Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

Rationing is not a very fair way to distribute goods or services to people. Some people may value it just enough to pay the entry fee, while others might value it a lot more, but now they have the same chances of receiving it. If you prohibit people from on-selling their tickets, then you also causes losses when people change their minds but are already locked in by the lottery.

Instead of the destination country finding a way to charge tourists more to discourage them, source countries could tax them more to resolve the issue and keep the monies for themselves.

Welcome to the world of, by some measures, "too many" people having too much disposable wealth. There are obviously worse problems to have. But overtourism is a problem that's only going to get worse.

This even affects Mount Everest where people are literally dying just to say they stood at the top of the world. And Everest simply can't support the number of climbers now.

You see this in US national parks where the obvious ones (eg Yosemite) are arguably oversubscribed while others you could probably go days without seeing anyone.

There's a certain lack of imagination here. Some of it is convenience. Take Everest. People climb it because it's the tallest and people know what it is. There are ~14 other peaks over 8000 meters. Are any of these qualitatively worse experiences? Probably not. But... bragging rights.

Solutions to this fall into a number of buckets:

1. Making it more expensive: some will complain only the rich can go and this is unfair.

2. Quotas: you have to book far, far in advance and no doubt this is unfair to some people.

3. Lottery system: this is really a variation of quotas but probably fairer.

So I've been to Paris like 4 times. I like it but my God the touristy places are a nightmare such that I basically never went to any. Honestly the best part for me was the bread. The sandwiches you'd buy on the street were unbelievably good.

Anyway, I honestly don't understand this need people have to jam in with 100,000 other people just to see some famous building. Maybe that's just me.

I have mixed feelings about this. I used to live in El Raval, and during August I dreaded even leaving the apartment because I knew I would have to fight crowds even to go to the corner and buy milk.

I agree with your general premise, that restricting freedom of movement has not historically been a good thing, but I do also think it's a tragic when a beautiful and interesting place gets absolutely overrun by tourists and as a result gets less beautiful and less interesting, and far less livable for the people who stay there year round and don't leave after a couple days.

I think tourism can be seen as a problem of negative externalities, much the same way as pollution can: for a few businesses in the community, it's a huge net positive. Hotels and restaurants, for example, make big profits off of tourists in popular destinations, but everyone else has to deal with more litter, crowded streets and higher prices, but doesn't see any of the benefit. Just like we regulate pollution, I think it's possible to find ways to regulate tourism to maximize the collective good.

I also think there are ways to regulate tourism without beckoning the "slippery slope" you worry about. For instance, I have been on an island in Thailand which can only be accessed between 8AM and 8PM, does not allow outside plastics of any kind, and charges a modest fee to enter. Measures like that, or increased taxes on accommodation for example, can make it just a little bit harder to visit a popular destination and will probably result in less visitors on average without imposing a quota.

> [...] in Barcelona, where 'overtourism' is a much bigger problem than in Norway IMHO [...]

We do have quite a lovely but challenging nature here. We have lots of tourists who come here unprepared and some would likely been severely hurt or even died had it not been for volunteers from red cross etc helping them.

As the number of tourists increase, we're likely to see more of these unprepared tourists. So it's not just about the numbers, but what they do when they're here.

A recent news article (in Norwegian, Google Translate does a decent enough job): https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/gar-hardt-ut-mot-uvitende-t...