Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
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Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#2Isn't this in a sense the goal of globalization? Each region adapts more and more to the niche that they serve best.
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#3Funny that they blame Ryanair and Easyjet, who only serve Europe, in the first sentence, then plaster a big photograph of a field full of Chinese tourists that most likely did not use Ryanair or Easyjet to get there.
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#4Funny that they blame Ryanair and Easyjet, who only serve Europe, in the first sentence, then plaster a big photograph of a field full of Chinese tourists that most likely did not use Ryanair or Easyjet to get there.
Lots of tourist from outside Europe use "hub" airports and then travel to their final destinations, often using low cost airlines. This why German and Dutch airspaces are so busy.
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#5I grew up with stories of people like Maco Polo and love of travel but my recent trips to Europe has almost repulsed and disillusioned me. Tiny European countries are being swamped by huge swath of tourists, everyone with Rick Steve’s guidebook, they all go look at exact same thing, take exact same pictures and even eat at exact same recommended restaurants. There is a lot to see and little to reflect when you are among herds of camera clicking tourists. I wonder if there are any other guidebooks people use (especially for Europe) that puts them more on path of becoming traveller and less on tourist.
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#6Always worth posting Wallace's quote on the subject:
"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 noneconomic 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."
A similar phenomenon is happening in the outdoor industry. Instagram is (depending on your perspective) ruining everything or democratizing access to natural beauty. Most people I know practice some variant of a digital leave-no-trace rule: don't post photos in publicly-trafficked areas of the internet, or if you do then don't say where they were taken. It's not so much gatekeeping as ensuring people who want to experience that beauty have to put in the work - read terribly-designed websites, meet actual people and gain their trust, or even take a backcountry travel class which hopefully instills a healthy respect for the environment you're enjoying.
Another strategy is to delve further into mountaineering, where the obvious danger of the terrain repels everybody with a working survival instinct and ensures some degree of solitude :)
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#7I grew up with stories of people like Maco Polo and love of travel but my recent trips to Europe has almost repulsed and disillusioned me. Tiny European countries are being swamped by huge swath of tourists, everyone with Rick Steve’s guidebook, they all go look at exact same thing, take exact same pictures and even eat at exact same recommended restaurants. There is a lot to see and little to reflect when you are am…
I often wait until I have a personal connection to a place, such as a friend or related hobby, before traveling. The experience becomes very removed from that of a tourist, and so much more rewarding.
Am I selfish if I put extra effort into maintaining friendships with foreign friends so I might end up visiting them?
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#8In my mind, this could be solved fairly simply with government regulation. The government can sell tourism passes to enter the country, therefore socializing some of the profits of tourism, or even just hand them out in a lottery. It seems obvious that this will need to be done at some point; there are fundamental limits on how many people a country's infrastructure can support. Without the government stepping in, it will only get worse.
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#9Always worth posting Wallace's quote on the subject: "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 noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without yo…
> It's not so much gatekeeping as ensuring people who want to experience that beauty have to put in the work - read terribly-designed websites, meet actual people and gain their trust, or even take a backcountry travel class which hopefully instills a healthy respect for the environment you're enjoying.
Or we could build more walls.
Re: Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love
#10Funny that they blame Ryanair and Easyjet, who only serve Europe, in the first sentence, then plaster a big photograph of a field full of Chinese tourists that most likely did not use Ryanair or Easyjet to get there.
Lots of tourist from outside Europe use "hub" airports and then travel to their final destinations, often using low cost airlines. This why German and Dutch airspaces are so busy.
It would usually be the same airline that did the long flight or one of their partners - but Ryanair and Easyjet don't do those partnerships with Chinese airlines. I've also gotten a lot of their flights and hardly ever see Chinese tourists, mostly local (or other European) tourists in fact.