Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How cities can fix tourism hell

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 113 posts

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#81

Post by mrep »

yifanl wrote: post #80
mrep wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tourist hell mostly affects European cities, which at the same time are usually denser and have a more problematic transport. In some European cities, native people can't pay the rent to live in reasonable places because tourists will pay more. Interesting, as a born and raised American, I find it odd that I keep seeing people praise europe about how great their public transportation and living wages are and ye…

Obviously, the public transportation system was implemented based on the number of local residents. I imagine that the influx of tourists is well above that number.

Do european cities change population sizes that little that you never really have to adapt your public transportation?

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#82

Post by dgzl »

thenanyu wrote: post #37
dgzl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, if the destination is say a city, then those who live even just an hour away want to come and stay sometimes. Same is true for beaches and lakes, near ski resorts, ect.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#83

Post by Animats »

twelvechairs wrote: post #2

I work in urban planning and have to say theres a lot of empty puff that comes under 'smart cities'. Sensors and IoT can help with some things but are more about efficiency or informing of issues rather than solving the issues themselves. The title here is quite ridiculous for the articles content

Yes. The article somehow claims that an "Internet of Things" will somehow be useful for managing tourists. Probably not. Most of the "smart city" efforts seem to be devoted to collecting data that would be useful for marketing, but not city operations.

There's not much interest, say, in sensors which measure ground conductivity between separated points and process that data to detect water main leaks. Yet water system leaks are a big issue for many cities. Sensors mounted on city vehicles to detect and report potholes and road damage would be useful. Put them on garbage trucks; they see most streets regularly. Those are things cities have to fix and need to track.

No, the author wants to track tourists in detail. Guess who wants that data.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#84

Post by akvadrako »

pj_mukh wrote: post #74
akvadrako wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the idea is to put them off. It's basically impossible to "build infrastructure" to support them, whatever that means. There is no more room for trains or even sidewalks, so it would mean totally changing the cities into something else.

Yes. Cities change. All the time. Why is this suddenly a problem? New train/subway lines are built (even in SF! [1]), sidewalks are widened (car lanes can be collapsed). None of this is new, in fact, this kind of growth and change has been the standard in the last 100 years of urban development. This doesn't stop now. [1]: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/15/18096775/bart-second-crossi...

It's obvious why this is a problem. Just look at Venice - when a city is mostly filled with tourists it becomes like a theme park. Are you serious about building subways and widening sidewalks there?

I suppose you'll say everybody should just move out if they don't like it, but most people consider it the better option to plan how their cities evolve.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#85

Post by jpalomaki »

pj_mukh wrote: post #35
buboard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe in many places the problem is that locals don’t want to live in a city built for tourists.

Huge number of visitors for example affect the local stores and services. Places catering for locals getting replaced by tourist attractions.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#86

Post by frio »

akvadrako wrote: post #84
pj_mukh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Cities change. All the time. Why is this suddenly a problem? New train/subway lines are built (even in SF! [1]), sidewalks are widened (car lanes can be collapsed). None of this is new, in fact, this kind of growth and change has been the standard in the last 100 years of urban development. This doesn't stop now. [1]: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/15/18096775/bart-second-crossi...

It's obvious why this is a problem. Just look at Venice - when a city is mostly filled with tourists it becomes like a theme park. Are you serious about building subways and widening sidewalks there? I suppose you'll say everybody should just move out if they don't like it, but most people consider it the better option to plan how their cities evolve.

Venice is an extreme case, I agree. That's one of the places that we visited that had the small kind of bed tax I'm thinking of; unfortunately that probably isn't fixing their problems. Many of their tourists stay in cruise ships (which have to have the lagoon dredged to support them; sinking Venice itself...); a bed tax doesn't target them, and they're completely and utterly overwhelmed regardless. It was a fascinating and deeply depressing place to visit.

A bed tax in general, applicable to both hotels and AirBNB, I suspect probably deals better with the other end of the spectrum. At the end of the spectrum I'm thinking about (and probably my co-poster), extra funding is necessary for the municipalities that can sustain further growth of their tourism industry, but are struggling to keep up with demand. New Zealand falls somewhere in here; we have significant problems with tourists literally shitting on walking trails because the previous Government dropped all its tourist budget on global advertising, and didn't anticipate the sheer success they'd have; we therefore lack basic amenities like toilets in many popular tourist spots (or -- if there are toilets -- they're long drops maintained by the Department of Conservation, which most tourists won't use). We can do better with a little extra cash; I believe the new Government is currently investigating a border tax, but a bed tax would help the regions too. Other major metropolises popular with tourists like Paris, Rome, Barcelona etc. could use the extra cash in broadly similar ways; supporting the growth of transit systems and developing infrastructure that supports and promotes distributing the tourist load to other attractions.

I suspect that if you were to put in a large bed tax with the explicit goal of discouraging visitors in places like Venice... it might not work? The rich would put up with it and go anyway. You'd probably cut out many of the poorer visitors, but I doubt you'd see a big net drop unless the tax approached a point that it killed the tourism industry altogether, and sunk the local economy. I suspect that for somewhere like Venice, there needs to be stronger intervention; the category of idea I'm thinking of is a lottery system like the US parks or something.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#87

Post by sandworm101 »

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? :)

Yes. Because i use the woods every day for my own enjoyment. The tour companies are there only for profit. I help maintain the trails and when some tourist (or old person) goes missing in those woods me, and my dog, help look for them. We look after the woods. Tourists dont.

I dont say ban any people, but the city should try and keep the tour groups where they can do the least damage

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#88

Post by captainwhoreal »

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.

What if someone local wants to use Airbnb, but there is a bed tax? What if you want to visit family in next town that happens to be touristy or what if you have a work placement? How do you distinguish tourists from non tourists?

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#89

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #59
longerthoughts wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, people hardly even consider tourist taxes and they’re often not visible when you’re rate shopping. So help me understand this claim from your original post: >Tourist taxes are how you destroy diversity and trap people into the tiny bubble in which they were born

People know hotels are expensive. People know that bullshit taxes and fees get piled onto the advertised price when they try to checkout. People regularly scoff at the final price. Who among us hasn't? If someone closes their browser is doesn't matter if they do or not understand what the taxes or fees are for. To reiterate, my original reply was someone asking for MORE tourist taxes. We can probably agree that trave…

You are making all kinds of emotional arguments but not addressing the topic of the discussion.

This whole comment thread is about how cities can deal with the problems that come with an excess influx of tourists. These problems are real, no matter how romanticized the tourists' view of their trip was. In short, the destruction that massive tourism waves leave in their wake (to use an exaggerated analogy) is ultimately an externality to their action that needs to be paid by someone.

Yes, modulo everything, paying more for things sucks. Paying for externalities that you are not used to paying probably sucks even more. Tourism is not special in that regard. But the problems caused by tourism to the locals also suck, and if one of the fixes for them is increasing taxes, then you can't argue it away by saying, effectively, "no! I don't want to pay more".

Post reply on HN