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Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

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Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#171

Post by sideshowb »

1023bytes wrote: post #29
el_cujo wrote: post #21

I'm glad they're approaching it in a way beyond just "make everything more expensive". It's interesting how when it comes to climate change, a lot of the same people who are otherwise committed to egalitarian ideals immediately jump to "just charge more" as a solution for everything. I'm not saying those kind of policies can't be a piece of the solution, but I really don't see it being effective to tell all but the r…

Well, Norway is already one of the most expensive countries in the world, second only to Switzerland.

Speaking as a tourist, Norway makes Switzerland look cheap. Even the Swiss complain about the beer price in Norway!

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#172

Post by porknubbins »

skohan wrote: post #87
PeterStuer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Barecona's case it was the RyanAir booze flights from the UK that destroyed the city.

When I lived in BCN there was a certain reputation a type for British and German tourists who used the streets as a toilet. It struck me as odd that so many people seemed to view Barcelona as an "anything goes" type of city while the Catalan people are not that wild for the most part and drink socially but not to get drunk.

My theory on british tourists is that people from uptight, repressed places are looking for somewhere to let loose. Granted the US is uptight too but we don’t have as much drunk hooliganism because we’re strict on alcohol too.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#173

Post by skohan »

claytoneast wrote: post #156
hinkley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It the Everest case the lottery could be used to pay for all of the externalities. Everyone who wants to climb Everest pays in 100 bucks to register. Winner has to pony up another 900 for the permit, and fines for leaving material on the mountain. Spend the net profit on cleaning up after the people who already left shit on the mountain. But here's another alternative that also fixes it: To get a permit to climb Ever…

Everest permits already cost USD $11,000. The problem is the government doesn't necessarily use that money to clean up the site. The government also doesn't cap the number of climbers, as far as I know. Hence the chaos up there. http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2018/12/17/how-much-does-it-...

This year was especially bad because the weather window was especially short, meaning that all the people who might have had a month or more to spread themselves out over were condensed into a week or two.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#174

Post by hinkley »

claytoneast wrote: post #156
hinkley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It the Everest case the lottery could be used to pay for all of the externalities. Everyone who wants to climb Everest pays in 100 bucks to register. Winner has to pony up another 900 for the permit, and fines for leaving material on the mountain. Spend the net profit on cleaning up after the people who already left shit on the mountain. But here's another alternative that also fixes it: To get a permit to climb Ever…

Everest permits already cost USD $11,000. The problem is the government doesn't necessarily use that money to clean up the site. The government also doesn't cap the number of climbers, as far as I know. Hence the chaos up there. http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2018/12/17/how-much-does-it-...

The friction of requiring volunteer hours would probably buy them another ten years of runway to solve that problem.

https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-services/... has a required number of hours per year to get - and retain - an allotment. It's meant to reduce entropy and keep the waiting list a bit shorter. A couple of things on this list https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-services/... can get you your hours in faster, which bumps you up a little bit in the queue. I'd like to see that ramp more aggressively but that would discriminate against blue collar workers.

Everest doesn't have that problem, though. Climbing it is, in many ways, a statement of privilege already. If you issued permits to the 100 people with the most volunteer hours in that year, you'd solve a whole host of problems.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#175

Post by mytailorisrich »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #165
mytailorisrich wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming that the money goes to the local communities (even countries). If it does then it seems quite obvious that more money is better than less money.

Sell me your brain? It seems like communities can be ruined by richer tourists in ways that not so rich tourists won't. For example, in Pembrokeshire and areas of Devon some communities have been partially replaced by clusters of second-homes because rich people like to have their holidays there. Locals can no longer afford to live there because they lack the wealth to outbid incomers. Maybe that's not quite in scope…

> 3 cars, private plane, large concreted property, ..., yes at a holiday home, as one goes further up-market?

What? We are discussing visitors on holidays, not people moving in or buying second homes.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#176

Post by mytailorisrich »

claytoneast wrote: post #148
mytailorisrich wrote: post #3

There's no silver bullet. Tackling overtourism means limiting the number of tourists. One way to do that is to impose high enough prices.

This problem has been solved a long time ago by the Departments of Fish and Wildlife for hunting and fishing. A lottery that is tied to an identity, no transfer allowed. Psuedo-RNG, so that each time you enter the lottery and are not selected, your chance to be selected increases next time. The money from the lotteries are used to help conserve the resource that they draw on. Example: https://idfg.idaho.gov/press/big…

Why would the people of Norway, Barcelona, Venice, or anywhere else make efforts to ensure foreigners can visit cheaply?

It may make sense for your own citizens to visit irrespective of money, but I would want foreigners to have as much as is needed to keep the number of visitors under control.

I think we'll get there at very famous, very limited places like Venice.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#177

Post by legulere »

cletus wrote: post #55

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 o…

There is also some effect of social media. For my next holiday I was checking out where to go and found articles with titles like "The most instagramable locations in *".

Banning photos might be an unconventional but effective way to have people actually experience more of the place they visit and for places to be less overrun.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#178

Post by munificent »

cletus wrote: post #55

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 o…

> "too many" people having too much disposable wealth.

I don't think this is the problem at all. The world is huge. There are millions of tourist destinations and plenty of room for people in all of them.

The problem is with distribution. Social media creates power law distributions of attention. There are a few pieces of writing I wish every human on Earth had read and this is one of them:

http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

Instagram has caused these power law distributions to escape media onto the real world. While there are millions of delightful vacation destinations, most people never hear about most of them. Instead, a tiny minority of the most photogenic one (like Trolltunga, mentioned in the article), consume almost all of the attention and then net a huge, unmanageable number of visitors. For every Everest, there are a hundred mountains that are 90% as beautiful but only get 10% of the visitors.

I believe this is one of the fundamental, structural problems of the modern age. Most of the information we consume — literally the knowledge we base our worldview on — is now brought to our attention based on social media sharing and aggregation. The nature of those systems takes a linear range of "relevance" and distorts it into power law that no longer matches reality. But because this is our window into reality, we then take the result of that distortion at face value.

I would love to see more systems engineered to try to balance that. Perhaps a Twitter-like system that capped the number of followers you had. A recommendation engine that subtracted out the effect of popularity when ranking. But so far I don't see many. I'm not sure if it's because it's not what people want, not what advertisers want, or what.

(The great thing about knowing that this effect happens is that you can often easily acquire a better-than-average experience by deliberately stepping a little farther towards the long tail. The third best restaurant in a city is usually almost as good as #1 but noticeably cheaper. The second-most popular hike will give you 80% of the view with 20% of the crowds.)

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#179

Post by yazaddaruvala »

m4rtink wrote: post #146
scarejunba wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just auction? That way you don’t have the misallocation of quotas without auctions, the uncertainty of lotteries, or the deadweight loss of incorrect price choosing. Pick a number the trail can handle, auction tickets.

Sure - if you don't mind cutting off all less wealthy travelers, then go ahead.

How is this different than what for profit airlines, hotels already do within the tourism industry?

Less wealthy travelers go at odd times, they live in hostels and have "worse" experiences.

The only difference in this case is that the country is also directly profiting from this demand.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#180

Post by frereubu »

dang wrote: post #163
tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a guideline against talking about voting. "Unpopular opinion but here goes" or "spicy take here but" is just normal human conversation, and it doesn't actually add much noise; sometimes it's even a little useful. I wouldn't crud up the guidelines with this, but maybe refine the "commenting about voting" guideline.

I wonder how to refine the "commenting about voting" guideline? Normal chattiness in comments is totally fine. What's tedious is "I, the noble freethinker against the hideous masses" posturing. It's also common, because of the biases in how people perceive the community; basically, anything you dislike shapes that perception 10x more than anything you like, so most people's image of the community becomes an inverse i…

"Preemptive defensiveness" hits the nail on the head for me. It's most problematic when it's the first thing in a comment, and makes it difficult for me to take the rest of the comment seriously, no matter carefully worded it is. I find it easier to write off as chatty if it's later in the comment and / or more offhanded like "... although I know that's not exactly flavour of the month on HN." The fact that it comes first carries a subtext of "I'm not really going to phrase this carefully and I don't care what you have to say," like they're already writing off anything critical that others have to say.

How about something like:

Don't try to preempt reactions by starting "At the risk of being downvoted..." or "Unpopular opinion here..." State your case clearly and let your ideas stand or fall on their own.

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