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How cities can fix tourism hell

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Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#61

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #52
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do you assume that local businesses generating more revenue doesn't contribute to local incomes? It does, almost by definition. In a housing supply restricted market, tourism can contribute to higher housing costs, but that can be fixed by removing constraints on housing supply, like zoning. And even when this effect is present, its effect on quality of life is counter-acted by the positive effect of tourism spen…

> Why do you assume that local businesses generating more revenue doesn't contribute to local incomes?

Local businesses do not always generate income from tourists. For example, some of the destinations complaining about overtourism are upset at cruise ships, where the tourists do all their eating, drinking, and sleeping on the boat, and they only walk through the city during the day without spending any significant amount of money.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#62

Post by viraptor »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #40
viraptor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not a recipe for all conferences and it will not work for all of them. It's a response to a specific issue - conferences in tourist cities are expensive. Really large conferences are almost entirely non-local anyway.

If you want to do work+fun trip, then a tourist destination could be great - but you have to be prepared to pay for it. (Or go to a nearby tourist place) If you want conferences for locals, they will always happen anyway.

The rest of your accusations don't make sense to me. How can something for mostly non-locals be xenophobic? How is an expensive conference in a big city less elitist (who can afford to live there?) than one outside of it?

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#63

Post by kaffee »

sologoub wrote: post #53
kaffee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Montreal looks to be only 3.5% extra, not exactly massive. Their sales and goods/services taxes are high, which works out to close to 20% total tax on a room. Still not that crazy. Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g155032-i51-k6671607-H...

I think YUL has some of the highest airport fees for any major North American city. For example, there's an "Airport Improvement Fee" of 30 CAD (on every flight) https://www.aircanada.com/us/en/aco/home/legal/surcharges.ht... My sense is that this is just one of many fees that hit you when you fly into Montréal. I think the total fees are more like 60-90 USD on every flight.

(I'm not suggesting that high taxes are bad. I support aggressively high VAT taxes refunded to the poor and lower middle class.)

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#64

Post by mc32 »

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.

Bhutan provides an example of capping the tourists and charging a hefty visa fee for visitors. Tourism is not a human right and as such it's a luxury. It taxes all natural resources and exacerbates pollution (more disposable items and short lived items). Therefore, something akin to Bhutan could work for places which feel overwhelmed by tourists.

(not proposing all places instate this, but rather places where the footprint of overtourism is too much to bear)

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#65

Post by andrewflnr »

linkregister wrote: post #38
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't think Miami is worried about becoming reduced to just tourism (aren't they already?), so it's not really a counterexample to GP's point.

Ed: explicitness

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#66

Post by ryanwaggoner »

sandworm101 wrote: post #31

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 n…

Hmm, so it's the sheer volume of people? What makes you different? Why are you more deserving to walk in those woods than "tourists"? Because you were there first? :)

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#67

Post by yardie »

linkregister wrote: post #38
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Just a small correction. Miami has a hotel bed tax, not a beach fee. I have friends and family that visit and stay with us regularly. They have never been charged to stay with me nor go to the beach. Compared to the rest of the tourist traps down here the beach is one of the best values.

As for the cities of Miami and Miami Beach being solvent, LOL. Depends on who you ask. There is never enough money for the things we need (public transport, housing, education) yet plenty of money for things we never asked for (stadiums, Amazon HQ2).

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#68

Post by eigenvector »

kaffee wrote: post #63
sologoub wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Montreal looks to be only 3.5% extra, not exactly massive. Their sales and goods/services taxes are high, which works out to close to 20% total tax on a room. Still not that crazy. Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g155032-i51-k6671607-H...

I think YUL has some of the highest airport fees for any major North American city. For example, there's an "Airport Improvement Fee" of 30 CAD (on every flight) https://www.aircanada.com/us/en/aco/home/legal/surcharges.ht... My sense is that this is just one of many fees that hit you when you fly into Montréal. I think the total fees are more like 60-90 USD on every flight. (I'm not suggesting that high taxes are ba…

All Canadian airports have high AIFs (Toronto's is $25 for instance), and they are charged to everyone not just tourists.

It's more to do with how airports are structured and managed in Canada versus other countries. It's a user-pay model rather than having them subsidized by the government. In fact many actually pay ground rent to the federal government.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#69

Post by tompccs »

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…

No - retail space and housing have fixed supply. It's a finite resource, especially in historic city centres. Labour is also finite - would you want to live in a city where the only employment is in the hospitality sector?

Secondly - as I have already mentioned, tourists are price-insensitive, so businesses have no incentive to reduce prices by employing "economies of scale".

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#70

Post by jackvalentine »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #66
sandworm101 wrote: post #31

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 n…

Hmm, so it's the sheer volume of people? What makes you different? Why are you more deserving to walk in those woods than "tourists"? Because you were there first? :)

Is ‘deserving’ the right thing here? Or is it just because he happens to live there and has a longer term interest in the place than visitors for a day or a week?
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