How cities can fix tourism hell • Hacker News Board

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#31

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

I say cram them in. Keep them in the cities. A tourist does less damage, and spends more money, in times square than in a forest. In my area, tourists are wrecking our parks, our wild places. Dog bans (to cut back on dog walkers. Dog feet do little damage in comparison) and the closing of trails are being applied to counter the tourist wave. Im for whatever it takes that keeps them on the pavement.

Our city put up new signs in a wooded area that never had signs before. Tour companys now post material on these signs. Locals are chopping down the signs. Keep the woods dark imho.

If one more of them asks me where the twilight house is . .. google that to see of where i speak.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#32

Post by buboard » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

elbasti wrote: post #3

At risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Pigovian taxes have been a thing for fifty years, yet they are still seldom used. It seems like such an obvious solution to me that the fact it's not used more often (ex: towns banning airbnb vs taxing it) suggests to me that I'm missing something obvious.

its not possible to do that in a viable way mainly because in many places tourists come from richer countries. An exorbitatly high deterrent-tax would paralyze the local market.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#33

Post by buboard » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #30

frio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is roughly where my thoughts lie. When my partner and I were travelling around Europe, many of the popular cities charged a bed tax — usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx. Back home, there’s been debate about doing this too. I hope the pro-tax side wins. Our country is su…

"usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx." This is exactly the right strategy! And the "infrastructure to support more tourists" is exactly what this article lays out.

but if it's not enough to put them off, the tax doesn't work

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#34

Post by kaffee » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:51 PM UTC

frio wrote: post #8

elbasti wrote: post #3

At risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Pigovian taxes have been a thing for fifty years, yet they are still seldom used. It seems like such an obvious solution to me that the fact it's not used more often (ex: towns banning airbnb vs taxing it) suggests to me that I'm missing something obvious.

Yeah, this is roughly where my thoughts lie. When my partner and I were travelling around Europe, many of the popular cities charged a bed tax — usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx. Back home, there’s been debate about doing this too. I hope the pro-tax side wins. Our country is su…

Check out Chicago or Montreal. The tourist tax is just massive.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#35

Post by pj_mukh » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:51 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #33

pj_mukh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx." This is exactly the right strategy! And the "infrastructure to support more tourists" is exactly what this article lays out.

but if it's not enough to put them off, the tax doesn't work

The idea isn't to put them off, that seems like a mindlessly cynical goal. Build the infrastructure to support the larger numbers. If the infrastructure needs to discriminate against tourists, that's fine too (e.g. added trains for tourists vs. commuters), new digital methods tool can allow for this.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#36

Post by viraptor » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:52 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #24

elbasti wrote: post #3

At risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Pigovian taxes have been a thing for fifty years, yet they are still seldom used. It seems like such an obvious solution to me that the fact it's not used more often (ex: towns banning airbnb vs taxing it) suggests to me that I'm missing something obvious.

Gross. Gross gross gross. Tourists already get taxed. Hotel taxes are huge. It sucks. Traveling for conferences to meet new people and learn new things is soooo expensive and tourist taxes are a big part of why. Tourist taxes are how you destroy diversity and trap people into the tiny bubble in which they were born. We should be striving for the opposite.

A good solution here seems to be - don't organise conferences in places which are full of tourists already. You want to meet new people and learn? Great - book a country hotel and transport from the airport, or maybe a place in some town with reasonable plane connections. You want to also see the city? You're a tourist.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#37

Post by thenanyu » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:54 PM UTC

dgzl wrote: post #25

gsnedders wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's typically a tax on accommodation, rather than anything else.

That's what I thought. Unfortunately that also affects locals, which diminishes the benefit.

Locals who stay at hotels? Usually these taxes are only on short term accommodations like hotels and Airbnb

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#38

Post by linkregister » Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 12:02 AM UTC

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #16

elbasti wrote: post #3

At risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Pigovian taxes have been a thing for fifty years, yet they are still seldom used. It seems like such an obvious solution to me that the fact it's not used more often (ex: towns banning airbnb vs taxing it) suggests to me that I'm missing something obvious.

> At risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Because that's really tricky to do without reducing the town to just tourism. Some people forget that in tourist towns there are also people who live, who have families and friends and some of their activities look very much like tourism. Sure, you can try to do all kinds of things to work around this but ultima…

> ultimately the solution of taxing tourists does not work well in practice.

Got any examples? Many cities in the world have tourism taxes, charged as a per-night fee added to hotel bills. Miami has a beach fee for tourists. Somehow, despite no income tax, Miami manages to stay solvent.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#39

Post by mrhappyunhappy » Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 12:02 AM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #28

tompccs wrote: post #22

Gadgets? No thanks. The fundamental problem with tourism isn't crowds (although they are unpleasant), it's inflation - tourists have more money to spend and businesses will naturally align themselves to suck up that money. Compare with situation of huge student populations in small towns in UK: their interests don't align with the incumbent community, therefore tension ensues. The effect is two-fold: increased prices…

That's like thinking that a city exporting its goods to a foreign market with high income consumers causes inflation in the city. The businesses that cater to this influx of tourist spending employ locals, which pushes up local wages and spending. The goods/services produced are also not scarce. They can be increased in supply. In fact higher volume retail shops result in more economies of scale, which can reduce loc…

This is simply not true. Look at Santa Barbara for example: high tourism, high prices and locals are forced to distant outskirts. Local spending doesn’t increase because prices simply go up and locals shop at cheaper places outside of tourist hub. I doubt their wages are any higher either.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#40

Post by forrestthewoods » Sun, Nov 18, 2018, 12:03 AM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #36

forrestthewoods wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gross. Gross gross gross. Tourists already get taxed. Hotel taxes are huge. It sucks. Traveling for conferences to meet new people and learn new things is soooo expensive and tourist taxes are a big part of why. Tourist taxes are how you destroy diversity and trap people into the tiny bubble in which they were born. We should be striving for the opposite.

A good solution here seems to be - don't organise conferences in places which are full of tourists already. You want to meet new people and learn? Great - book a country hotel and transport from the airport, or maybe a place in some town with reasonable plane connections. You want to also see the city? You're a tourist.

I could not possibly disagree more.

Conferences are almost always a split of local and non-local attendees. Forcing conferences to be exclusively non-local attendees makes zero sense. It would be even more expensive, in absolute dollars and environmental cost, to have everyone travel to the middle of Nebraska.

I know it's not your intent, but your stance here reeks of elistism, xenophobia, and othering. Extrapolating your worldview I don't know why a country hotel would, or even should, be accommodating.

> don't organise conferences in places which are full of tourists already.

This is absurd. Conferences are about people. Places with a lot of people will naturally have those people come together for events. Things that make a place attractive to live can also make it an attractive place to visit.

Travel is so expensive it's almost crazy NOT to make the most out of your trip. Adding a day or two of tourism to a multi-day work or education trip is more than reasonable.