
The backlash against overtourism - bushido
https://www.economist.com/node/21752943
======
robben1234
I won't argue about off topic issues, but I don't think mass tourism is
killing any sights. Ignorance kills natural sights, over advertisement kills
human created sights.

Nearby Venice there's so much interesting stuff and small cities, a bit
further are big cities. None of them really struggles with tourists as much as
Venice. Maybe you'll see a huge line for Firenze Duomo but that's it, streets
and other sights are practically lineless.

Why Florence struggles with Duomo and Venice struggles in general? Because
they're famous all over the world for things they're struggle with. Everyone
know about floating city of Venice, and Florence's Cathedral. Those things are
being romanticised for centuries.

All Italy has to do is start load balancing tourists. Advertise other sights
in the area, build easier public commute to other stuff. They have means to do
so, they have tourism ad budget, they have 'city_name' cards which grant
discounts to different sights.

I've been to Croatia this summer, they are struggling with Dubrovnik too. But
most beautiful things are not there. Plitvice is like heaven and past 2pm I
was walking there practically alone, Split's old city is as beautiful as
Dubronik's and except 12-2pm is not crowded, beaches in Makarska and on Hvar
are way more scenic and comfortable than Italy's and there's no crowds.

Go other places or rot in queues of over advertised sights.

~~~
js2
I stayed with my wife and two kids on Venice almost exactly four years ago
this month. We avoided the busy spots during the day, and had Venice to
ourselves at night. So even at places as busy as Venice, it's still possible
to avoid crowds.

We actually found Florence to be busy almost everywhere, even with lots of
people still wandering around at night. The Uffizi was the one place that was
impossible to enjoy, mostly because of the tour groups. I wish they would
limit the number of people in any given room at a time. But, we wandered
across to the Museo Galileo and had it to ourselves.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Yup, same experience in Florence. Beautiful city but just couldn't enjoy it. I
saw half a dozen other Italian cities and had a great time, Florence was the
worst experience and it had little to do with the city and everything to do
with the guests.

The one thing that bugs me about museum tours these days is that they all wear
in-ear headphones connected to the guide. Which means whereas before you'd
mostly have groups of 5 people with one guide, you now have groups of 20
people walking 20 meters behind one guide because distance isn't an issue.
Some rooms become unbearable, it's like you take a super busy street market in
Mumbai and hang up some paintings and expect people to enjoy the art while
navigating through a flood of people.

In a way it helps because you get fewer guides and possibly less shouting.
You'd hope this makes things more quiet but it doesn't. It drops the costs of
a guide for individuals to next to nothing due to the size of the groups, so
you get massive groups and more groups.

Having a few groups of two or three individuals standing around isn't an
issue. But when it's a blob of 15-20 people, it's no longer possible to
navigate through it or look through/past it, you have to go around and if
they're infront of an art piece, you're mostly out of luck.

As for the city, in many parts you hardly hear any Italian and if you do, it's
someone in the tourist business trying to sell you something.

I'm not necessarily complaining, I'm part of the problem haha. Just sharing my
experience.

------
whack
If cities really had a problem with "overtourism", there's a simple solution:

1\. Gouge the hell out of tourists by jacking up the taxes on hotels & tourist
attractions. Exemptions provided only for those with local IDs/passports

2\. Redistribute the resulting tax dollars to all city residents

Either you will successfully drive away all tourists, or you'll be making so
much money that your residents will love them.

The fact that no city is actually doing this, makes me think that no one
really has a problem with "overtourism". They just love to complain about it,
while still hooked to the GDP boost tourists bring.

~~~
hrktb
> 2\. Redistribute the resulting tax dollars to all city residents

One of the result is less and less “true” residents. That’s what is happening
with airbnb, where some people prefer to move away and dedicate their appart
to tourism, even if it’s only for part of the year.

Or restaurants and other services used by everyone get tourism focused, and
while money flows in, quality of life goes down.

I think that’s one case where money doesn’t solve the issue (provided it’s an
issue to solve, some might argue)

~~~
jhbadger
While I'm sure airbnb accelerated the process, when I visited Venice a decade
ago I rented a flat owned by somebody who lived on the mainland. It had been
his grandmother's residence, but he had been renting it out to tourists for
years at that point.

------
Loughla
Honest to God, the best take on this theory was actually the Consul's tale in
Hyperion explaining why he was against the Hegemony. The degradation of Maui-
Covenant is just so very realistic and easy to visualize.

Reading that as a child actually led me to travel less than I really want to
as an adult. Instead, I enjoy making my small part of the world 'mine' instead
of trying to make the rest of the world 'mine'.

~~~
zanny
It doesn't hurt that you can get a large chunk of the travel experience
virtually now. Either watching someone elses travel vlogs (from just phone
camera stuff to professional productions on various places) or using something
like google maps lets you "tour" the world.

If I want the sensation of being somewhere busy I could just drive an hour and
walk main street in my closest city. I'm sure all the shops and attractions
there would love to see you more often as much as the ones halfway around the
world would.

And the good news is a lot of missing pieces (the grandeur and immersion that
comes with being somewhere in person) can be improved on with VR. Really
looking forward to virtual tours of places being commonplace within my
lifetime.

To be fair its much the same problem remote work experiences. Its mostly
subjective experience that people feel is lacking telecommuting more than
anything physically being absent. Which makes it a personal thing if you are
satisfied with it or not. But it just being an option means many people can
experience 99% of something without having the immense marginal costs moving
bodies around the planet.

~~~
mitchdoogle
VR can only ever satisfy the visual and auditory experience, which I would
argue is much less than 99% of an experience of visiting a different place.
Even if VR came along that could reliably emulate our other senses, you would
still be missing out on a vital part of most experiences - interacting with
others.

~~~
Loughla
> interacting with others.

What? Why wouldn't there be substantive human interaction as part of this
process. If we can do that via text (see this post for an example), why not
vr? Virtual Tour guide could be a thing. Or Just think of a VR version of
Second Life, but with less sexual overtones.

------
csomar
Couldn't this be a failure from the European cities in question?

While European countries are on the top of the list, the cities? Not that
much.

The first one is Bangkok. With around 22 million tourists. Paris is third with
18 million. Interestingly, Paris has more things to see, a more extensive
metro system (actually waaa..y more extensive). Yet, I seem to be more
bothered by tourists in Paris than in Bangkok.

In Bangkok, the tourism is spread around the city. There is the Sukhumvit line
which is quite a lot of BTS stations. It is full of hotels but things are
spread out. You do see lots of tourists but there doesn't seem to be a problem
of tourists overcrowding as in Paris.

Paris has failed to grow outside of Paris 1-6. There isn't much space to build
there, so things got messy. What Paris should have done is create a whole new
region (regions?) for young tourists, couples, families, and old tourists.
Each region is separate. They can be a bit far but not too far. Tourists
traveling around will find their mates instead of stumbling on locals.

Other cities that adapted better to tourists: Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Kuala Lumpur. All on the top list.

~~~
httpz
The cities you mentioned were mostly developed recently with a solid plan. The
primary purpose of those European cities weren't being a tourist destination.
When the Notre Dame was built 800 years ago, they weren't thinking about 21st
century tourists. A lot of tourist attractions in European cities were built
before the airplane/car era so preparing for a massive influx of tourists
probably didn't cross their minds.

------
mattmanser
I read Arthur C. Clark's Childhood's End the other day, good book, but what
surprised me was his naivety in describing the 'perfect' world. Briefly, the
book starts with aliens peacefully invading and enforcing peace and order,
while bringing prosperity.

He talked about how anyone could travel anywhere, and did, without ever
reflecting that if you have a few billion people just travelling anywhere they
wanted, it would be utter chaos in all the tourist spots.

It really underlines that he didn't even vaguely comprehend the incredibly
privileged life he lived in (and I don't really either!), that he was so
unfathomably richer than so much of the world's population that he couldn't
even conceive the chaos of what he was proposing.

And now more of us enter that section of society (and still we are only a
small fraction of the world's population) there simply isn't the capacity to
accommodate us all.

~~~
bunderbunder
A perfect society where everything is so great that _everybody_ has the
freedom to tromp all over the planet in an effort to occasionally distract
themselves from their otherwise dreary existences.

There's a parable about what a deeply entrenched mind virus materialism can be
hiding in there somewhere.

------
jolesf
“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.” -David Foster Wallace

~~~
chasingthewind
I personally hate travel and can identify with some of what he expressed here,
but at a deeper level this throbs with a kind of elitism that really bothers
me. I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the
sentence almost reads like one of today's despicable screeds against the
"alien" invader. Is there even any possible solution to the "problem" of some
people living in or near a place that others would wish to visit or even move
to? What gives one set of people the right to live in/visit a place and denies
others that same right? It's not an easy problem and a well crafted paragraph
by a talented writer doesn't transform it into one.

~~~
ChristianBundy
> I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the
> sentence almost reads like one of today's despicable screeds against the
> "alien" invader.

FYI, it shouldn't be surprising that replacing critical words can change the
meaning of a sentence.

~~~
domador
A question would be whether the replacement forms a valid analogous statement,
one which reveals unrecognized hypocrisy.

In this case, it's a partially successful analogy. Both mass tourist and
immigrants travel to foreign lands, but one of them does so optionally while
the other typically does so out of real or perceived necessity.

------
mattnewton
Sounds like in many cases they need a pricing mechanism to pay for the
externalities. A tourist tax on hotels downtown is nice, what about a tax on
tourist alchohol? And cannabis in Amsterdam, that pays for the stag party
cleanup? Tickets for publically vomiting after 10pm?

But in other cases, for any reasonable tax the demand might still keep
outstripping supply. I guess that leaves unreasonably high fees, or something
new and much more creative.

~~~
eternalban
Back in the early 90s in St. Marks (NYC) there was this head shop (among many
others on that fabled stretch) with a [prominently displayed] "This Ain't
Kansas Dorothy" t-shirt with a drawing of a handgun. Manhattan had this unique
'buzz', and some people actually were scared of visiting!

Now it is an open air disney land for the tourist. The buzz is gone and most
of us have retreated to Brooklyn.

I now fully sympathize with "rude" Parisians.

------
js2
If you stay on Venice, you can explore away from the busiest tourist areas
during the day, then at night when most of the tourists leave, have the city
to yourself to explore.

Obviously a place can be loved or touristed to death. Groups with a large
number of people arriving all at once (whether by van or bus or ship)
exacerbate it. But everywhere I've traveled, even very popular places, if you
can find a way to avoid the large groups and peak times, you have a much more
pleasant experience.

My initial impression of Venice when I visited it four years ago was: "this
seems like a place Disney would build if it only could." Perhaps Venice should
take a page from Disney's playbook: treat itself like a theme park and limit
total daily access with time-of-day tickets for the most popular destinations.

~~~
buboard
It IS a theme park, albeit a sloppy one. If the city did not rely on tourism
they would have more efficient boats, perhaps some other transportation system
(so that the city is _actually_ livable by working age locals, and not just by
pensioners), some squares would have a playground instead of cafes and jewelry
shops etc. Tourism sets the whole city to "tourist mode", slow and geared only
towards tourism-related businesses. It wouldn't work as a tech city for
example (even though i would love to see the innovations they would have to
build for it). It has been museum-ified by choice of the Venetians.

I love the history of Venice to bits (I live in one of their former conquests)
, but nowadays its indeed like a disney construction, you can't trust it to
maintain a culture. Even the art students who frequent the various squares
look like posers.

~~~
bliblah
I am very doubtful that Venice has some latent value outside of Tourism. There
are many reasons it fell out of power while other cities flourish and thrived
during the same period.

This isn't a case like Singapore where land is limited because you could just
live in the mainland. The buildings are all historical treasures so
modernizing the infrastructure is probably out of the question. So business
need to thrive in a place that is hard to access, can't grow, and can't
modernize itself.

Don't get me wrong, I love the place but the only people who live there are
Millionaires that use those houses as vacation homes half the year and don't
contribute much to the local economy. The local craftspeople are all masters
so only the most wealthy could afford their wares so they have been replaced
by Chinese souvenir shops.

It's definitely a shame but I don't see how a common Italian person is
supposed to reap the benefits of less tourism.

------
dsfyu404ed
Meh. I grew up somewhere tourism was the biggest local industry. I will never
be able to go on a "normal vacation" without feeling dirty because I know how
the sausage is made.

Tourism sucks and the suck percolates through the entire local economy and
everybody who has to participate in it (i.e. everyone who lives there). Even
if you don't sell grossly overpriced goods or services to the tourists you
make your living off of those that do. The non-repetitive nature of
transactions means shady people get rewarded shady business practices and
everyone develops this world view in which everyone else is a lying scumbag
who will screw you for a quick gain until proven otherwise. Of course many
people bury their head in the sand from a young age and convince themselves
that wherever they live really is special (protip: it's really not). Drugs are
rampant in whatever the off season is. People get all bent out of shape over
"branding" issues (e.g. the color you paint your house, what kind of business
you run, etc, etc) because your local "brand" is what attracts tourists and
money. I could go on and on and on about specific downsides to having an
economy dependent on tourism.

By trying to curtail tourism I think these cities are doing the right thing in
the long term even if they could make a few dollars in the short term by
selling out. This isn't a pro business/anti-business issue. It's a "what kind
of business are we ok with" issue. Tourism unconstrained poisons local society
the way a chemical plant will poison local waterways if left unchecked.

Also, FWIW all the negative predictions about cost of living in this article
are correct in my observation.

~~~
clojurestan
I live in New Orleans and this rings true to me. It sucks because many times
there is something special about the place that led it to become a tourist
destination in the first place, whether it's natural wonders like mountains or
a beach, a culture that produces new musical genres every few decades, or a
historical legacy of art and architecture. It is nice to live in these
environments and it sucks that cheap commodified travel and packaged tourism
is exacerbating the problems that come from an economy based on serving
tourists.

~~~
selimthegrim
Down the street from me by the Industrial Canal someone has an “AirBnB
Crossing” sign in their window with an ape ascending into a man with a club on
it.

------
ip26
The elephant in the room, of course, is that tourism helps people think of
themselves as part of something bigger. The National Parks, for example, help
drive votes for conservation. If you've never set foot in nature, and you've
never left your town, other places and their problems will always be somewhere
beyond the horizon.

~~~
spadros
Yeah, I actually just got back from a trip to Spain last week. I saw the
"TOURISTS GO HOME" graffiti in Barcelona and Granada. Very weird thing to run
into when you're from Canada; we're all about new people and cultures and
tourism bucks over here. I don't really feel guilty for wanting to see these
famous historic places, though, and I'm not going to feel guilty when I go to
Amsterdam in April and Japan in September to see their way of life.

~~~
Symbiote
But Canada is gigantic! Other than Niagara Falls, the tourist attractions are
either in nature and not world famous (no Instagram-pressure to pick any
particular place), in big, modern cities and not particularly focussed to one
place (Montreal, Toronto), in old cities where people don't live (centre of
Quebec), or in places like ski resorts where if all the hotels are full, it's
full.

Amsterdam is large, but everyone only wants to go to the centre, which has
mediaeval-size streets. In Barcelona there are a few expected sights. Both
cities are also normal cities.

27 million tourists to Canada — 82 million to Spain — 17 million to the
Netherlands

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Canada)
and similar.

------
CodeSheikh
I don't want to sound harsh but aren't some of those European countries
struggling financially and tourism money is the least hectic way to bring in
new revenues where it affects (positively) across the entire food-chain (from
visa fees to airline tickets to food carts on the streets). Why such a
backlash? It can be governed and moderated but blatantly discouraging tourism
is not a solution.

~~~
buboard
Absolutely it is, more so for the poorer southern regions. But tourism is like
a natural resource, it becomes a curse. Requiring mostly unskilled workers, it
doesnt help diversification of the economy. Most of the tourist-based
economies are in third world countries.

------
grogenaut
This was one of the undertones of the Hyperion series. People from Rich
planets setting gates to gorgeous poor ones and then slowly destroying the
unique cultures shaped by totally different planets for their comfort. Also
evil AI and man that guy hates the Catholic Church.

~~~
logfromblammo
Also, rich folk could have every room of their houses be on different planets,
so that their only interaction with a planet could be that they go there only
to poop in its ocean.

------
40acres
I like to travel but hate overcrowded touristy places. There are some popular
spots where the overcrowding actually seems to be a part of the experience
(Time Square for instance) but I will probably never go see the Mona Lisa or
Sistine Chapel because it's filled to the brim.

When I travel I have some pretty simple heuristics, if we're staying at a
resort I prefer a smaller luxury resort, ideally w/o kids, and I like to go in
the off season, which so far has meant Sept-Oct or March-April, depending on
the climate of the location.

There are lots of smaller towns and cities near the big tourists hubs that
have a lot of charm. When I visited Italy I went to Positano, a small town on
the Almafi coast about an hour from Naples. The city was great and I was able
to visit the island of Capri and check out Pompeii all while being stationed
in a small, beautiful town. There were tourists but it did not feel
overcrowded.

~~~
kweks
So there are "hidden" side entrances to the Louvre. With your back to the
glass pyramids, cross the road, and next to the arch on the right is an
underground staircase that will pop you in without queues.

Likewise, pick your times and you'll have La Joconde (Mona Lisa in French) to
yourself. And then scoot off to the other sections that are actually so much
more interesting - including a literal castle in the basement.

------
lordnacho
The problem with most tourist destinations is the same as the tragedy of the
commons: there's a bunch of tour guides, restaurants, airlines, hotels, etc
that can sell a piece of the common heritage, and there's no overall
coordination of the total amount served.

I went to Galapagos, and they were thinking of limiting the total number of
visitors. To me this make a lot of sense. You can't have hordes of people
showing up, it'll wreck the place. I would do an auction, 10k or whatever
highest bidders get to enter. A tourist attraction could then act like a
monopoly and extract the maximum out of it, without straining themselves
serving those customers (yeah I've got BT internet).

Granted, there will be a lot of politics about the distribution of that pie,
but at least you can say you are getting the most out of the situation.

~~~
senorjazz
so only the richest should be able to visit such places? Probably from far
away countries, whilst people from neighbouring countries are not able to see?

~~~
alistairSH
Peru does this on the Inca Trail trips. There is a daily cap on the number of
people allowed on trail (tourist + guides + porters/cooks), plus guides are
required. While it certainly isn't cheap, it wasn't prohibitively expensive
(i.e., if you can afford the airfare and hotels in a city, you can likely
afford to hike the Inca Trail).

Having recently visited Iceland, I could see that the Reykjavik-area was near
its limits. As was the airport (gate areas were overcrowded throughout the
terminal). There's plenty of space elsewhere on the island, but the government
and Iceland Air have done a really good job convincing tourists to do a quick
stopover en route from the Americans to Europe.

And being a regular visitor to Scotland (Scottish by birth, though raised in
the US), there are more and more tourists every time I go back. Skye is
running into problems supporting the number of visitors at peak season - many
showing up without planned accommodation, camping on roadside, etc. The NC500
route is similar - the area is desolate and lightly populated, but it's been
pitched as a tourist destination - great to get people out of Edinburg, but
facilities are barely adequate, at least at peak season.

~~~
drb91
> As was the airport (gate areas were overcrowded throughout the terminal)

It's also a popular layover destination, right?

~~~
alistairSH
Yes, it's the hub for WOW and IcelandAir, so a lot of people passing through
on trans-Atlantic trips.

IcelandAir also allows travelers to split their itinerary for no extra fee, so
a few days in Reykjavik isn't too costly (just room/board). I assume WOW does
the same.

I was there in mid-January and was amazed how busy both KEF and Reykjavik were
for the "offseason." A few locals said there wasn't really an offseason any
more.

------
Tepix
We need (very) high fidelity virtual reality to save the planet, making
traveling superfluous. I'm afraid we're still far away from that development.

~~~
wild_preference
It's sad how travel, to most people, is just seeing things.

No wonder so many HN comments are grandstanding about how they dislike or
don't need travel: they aren't talking about meeting other people or
experiencing other cultures. They're just talking about weekend travel
packages where they're shuttled around to take some pictures.

How incredibly boring.

Your VR idea like saying you've been to Prague because you spent extensive
time in Google Maps street view: I wouldn't even bother.

~~~
shakestheclown
Don't worry the AI will be very realistic; it will be better than interacting
with locals.

/s

~~~
WillPostForFood
Why /s? Could be even better, no language barrier, taxis programmed not to rip
you off, every girl at the bar will want to go hime with you, and you get to
cut all the lines.

------
domador
Personally, I hate the bucket-list-as-a-checklist idea, and have found the
idea of visiting places and seeing things to feel pretty hollow to me,
regardless of whether the sites are well known or not. Except for beautiful
parts of nature and architectural beauty, visiting places does little for my
soul.

I find cultural, people-oriented tourism, though, to be lifegiving for me.
This is a bit surprising to me, given that I'm a kind of person that's lesser
suited to it, as someone who tends toward shyness and also happens to be a
picky eater (which is not great for sharing and enjoying meals in foreign
countries). But on those times where I've been able to connect on a deeper
level with locals, I've felt very fulfilled in my tourism experience. Having
friends who invite me to visit the place they're now living in has been one
gateway for me to be able to pursue this kind of cultural tourism (though I
realize not every would-be tourist has personal networks that would provide
this kind of opportunity.) Given our common language and culture and their
local connections, these friends can help me enjoy their new home on a much
deeper level much sooner than if I just went to that place by myself.

I realize that my tourism preference is personal, and that various other forms
of tourism are perfectly valid and more enjoyable to others. However, if I
were to generalize, I'd say that tourism that values, respects, and enjoys the
places, people, and cultures involved for their own sake is commendable, while
tourism that simply uses such places and people for narcissistic motives
should be questioned. (These narcissistic motives typically revolve around
showing others how much richer, more beautiful, more refined, classier, more
knowledgeable, worthier, and ultimately better you are than them.) Loving a
place, people, or culture might even involve leaving it alone, and enjoying
them vicariously through other's tales, photos, and videos.

Speaking of motives, and on a somewhat-related note, you might enjoy this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V68SMFrpFt8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V68SMFrpFt8)
(First Person To Run A Marathon Without Talking About It)

------
Markoff
agreed with this sentiment in Prague, city center now it's tourist ghetto
locals avoid unless they work there or few young hipsters who wanna show off
their presence, but all in all full of Russian owned shops/restaurants,
everything with jacked up prices to milk tourists

personally I don't go there at all because tourists also dunno basic manners
in public transport about letting elders and small children to sit or don't
block space for prams, similar with sidewalks, them you have noise everywhere,
especially in evening from drunk people and when I dared as local to visit
park popular among tourists i was pushed by tourist who want to cut the queue
to be with friends in front of me, while i was holding small child

when i see tourist outside city center heading wrong direction in tram i
usually help them, but i can't really visit city center with my family anymore
because they ruined the city center and am more and more disgusted by them

also companies dodging taxes while renting airbnb apartments don't help, if it
would be up to me I would ban airbnb completely and hike accommodation tax to
push away groups of young boys usually from UK/DE who come for cheap beer on
their sausage parties

------
badestrand
It will be interesting to see how cities will cope with it. I am sure the
amount of tourists will continue to rise significantly over the next decades -
just think about much of India, Africa and South America entering global
tourism. So Venice, Amsterdam, London, Barcelona, Paris, New York etc will
maybe have 10 times the tourists than today and the cities will need a concept
how to deal with it.

~~~
alex_anglin
Like they do now with tourist taxes, perhaps? All the cities you mention won't
have 10x as many tourists if they're 20x more expensive (in real and
comparative terms).

------
platz
> Having spent decades trying to attract tourists

This is what they designed for.

~~~
Fuxy
They really just need to search for ways to manage the crowds instead
alienating them to be honest.

Tourist bring a lot of money to local businesses you really shouldn't be
killing the goose who lays the golden eggs if you ask me.

~~~
ajmurmann
The article also mentions stack parties in the first paragraph. I believe
those to be a common problem with tourism in European cities. That's to me an
obvious and extreme case of unacceptable behavior by tourists. People who do
things like that are running it for everyone else, the locals and other
tourists. Maybe it would be appropriate of those people can stay home and
learn how to behave respectfully in a different country before they get to
travel again. I see it as every travelers duty to learn about different
cultural norms in the destination country and to follow those and of course
follow basic decency you'd follow at home. If we don't all do this, we cannot
have nice things.

------
Fuxy
I found the quote “tourists go home, refugees welcome” quite funny.

So what their basically saying is they would rather kick out tourists that
bring in and spend quite a lot of money effectively boosting the economy in
favour of some refugees the government will have to spend a large amount of
money on... and you wonder why the contry's economy is in such a bad shape
when the citizens advocate shooting themselves in the foot.

~~~
Daishiman
So... it's not all about money. You can refuse to accept money from sources
which are really not all that cracked up (because the margins in tourism are
not great actually) and accept people for humanitarian reasons.

If you're not 14 or completely driven by greed you can understand the
reasoning behind this.

~~~
Fuxy
Being a humanitarian is admirable but at the end of the day it's a luxury that
may or may not pay off in the long run.

Just the same way you don't give your money to a beggar on the street when you
can barely afford to survives yourself the employment of personal boundaries
is important for humans and countries.

So given that Italy is not doing so well at the moment I kind of have to
question their thinking reducing their revenue stream in favour if immigrants.

The assumption that all immigration is good immigration is not true.

~~~
kranner
Humanitarianism or other altruism doesn’t have to pay off at all. That is not
a measure by which to evaluate it.

~~~
Fuxy
You're right it doesn't but everyone seems to assume it will which is quite
baffling.

~~~
kranner
You seem to be looking at the economic payoff alone, whereas others are
talking about the intrinsic payoff, i.e., that it is worthwhile to help
refugees even if it's a net economic loss.

~~~
Fuxy
No I'm looking at the big picture and given the amount of refugees allowed in
it is a major loss economically and culturally in the short term and quite
likely in the long term as well.

The US did immigration right before only allowing in people when there was a
need for workers and only allow predominantly cultures that would attempt to
integrate and get along with the existing population.

The current policy allows unregulated areas (no go zones) to exist where the
refugees make the laws; police are afraid to go in and they are not required
to integrate into society plus their cultural and religious beliefs create a
propensity for hostility against the locals/infidels.

Honestly it's a powder keg waiting to explode and given the rise of terrorist
attacks in Europe it's getting there at a short and steady pace. It will take
generations before their views will be moderate enough for them to be able to
get along with the local population and the higher the amount of people and
the longer they are kept in their echo chamber the longer it will take.

In the mean time we will see a rise in draconian Sharia law type laws since
they will represent a considerable amount of the voting population just like
in the UK. See Lauren Southern held under terrorism act for social experiment
[1]

Mind you the UK allowed the change to be gradual and their local Muslim
population is quite moderate over all yet this is still happening.

[1]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJt7oZSONiU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJt7oZSONiU))

Anybody see the irony of a weak white canadian girl held under a terrorism act
for distributing a bunch of fliers with some text on it?

------
abalone
This article is mostly about overcrowding but another important consideration
is carbon footprint. The carbon footprint of tourism is a big blindspot in the
"liberal" mindset (speaking as one). On the one hand travel is supposed to be
good and healthy for your development and the broadening on your mind..
Anthony Bourdain.. listen and exposure yourself to cultures.. etc. On the
other, air travel is 100% fossil fuel based. Flying to Europe from SF is like
driving coast to coast in a gas car.

We could use a healthy backlash against the idea that everyone should strive
to fly around the world. Sustainability must come first. This is a bitter pill
for us "liberals" to swallow, I think.

------
chicob
Mass tourism is the prostitution of places.

------
neuralRiot
This reminds me of stars complaining about paparazzi or fans harassing them.

------
kartan
I am from Barcelona, even that I have not lived there for the past 5 years.

Governments have been caring to maximize business profit. And in that pursuit,
they have created cities where one cannot live anymore.

Unregulated tourism has make things worse. The rise of Airbnb and similar
schemes are punishing buildings in popular neighbourhoods that instead of a
place to live with your family they become a business without rules. And any
regulation is sold as "any business" and "communism" by the usual internet
trolls. Problems are so bad in some neighbourhoods that even that push-back
from online discussions and the business themselves is overridden by voters.

Tourism is a very good thing. And that thought has not changed in the city.
Abuses should not be tolerated, thou. That you bring money to the economy is
not an excuse to be above the rules. Citizens first.

~~~
alexgmcm
I live in BCN now and I think Airbnb is really the biggest issue - the other
things don't really affect you if you stay out of Las Ramblas, Barceloneta
etc.

I moved from Sagrada Familia to Guinardo and its much nicer and not yet
affected by the tourism etc.

It must suck to own a house in Barceloneta or something as it has changed
completely although you would probably be able to sell it for a lot more money
than it used to be worth I suppose.

------
esotericn
Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that
everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living.

We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the
earth doing so.

We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and
don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown.

We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either.

We can't all eat high quality meat as often as we want. We'll boil the earth
and it'll require too much farmland, anyway.

I could go on.

We either eliminate these experiences, accept economic inequality, or watch
the experiences be eliminated via attrition (e.g. cars devolving into
gridlock, tourism devolving into queues and displacement, ...).

I find this to be an odd aspect of certain political movements at the moment -
unwilling to accept that the Universe _is_ actually a big competition, and
either some people lose, or we all lose.

It sucks. But what's the alternative?

It's perfectly reasonable to drag people out of poverty.

But the idea that everyone should be able to do the same things implies a set
of "things" very different from what, say, the middle class families on my
suburban street do today.

~~~
coldtea
> _It sucks. But what 's the alternative? It's perfectly reasonable to drag
> people out of poverty. But the idea that everyone should be able to do the
> same things implies a set of "things" very different from what, say, the
> middle class families on my suburban street do today._

Exactly. The "eternal growing of the economic cake" which the majority of the
related policies are based on, ignores limits to growth (e.g. energy, rare
materials, food, etc.) and doesn't care about externalities.

Under that model 10 billion people could all live like middle class
Californians eventually.

(Religious-like faith in technology, and "it worked thus far so it will work
forever" wishful thinking also play a role - it also helps to ignore the law
of diminishing returns and low hanging fruits).

Under reality, there will be huge cutting back and, quite possibly, big human
toll, before we reach a livable equilibrium.

~~~
hueving
Food is cheap enough we throw away a ton of it and energy could scale
significantly further quite easily if there weren't an anti-science political
barrier to nuclear.

~~~
txru
It should be fun telling the Japanese government that shutting down all of
their nuclear plants in the last few years is 'anti-science'.

~~~
isostatic
Why are they shutting them down?

~~~
newnewpdro
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster)

~~~
isostatic
1 death?

Why aren’t they stopping driving which causes nearer one death an hour than
one death per 50 years

~~~
newnewpdro
I think you need to step back and look at the bigger picture of how this
disaster has impacted Japan.

Reducing this crisis, which is _ongoing_ , to "1 death" demonstrates a
profound lack of empathy and understanding of what this nation has had to deal
with because of these reactors.

~~~
kazinator
Also, the Wikipedia article that is cited as the source for "1 death" contains
the following quote:

 _A survey by the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun computed that of some 300,000
people who evacuated the area, approximately 1,600 deaths related to the
evacuation conditions, such as living in temporary housing and hospital
closures, had occurred as of August 2013, a number comparable to the 1,599
deaths directly caused by the earthquake and tsunami in the Fukushima
Prefecture in 2011._

~~~
isostatic
So tsunamis are bad. I get that.

Nuclear power did not cause the earthquake or tsunami.

~~~
newnewpdro
Earthquakes and tsunamis happen. The nuclear reactors in Japan substantially
exacerbated their negative consequences for the entire nation.

------
partycoder
Tourism is the easiest way to become a 1% polluter.

