151–160 of 311 posts
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.
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'…
Maybe Bhutan provides a glimpse of what tourism can be. Put a cap on the numbers and charge a significant fee for a tourist visa. I’m sure this might seem extreme, but with more people getting into midfle class and affording the yearly foreign vacation, something has to be done. It’s completely unsustainable. Not only does the environment suffer, but the locals also have no sense of what their locale is like normally…
That doesn't sound extreme at all. In fact, charging for entrances is a basic technique to moderate demand. The question is what would be the economic impact of such a measure, because the tradeoff between charging admission and restricting access, thus restricting other sources of income and therefore jobs, might not be positive for an economy.
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…
We can all travel in a more sustainable way if we can do full body VR immersion wherever we want to go Will that include simulated human interaction?
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?
But I don't see why the locals living there would want to. They get to set the rules, and for them the money from rich tourists is certainly more attractive than being able to "show their culture" to a balanced sample of the world population.
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.
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 sp…
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'…
The solution is to have far fewer people. If the population of the planet were far less then there would be enough resources and space for everyone without destroying the planet.
[0] https://www.gapminder.org/topics/fertility-child-mortality/
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…
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?
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.
“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 afte…
I travel quite a bit and always encourage / force the people with me to visit museums and cultural highlights of the location because the truth is that only by being in a new city/state/country can you expand your horizons. The only thing I see coming from this anti tourist attitude is more xenophobia from residents and ignorance from would be travelers.
I honestly can't imagine people learning history just by scrapping wikipedia pages and not actually going to the sites that history happened.
I went to Venice during the Winter and the reality is that if it wasn't for tourists the city would be half empty outside of hyper wealthy individuals who own a vacation home there, it's a shame that every other store was a souvenir store but the only other stores there seemed to be Luxury Brand stores that probably wouldn't exist either.
I don't know, I come from a country that thrives on tourism and I definitely understand the hostility, but in the end of the day many cities wouldn't exist without this new wave of low cost tourism.
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…
I don't get a dime if someone starts renting next door via airbnb to endless parties of nightlife addicted tourists.