The backlash against overtourism • Hacker News Board

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#161

Post by bigbluedots » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #123

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…

Venice already does the first part, the 'city tax' component of the hotel bill is quite high. There's no redistribution though.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#162

Post by bliblah » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #147

js2 wrote: post #46

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 avoi…

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 busin…

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.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#163

Post by txru » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #138

coldtea wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. ener…

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.

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

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#164

Post by js2 » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #87

js2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is reductio ad absurdum, isn't it? You could implement a fair system giving everyone the equal opportunity to access (e.g. a tourist destination), even if not everyone gains access (via some sort of lottery). There's also enough places and opportunities on the planet that not everyone will want to do everything, certainly not all at once. So you could implement cap and trade.

What do you think reductio ad absurdum means? Your comment is worded as though it's some sort of logical fallacy to be avoided.

I misused the term. Thank you for the correction.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#165

Post by esotericn » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

senorjazz wrote: post #127

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" :-\

I think that's an unfair assessment. Care to argue with my points? I don't think it's a particularly nice state of affairs either.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#166

Post by crooked-v » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:32 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'…

I think part of the problem here is that you're automatically assuming that a "good" standard of living must involve driving cars, eating meat all the time, and traveling in inefficient ways.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#167

Post by bliblah » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #123

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…

You also need to ban Airbnb otherwise people will just Airbnb in the suburbs/residential areas and then Uber to the Touristy areas. Then locals will have to deal with gentrification and congestion during tourist season.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#168

Post by pyrale » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

totalperspectiv wrote: post #65

jolesf wrote: post #3

“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 struggle with this every time I travel! I think that part of the... guilt? ... can be assuaged by intent. As in, you are there to learn and absorb a culture and broaden your horizons, as opposed to being there for the entertainment of seeing crazy things and getting the Instagram shot. But maybe that's just a pretense I make up for myself.

It doesn't really matter whether your visit is motivated by self-enlightment or selfie-taking. The plane you use consumes just as much, the effect you have on local life is just as dire.

People have found other ways to broaden their horizon in the past.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#169

Post by logfromblammo » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

esotericn wrote: post #7

conanbatt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This view of things doesnt take into account that an absurdly higher number of people can travel and see multiple countries in their life, which was impossible 50 years ago. It is absolutely possible for every earth citizen to become a tourist, there is no economic impediment to do it.

I believe that I covered this in my comment. > 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, ...). Specifically, the last part. If everyone is a tourist, what it means to be a tourist is very, very different. Consider: We strictly have enough jet fuel and alumin…

Do people go to see Venice, or to see Venetians?

The easy, facile answer is to move all the residents out, turn the old city into Historic Venice Amusements District, build a commuter transit line out to New Venice (with no tourist attractions), and all of its civic services are then paid for by income from the tourist trap. Everyone has ready access to service jobs in the tourism and public safety sectors. If tourists want to see real Venetians, they pay to bring some in on the train, to be photographed in a nearly-authentic setting.

"Nobody goes there anymore--it's too crowded."

You shouldn't curse your own success. Plenty of cities would dearly love to have throngs of visitors that seek only to look around, have fun, eat, drink, and otherwise spend their vacation money. I know of one in Florida that was specifically built, from the swamp up, for that single purpose.

If you don't want all tourist attractions to become Disneyworld, you have to visit places that aren't yet well on their way to that endpoint. There are many places on this planet that are fun and interesting for visitors. I can very easily choose to no visit locales that have been overrun and ruined by overtourism. It's not difficult. If an underemployed local is trying to sell you discounted show tickets or pass out ad-laden maps of local attractions, you're in one. If your hotel has posted a warning about pickpockets, you're in one. If you can't discern the boundary line between the gift shop at the exit to the last attraction and the gift shop at the entrance to the next one, you're in one.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#170

Post by esotericn » Tue, Oct 30, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #166

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'…

I think part of the problem here is that you're automatically assuming that a "good" standard of living must involve driving cars, eating meat all the time, and traveling in inefficient ways.

I agree that the terminology choice wasn't great.

I think the points stand whether you call it something else though.

Basically, the lifestyle that lots of people aspire to (whether it's viewed by me, you or anyone else by a good ideal or not) isn't achievable at scale.

That's what I tried to get at with the 'eliminate these experiences' bit. Reducing their desirability so that they sort of fall out of existence is one way of doing that.

For cars, you'd do it by making other forms of transport better, for example.