The backlash against overtourism • Hacker News Board

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#121

Post by lordnacho » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

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.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#122

Post by TremendousJudge » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #80

robben1234 wrote: post #42

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…

One of the greatest cities in northern Italy is Torino. While medieval and in a certain shabby way as attractive as Firenze they only get a small percentage of the tourists.

Even in the city itself, the best renaissance sculpture museum imo is not the Academy where Michelangelo's David is, but the Bargello which not many people actually visit (the Academy is always super crowded)

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#123

Post by whack » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

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.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#124

Post by senorjazz » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #121

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…

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?

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#125

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #56

esotericn wrote: post #4

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'…

"It sucks. But what's the alternative? " Ideally we would stop breeding and keep world population at a certain number. In reality population will probably keep growing and we can only hope that technology will help avert a disaster.

Almost every country is below birth replacement rate except for those in Africa (which will come along for the ride as soon as those folks are lifted out of poverty).

https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#126

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #72

zanny wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least a few of those have evolving technical solutions. We can all travel in a more sustainable way if we can do full body VR immersion wherever we want to go. We don't need cars if we have fleets of autonomous vehicles to pick us up and drop us off wherever we want to be on a whim. We can all live in the country if you don't need to commute either yourself or property to and from where you live (the infrastructur…

I agree with a lot of this. That said: > if we can do full body VR immersion wherever we want to go At this point we're basically post scarcity. You plug yourself into the wall, hook yourself up to the IV and that's that. The rest of your post (and all of mine) becomes irrelevant. It's pretty much an "all bets are off" scenario. :P

[deleted]

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#127

Post by senorjazz » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #4

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'…

"today a man on the internet from rich country with good job and a good standard of living says bollox to the rest of you, I've got mine, feed on my scraps"

:-\

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#128

Post by lordnacho » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

senorjazz wrote: post #124

lordnacho wrote: post #121

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…

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?

Yep. They also live in the nicest homes, live longer, have nicer cars, and so forth.

Not saying it's fantastic, but if you have to ration a resource willingness to pay is a place to start.

I don't feel the same way about every resource (eg health and education) but whether you can visit some old town somewhere doesn't seem essential.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#129

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

spiralx wrote: post #95

narag wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the two comments that touch the overpopulation side are being downvoted. Why? Does the people downvoting care to explain? There's a huge contradiction here. Either you do "something" to control population or else all the measures to control climate change are stillborn. We are struggling with the current population!

Because world population is already forecast to peak and then decline over the next few decades, economic development has already "done something" about this issue, unless you're proposing mass murder or something equally implausible.

Would paying people in countries with high birth rates to not have children be exploitative?

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#130

Post by TremendousJudge » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

spadros wrote: post #82

ip26 wrote: post #79

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.

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 Septembe…

If you want to see "Amsterdam's way of life" then stay away from the downtown. It's literally adult Disneyworld, with pretty much everything it implies. It's great if that's what you're into (all of Europe visits the city regularly to get high), but not if you actually want to see their "way of life"