhelpful.
I say this as someone who hates to travel and who cannot stand going to a tourist destination that's overflowing with people.
But I refuse to demonize people that like or tolerate that kind of experience the same way I refuse to demonize people who are seeking a better life for themselves more permanently.
It is a delicate and fragile thing to be sure. The culture of a place comes from the people born accidentally to it. The desire to see that culture drives people not of it to visit, and then maybe to relocate, but if they don't let go of their own cultures and assimilate, they will fundamentally change the culture that drew them there.
Is this bad? It just means something changes -- it's up to the maintainers of the existing culture to decide how they want that culture to change.
Free movement is beautiful, a border-less world idyllic, but it does mean abandoning regional differences as the world becomes one giant ice cream soup of Hard Rock Cafes and Le Pain Quotidien bakeries, Ei Group pubs and Wyndham hotels.
If my ancestors built a place, and raised their families there to continue taking care of it for generations, in what sense does it not belong to me and my extended family? Nothing about that process was "accidental", though it may have some factor of "randomness" about it depending on your personal epistemology.
> I think it's only a very short distance from that kind of argument to the argument that many use to suggest that immigrants fleeing dangerous and awful places are an infestation to be eliminated.
You've skipped a thousand steps. When the caretakers of a place welcome people in, and then discover they pose a problem, it's not unreasonable for them to wish to mitigate the issue. If this means that an unlimited number of refugees or immigrants cannot be accepted because maintaining the same standard of living would be impossible, it is not unreasonable to refuse new entrants. By no means are we beholden to support every other human being, even if we empathize for their plight.
> The fact that some groups of people find themselves in possession of a place or a resource that others appreciate or even covet does not convey on them some kind of moral superiority over the rest of humanity.
It's not moral superiority; it's moral duty, to understand and uphold the works of the past that have lead to greatness. Failure to do so could mean seeing beautiful things destroyed, replaced by the same chaos and fear that people are already fleeing.
> I say this as someone who hates to travel
Well, maybe if you saw more of the world, and saw what people are trying to protect (e.g. in Europe), and got a greater sense of what it means to be a people (as opposed to the atomized, decultured masses in North America)... maybe you might understand why someone would seek to preserve something.
It makes sense that you don't care about preserving your local strip mall / walmart / home depot. It's quite another thing to care about preserving Notre Dame and such.
I don't think it's about ownership of a place; it's that the wonder of the place is destroyed by observation; especially by bulk observation. The question becomes is it better for the wonderous place to exist for insiders only, or for everyone to be able to observe its destruction?
Some places have become so far gone, that tourists come solely to observe tourists.
Tourist destinations, though they're also full of people from around the world, make something less than the sum of its parts. Tourists in this mode don't bring their own culture to the place. I'm sure most of the tourists are interesting people back home, but for some reason they adopt a globalized extruded tourist persona on vacation.
For example, parts of Bali are full of Australian tourists. Bali is interesting, and Australians are interesting. But mobs of Australians picking over the gift shops in Bali are ghastly.
Well, arriving could be accidental, but living there generation after generation, building the local culture, building the buildings, cultivating the land, etc, made it yours in a non "continent" but very real way.
When you go to see e.g. Venice, you don't go to see some wildlife area that some people happened to arrive nearby recently and claim, but to experience the culture and building and legacy that people built (and built upon) over millennia. There's few things "contingent or accidental" about that.
Perhaps difficult to explain this to Americans that are e.g. children of first generation immigrants, that live in a culture/city that others have built, and thus it's all the same to them.
Though the Native Americans would beg to differ - but those were treated as an "infestation to be eliminated" by the new European arrivals at the time.
Its not that its uncommon, its just a tiny fraction of total tourism.
The visit some museums, take some pics, talk to some locals, have a couple of adventures, and then they feel deeply emerged in the culture they still know nothing about (and don't really care to learn).
Actual caring for another culture is not shown in some travel. It takes long (even life-long) devotion.
And if it's more than one-two cultures, it's more of a sampling at a buffet, than any deep connection...
And if they're really serious, then proving it by putting skin in the game, not just a 2 week retreat: moving there, for example.
Even the latter, hardcore thing, is not some elite suggestion. Millions have done it, including richer, middle class, and poor people, that were fascinated with another country / culture / lifestyle.
What you see as "superficial", I see as a starting place. Maybe you don't really get to know the locals, but maybe you do get to meet other tourists from other countries, and then maybe you feel more comfortable traveling to their countries.
They are there to see, and make a tick in their mind. They are not even interested in talking. Tourism is not a small industry - we are talking about hundreds of million people globally. A tiny fraction is actually deeply interested in the culture.
If people really wanted to "meet each other, talk and learn" they could do it in their towns. Heck, in their neighborhoods. There are tons of stories there, people of different races, perspective, different political views, social backgrounds, etc. Even from different countries (immigrants etc). But you need to care and engage to do that.
So instead, they "meet and talk" as tourists, ie. in some place they'll spend 10-20 days and seldom if ever go back, with people they'll never see, and don't really care about.
And usually for trivial matters (since they don't share common causes or engage in some shared project, like they could with people in their home towns, so they just go for trivial stuff, and "aren't we all the same", etc).
That is, if they even engage. Usually they'll just look for either the more exotic token people to photograph, or the more like-them people (e.g. young hobos) to hang around in some generic touristy-bar. Plus tons of photos and videos they "have to" take, that nobody looks again at or cares about.
Maybe, or maybe they'll just be as narrow-minded as before, judging the other place with preconceived notions, and thinking they now know it expertly too (just because they visited it as tourists).
If we insist on traveling, I'd say the "best way to break prejudices and stereotypes on certain country/people" is to work there for a year, in a low/median-end job along with the locals at that (not in some expat enclave for the privileged with echo-chamber friends).
Maybe, but less likely than those who stayed home...
It's not just about traveling, it applies to all aspects of our social interactions... in order to change your perspective on things you need to have your presumptions challenged, and that will not happen if you're always in the same social bubble that reinforces your existing beliefs...
It says mass tourist, not tourist.
Mass tourism doesn't allow for meeting people and learning, expect maybe superficially with other mass tourists or wait staff.
On top of that, many people travel in groups and don't communicate with people outside of their group at all.
Want that authentic experience? Go solo to barely visited places. But that's not what 90% (if not 99%) of tourists do.
Dublin experiences this as well in the last few years, with all of our Silicon Valley companies and investment banks continuing to expand there and push out the long-term residents.
To be a humble guest in a different land is difficult and often far from the approach most tourists take in their travels, to the detriment of both visitor and resident.
Tourism is a paradox where suddenly you have demand but building enough supply to quench demand is often restricted for historic or cultural reasons, so ironically the locals who created this culture and history worth preserving are the ones who are pushed out of the limited supply as prices inevitably rise.
So if you want to be a traveler instead of a tourist, you must first shed your preconceptions and expectations. You may need to go the the kind of places you've never dreamed of going. You'll need to go there ready to experience it as it is, instead of how you'd wish it to be.
I went to Pisa a few years ago, mostly by chance. I thought I'd go take a look at that tower and was at first disgusted to see how the tourists had ruined the place. But then I looked again, rows and rows of people leaning, arms outstretched, askew, faces twisting into smiles. See what there is to see and you may yourself be changed, traveler.
That's the worst kind. It's basically a tourist + delusions of being different to the rest.
The floating islands of Lake Titicaca.
The islands take a lot of work to maintain, they're actively dangerous to live on, and not especially comfortable. The islands continue to exist because tourists visit and pay enough for souvenirs to keep the islanders from moving onto dry land.
Just one example.
I don't know if it is still like this, but when I was in Cinque Terra in the Italian Riviera, there was a lot that seem to be structured into the place to have tourism, but not let it overwhelm the place.
Building development was strictly controlled, so the hotel/hostel we stayed at was pretty simple and converted apartment building.
There wasn't a ton to do in the towns, like jet skiiing or parasailing, so the appeal of the place didn't feel like a resort place. It really felt like people mainly made wine there with a few converted buildings that tourists stayed at.
For me, the main draw of the place aside from the natural beauty was the lack of things that seem to cater to tourists.
The second night I was there, we ran into a post-wedding party with locals at a bar who outnumbered the tourists probably 25-1.
And that felt normal. Like, we were there seeing how these people lived and just got to enjoy the lifestyle and beauty for a few days.
Contrast this to Venice, which was almost 100% tourism to me. It felt like a museum. Locals seemed almost out of place. While the buildings weren't new, everything in the town seemed to revolv around selling stuff to tourists.
The point of pricing isn't to completely eliminate tourism, it's to lower it.
The goal is to find a price point that cuts down, but doesn't eliminate tourism.
And while it would attract a higher wealth tourist, you can easily adjust the system to a lottery type where you have a certain percent of people who just buy access and others who won a lottery.
They do this out west for river access during the summer. They don't want a whole bunch of people river rafting and destroying the river, so they have a lottery that you have to buy a ticket for. You lose the money if you don't win a license. This creates revenue without increasing the number of tourists. And it also creates a system where people who really want to go there, will buy a ticket without a guarantee of a spot. And,when they do go, they tend to be much better quality tourists since.
I know people who have been buying tickets for almost a decade and haven't gotten a spot.
Something like this is very effective at keeping up revenue and decreasing the number of tourists.
“Make poor people poorer”.
The price increases won’t impact the wealthy, even if they did have to reduce their travel by 10-20%. But it will impact those that save (or pay-off) for years for their dream trip or honeymoon trip.
My preferred approach would be more progressive than regressive: just make rich people poorer through income/capital/dividend taxes.
A reasonably priced lottery would give middle income people access and an even playing field against wealthy people.
This system, combined with a limit on tourist infrastructure would cut down on excessive visitors and make it sustainable.
But yeah, making it something just the elite can enjoy would not be fair..
It was surreal to see the level of tourism increase between my favorite places. And I am convinced this is a bad thing because it steals the soul of the said environment.
People become more comfortable with greed. I was in Cambodia in late 2015,and was quite happy with pricing of things, even if often charged a premium. Then, I returned earlier this year for a holiday and quickly learned that prices have soared, and sellers don't care if you put your fruit and vegetables back. This was a huge warning for me personally.
In short, a lot of these places are becoming the exact same thing anywhere you go. An opportunity to grab money from foreigners, whilst putting culture as the very last thing for others to see and experience.
Anyway, I am probably just ranting. I do love Asia but the effects of mass tourism are very real.
Prices are soaring because tourism is soaring. Don't be mad at the people responding rationally to market forces and enjoying a higher standard of living; be mad at the tourists. And as someone who isn't from there and only lived there for a few years, you have more in common with the tourists than the locals.
I understand your point, it's valid. But I will add that local markets, in Cambodia for example, will sit on mangoes and papaya until they rot, and still charge a premium despite the product being borderline inedible.
Oh, and I am very well aware of local prices. If you take a local with you to theater or even grocery shopping, you'll astound yourself at the "premium" that you get charged as a foreigner.
Source: Grew up in a town where tourism was the only industry.
It's kind of obvious - tourism requires low skilled laborers.
Iceland (3 tourists per resident - 70,056.87 USD GDP per capita)
> Tourism accounted for more than 10% of Iceland's GDP in 2017.
That doesn't sound like a tourist-only country.
Even in developing countries that are popular with rich tourists, like Thailand, tourism is <20% GDP.
When you spend your entire vacation at a resort, it might feel like the entire country is a third world "shit-hole" dependent on tourism. That's probably why the OP feels like this.
Singapore and Hong Kong get a lot more tourism (per GDP) and are both high income city states.
https://www.wttc.org/-/media/files/reports/2018/power-and-pe...
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/Mapped-...
Mostly as % of workforce working in tourism - but may also be % GDP. And yeah there are outliers, but still : Iceland 300K people - Malta 400K people.
Maybe the greedy one was the guy who thought he could pay pennies from his Western salary because he's dealing with third world vendors who should be satisfied living a third world lifestyle.
What does this mean?
I can travel off season because I don't have children, and I can take time off at any point in time during the year. The problem of congestion really is for people with families or who don't can't take time off outside "summer" months.
For example, Yosemite. It is possible to go there and go on a ten mile hike without seeing a single other person. In high season. Do you really want to go to half dome?
More mollified, I'd suggest that one can go to 'secondary cities'. Go to Alsace instead of Paris. Go to Sichuan instead of Beijing. Eat what the laborers eat for breakfast. Sleep in someone's home (isn't this what the supposed wonder of AirBnB is for?). Go to places that force you to experience culture just by facts of not having any easy tourist places to go or do.
If you use AirBnB, then all the people whining about tourism (which seems to include you) will get mad that you're avoiding the local governments' hotel regulations.
Personally, I did use AirBnB when I was in Germany last year because the tourists had driven all the hotel prices through the roof in one city. It was a great experience, meeting and talking to a local and staying in a private home. But apparently the anti-travel (for other people besides themselves) liberals think I suck because I didn't use a high-priced hotel.
Also, I have nothing against AirBnB to meet and talk to locals genuinely hosting you in their homes. I have everything against converting residential housing such as apartments to commercial housing (eg. landlords buying multiple condos exclusively to make them AirBnBs)
That's extreme. There's plenty of value in traveling to even touristy places in other cultures.
It's as if the world isn't black and white after all and there is no single right solution for everything.
You can see the same behavior reflected in the hiking culture here in Washington. There are thousands of unbelievable hikes, but a sunny weekend will see a mile-long section of cars at the parking lot for Stuart Lake / Colchuck Lake / The Enchantments, while other hikes throughout the state have no more than 3 or 4 cars.
You're the "Vince Vega" tourist who visits France and eats fucking McDonalds. You've completely missed the point of visiting another place, you've just gone to the place where America has exported its culture into another area, with all the grace and sensitivity of a hiker taking a dump on a birds nest.
I think people here expect better discussion than this.
Something like the Taj Majal is a sight to behold, certainly. But if you just go there, and oooo and aaah at it, and then go home, you haven't experienced a lick of India. You could've had the same experience with a Google Maps walkthrough.
I don't find this offensive so much from a cultural standpoint as much as just a massive waste of time and resources, to jet across the world, go to a completely new place, and experience NOTHING in it. What was the point of it then!? You'd have been further ahead never leaving your damn sofa.
"If you can't be a tourist the way I think you should be a tourist, then you should just stay home and look at photos on Google Maps!" Do you have any idea how much of a pretentious person this makes you sound?
Personally, I avoid any American restaurant chains abroad (and usually do at home too!), but I'm not going to tell people to just "stay home" because they aren't backpacking and staying in hostels like I have. That's some pretty serious arrogance. At least these people are getting out of their comfort zone a little. It's pretty impossible to travel in a foreign country without being exposed a little to the local culture, even if you have a tour guide escorting you around everywhere.
It's an easy parallel to going off the trail when hiking to get away from the crowds: it might not appear to be a problem on an individual scale but as more people do it the vegetation and fungal colonies are damaged, a new social path forms, more people are invited by the easier path and erosion becomes a problem. It clearly forms a feedback loop - the more people that come, the more others feel encouraged and invited, and the more that those on the "cutting edge" feel emboldened to go farther to escape the new crowds.
I was a digital nomad for awhile, too, but even after months in a place you are still a tourist. You are never really living like the locals do, even if you go to their bars and grocery stores.
No one is speaking out against experiencing the world-- the article is specifically against everyone going to the exact same handful of overcrowded places.
It's exactly why these spots are extremely crowded while other areas are not.
Note that I didn't say all tourists do this, which seems to be what you're implying I'm saying.
But at the same time it will have positive effects for both global warming and for the fragile eco-systems and heritage sites of the world.
Anyway, the main concern for climate change is coal. Not only it pollutes more, but there is much more of it on the ground than oil and gas. Luckily, solar is successfully competing with it.
Oil in particular seems to be unable to stay at very high prices. Historically we just get a recession and it goes down again.
People will have to move around closer to their work so they can bike or walk. Possibly take only a monthly trip to gather food and other things from the store. Air travel would be limited to more permanent immigration and probably the ultra wealthy of course.
I wonder how many decades we have left until this point.
The corollary to that is people will either be more locked into whatever job they're at because they need somewhere close to home or people will have to move much more often, meaning probably much more renting than home owning. On the other hand it might revive the idea of pensions and unions because people would stay at jobs longer since it would be harder to change jobs (or it would just lead to worse conditions because workers have less choice, the way it would fall kind of balances on a knife's edge here).
The other aspect if that if people can essentially travel less because of the transportation cost, there should be more hyper local services. So it should create more local jobs.
That being said, assuming it will ever happen, it won't probably be a smooth transition, and there will be winners and losers.
[0] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...
Not sure we are good enough for that though.
Pair this with the continuing trend of residential population density increase metropolitan areas. As travel becomes cheaper and Internet-enabled connectivity improves, multinational firms expand into more and more regional hot spots, bringing external wealth, increasing the prices on goods and housing in locations where tourism is already decreasing the availability of housing for local / long-term residents.
As these two effects collide, real estate prices climb, and that spike must be attractive to speculative investors -- as in SF, NYC, London, these cities see purchase prices climb faster than income increases. Then because the investment needs to be offset while the value rises, those houses / apartments are also put up for short-term rental or corporate lease.
The result is that the people who made up the city and made it run get pushed out, that it's culture is washed away. Dublin, Lisbon, Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam, Prague all demonstrate this process, and it's likely to continue unless the mass tourism floods can be reversed, and pressures to move into the middle of these cities is mitigated.
I'm actually really excited about burgeoning air taxis, along with things like level 4/5 microbus-augmented public transport, for reducing the pressure of relocating to cities themselves. But travel may also need to get more expensive again -- we don't yet require flights to be offset for their impact on the environment, let alone their impact on local life, and both of those avenues may need to be reviewed.
Are there still local cultures anywhere in the world? The west, and a lot of asia is more or less similar now, people are accepting of each other's habits and won't make a fuss if you break whatever local customs are left. I think local cultures were a thing of tourism ~40 years ago, people now glorify tiny differences.
There are, yeah. Even city to city in sub-regions of different countries.
> people are accepting of each other's habits and won't make a fuss if you break whatever local customs are left.
This is different from cultures not existing; tolerance != homogeneity.
Maybe in asia, where there are still less developed areas. In europe, which is by far the biggest tourist destinations i don't think there is true local culture to discover. There is an adulteratered "culture" doped with conservatives, maintained mainly because of tourism in some places.
I live in Europe and am happy to report that there are indeed differentiated cultures, even city to city in many areas.
> There is an adulteratered "culture" doped with conservatives, maintained mainly because of tourism in some places.
I don't understand what you're saying here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...
> I don't understand what you're saying here.
Sorry i mean fake, non-organic "culture" and "traditions" that have only been preserved because tourists like them
Hiking is the last bastion. However I'm fairly confident that really won't ever change, at least once you get past the 2 mile marker. Tourists fade away beyond that.
I know personally, I'll take a trip down to the Bruce Peninsula for a day hike. (I also personally wouldn't fly somewhere JUST for a hike, but that's only because of closer and more easily accessible hiking trails.)
Maybe the solution is to develop additional long-distance hiking networks and increase the area of protected land in the US, realizing that the cost-benefit ratio of doing so is outrageously high.
[1] https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/images/jmtgraph_2.png
Its not tourism; its growing affluence and diminishing 'touristy' places. No longer as easy to find an ancient monastery to tour, when they've installed AC and rebuilt with electric lights and indoor plumbing.
It doesnt matter. Tourists keep flocking in ridiculous amounts to tiny islands for their instagram selfies. Everyone says they want a "unique" experience, but in reality they don't. There are countries like greece where "unique" experiences untouched by repackaging/commercialization dont exist for decades- everything has been touristified.
People who want an actually unique experience will seek those out and find it. This year I went to a European country that exactly none of my family or friends could point to on a map, and it was amazing. I even went about a month before their tourist season started. If you find yourself complaining about crowds at tourist places, maybe you need to examine what it is that you wanted out of the trip.
Industry or gov shouldn't regulate to only serve those who are able to pay premium. There's nothing wrong with visiting that same Venice while living in a nearby city. Just build the infrastructure to accommodate more people and warn everyone that you should brace yourself to walk in the crowd or postpone your visit until off-season (or in case of Venice, just walk it in the early morning).
With this said, I still find it easy even in the globe's most popular cities, to escape the crowds and find hidden treasures by wandering sans guidebook/blog/etc. Making an extensive plan before traveling will almost by definition ensure your path crosses with a vast majority of other travelers.
Sure but people still want to leave. They don't seem to particularly enjoy their local enclaves anywhere (bowling alone etc). Online and offline escapism is on a steady rise this decade (e.g. digital nomads) so how is that going to be handled? Congestion pricing can do so much, there will always be cheaper alternative destinations. In fact younger people may not even want to have a permanent base anymore, so everyone will be a tourist, and everywhere will be a destination.
Cheap globetrotting was never a reality for anyone but the wealthy until the middle of last century. As we're discovering for many other things, being able to make it a reality for the middle classes is something we should have perhaps acknowledged but not acted upon.
That assumes that there are people who care. But if globetrotting becomes the dominant way to live for the middle class, very few people will care. Most people are flocking in major metropolises to work and live in tiny apartments. That trend has not changed, even with technology making it easier to work remotely. This centralization means that in the future anything outside rich megacities will be a tourist destination - and just that.
We already see that happening in the south of europe, which is becoming a convenient cheap tourist destination while the brain drain to the north continues.
There's really nothing stopping places like that from changing themselves to make themselves more attractive to industry and business to stop the brain drain. The people are leaving because those places haven't bothered making themselves nice places to stay and live and work in high-paying professions.
you'd think, but places dont change themselves - people change them. And when these people have left, it would take exceptional circumstances to reverse the trend.
The Eiffel Tower was built as a tourist destination so they'd make the problem easy, but this might be good for Machu Picchu
Actually for the latter it could be a knowledge of the history quiz, or a leave-no-trace quiz...
As the article touches upon, each additional tourist presents an increase in the external costs they impose on everyone else. These costs may manifest in price increases (more expensive accommodation) or in other ways (longer queues, disruptions to locals, etc). Taxes are very much needed so that tourists bare the true cost of their presence. This will achieve the desired outcome of reducing tourist numbers by pricing some people out and making alternative destinations more appealing relative to their price.
Tourism is a luxury and there is no serious case to be made that cities should have to effectively subsidise the demand of travellers so that everyone can see the world.
This is not a disaster - this is bootstrapping.
"No one sees the barn," he said finally.
A long silence followed.
"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."
He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.
We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."
There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.
"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."
Another silence ensued.
"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise
The world not having enoug space to be a playground is downright absurd.
If they didn't have the tourists they would be complaining even more about lacking an economy and blaming them for not visiting.
On the other hand, tourism accounts for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. As rates of tourism increase, so will a negative effect on the global environment. And an increase in poorly implemented eco-tourism is hurting vulnerable environments without strong economies to protect them; some examples being the Galapagos and Madagascar. Those parts of the world definitely are being eaten by Tourism, and we should focus more on sustainable tourism to prevent further damage.
This is especially obvious in France where American tourists only go to Paris and Nice (and a few other places in the south), leaving the rest of the country for us and our Dutch, British and German neighbors ;-)
Instead, I spent most of my time in the countryside. It was absolutely beautiful and I rarely saw another foreigner.
I remember going to national parks growing up and they were never that crowded. I feel like it’s all changed. And now instead of people who go to these places to actually see and experience the place, they go there for all the wrong reasons.
National park admissions are public records. There seems to less attendance now than in the 90s.
I think it's actually more novel nowadays to develop a really intimate knowledge of your home city/town/place and be content with that.
And if you think tourist spots are crowded now, wait until the UBI society arrives :)
Tourism is Eating the World
Software is Eating the World
[...] is Eating the World
I guess there will be nothing left to eat soon.
We can charge for tourism in a few ways:
1. price discrimination at individual locations based on passport. This would be difficult to implement and unpopular.
2. Charge really high prices for tourist visas that represent the true value of the what the tourists is gaining access to.
3. UBI for citizens
They use it for a couple of days compared to lifetime use by the citizens.
Your comment sounds so hateful and privileged. It almost sounds like "we made all this infrastructure, parks, law and order for you. You need to pay fairly for the honor and privilege to use it".
In India, public attractions charge higher to foreigners but the stated reason is purchase power parity. Indians on average make like $2k annually.
Neetu Singh IAS
Let the unwashed yokels and barbarians keep flying. They’ll come around soon enough
Sadly, it seems you suffer from the common mentality that seems rather pervasive among European people's overall, a sense of a kind of self-righteous ignorance, of presuming an equality mirrored on one's own culture, values, ideals, nature, and character; essentially the manifestation of the delusional belief that "we are all the same" and that muddling and mixing falsely equates to diversity.
Reality simply is that not all humans share the characteristics or values and ideals that have emerged from the rotten and pernicious western experience of abundance combined with various other cultural and traditional characteristics. No, the combined 3 BILLION people of India and China are not going to "meet each other, talk and learn" as they swarm and swamp Europe and the USA's measly combined <1 billion population, nor will the 4.5 Billion Africans somehow just want to talk and learn and meet in 2100 when the combined crush of humanity starts really gripping.
We are seeing these articles just now, as a relatively small subset of each of those populations has any means whatsoever to travel and become tourists, just wait until the exponentially rising numbers of them have the means to travel to swamp Europe and the USA, when citizens won't even have the ability to see their own cultural sites or artifacts in anything like peace or focus as billions of "tourists" flood into the relatively few places of interest.
no, this is just the beginning of far greater consequences of ill guided, self-righteous tyranny that is always common to the self-appointed authoritarian ruling class. This is the future you and we have condemned our children to, being overrun and dissociated with our own cultural heritage out of misguided delusional co-dependent and enabling policies of overpopulation of the planet.
I visited Venice in December '04. We stayed at a proto-Air-BnB (Air BnB didn't exist yet, but it was something very similar). Talking to the host we learned that she was from Moldova. The owners of the apartment lived elsewhere in Italy and only visited rarely. We went out to a restaurant and again, the people running it were not Italians - Eastern Europeans. It seemed very similar wherever we went in Venice.
The whole Venice experience seemed a lot like a sort of ancient Disney Land. It was the real old stuff, but somehow it just didn't seem real. Drunk tourists stumbling about getting their pics taken with people dressed up as masquaraders. It was kind of a bizarre experience. I much preferred the other out-of-the way, small Italian villages we visited on that trip.
Also: your point can be applied to any consumption, not only to travel. Everyone of the 4.5 billon owing a car won't work either.
btw: even though you are asking for it not to be, your comment comes across as condescending.
we're not, but we are. There's a lot of potential but currently we are acting more like a cancer than bacteria.
Not sure why you'd single out the Chinese tourists.
Most American/English/German/Australian/Russian etc tourists are just as ghastly and vacuous - to the point of there being several idioms and cultural artifacts in Europe about that...
I’m from the African continent and there is incredible culture to be found there.
While I agree that mass tourism is damaging, the Indians, Chinese and Africans can’t all be painted under the same brush of mass tourism. That is to miss the details. To assume that everyone coming from those places is like that. We used to think that all Americans were as you described: ignorant and willing to consume African culture with their dollars. How wrong I was.
I live in a popular tourist destination in the UK and there are busloads of Europeans damaging the city centre, leaving trash in the parks. Who are they and what right do they have? They’re probably from some European town suffering the same fate.
My point is that this kind of argument is inciteful and labels only a particular set of people as the ones to blame. This world has become consumerist. The whole world is at fault. You only see the newest emerging groups and blame them.
Let’s rather shift the conversation to the “culture of mass tourism” and not the “culture of the others” coming on their buses.
I do agree with you that there are beautiful parts of Africa, and interesting cultures to some degree, but even you don't want to be there, declare the white country you live in as the far superior to all others, including Africa, so it's not exactly like you are a good argument for why anyone would want to go to Africa ... especially if you don't want to be there ... as you try to be primitively manipulative in trying to slander people as "racist" for pointing out the reality of the destruction of the very engine that has driven all of humanity for thousands of years now.
I guarantee you are lying, or at the very least, exaggerating that "Europeans damaging the city centre". The difference is that Europeans traveling in Europe and the functioning society being able to handle sustainable levels of European tourists is not the same thing as mass Chinese tour busses or millions of Africans invading their continent and cities and then becoming burdens on the rest of society, just like they were unsustainable burdens where they came from in Africa. Reality is that by 2100 there will be about 9 BILLION Asians and Africans for the rest of the whole world's 1.5 billion ... There is simply no way but the way to hell to ignore the reality that this will lead to nothing but disaster no matter how any sane and intelligent person looks at it. It will end poorly no matter how an intelligent person looks at it, one way or another, if this insane LARPing continues that assumes that people who have not produced or contributed anything of value yet make up the crushing mass of humans on earth are somehow equal to the people who have essentially produced everything of value while being an actual tiny minority on the planet are somehow the same and equal. Exceptions as yourself simply don't make the rule, regardless of whether you are proving white supremacy by living in a white country or not.
Right now, Boston gets Chinese tour groups who are visiting just to enjoy cleaner air than they have at home. So it's true that they're not engaging with us locals at all. But when they go back, they'll be part of the pressure to clean China's air.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20676923.