211–220 of 278 posts
Why is "overtourism" even considered a problem? Just start advertising new destinations somewhere else in the country, raise the prices at the original overwhelmed destination and take profit.
Many of these places are where you can't charge an admission or limit attendance easily.
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…
> this need people have to jam in with 100,000 other people just to see some famous building. Maybe that's just me. I was fortunate enough to spend a gap year traveling around the world, and one of the lessons I learned quickly was that I have little interest in "iconic" destinations. I can distinctly remember when I made this realization: I was in Oia Santorini at sunset, which I had decided to go to because I had s…
Even on Santorini, which is tiny, I was able to find nice places that weren't completely crowded.
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…
I was in Rome with my wife for less than two days for other reasons, and we decided we'd pass by Trevi Fountain. Let me tell you, that place was packed . Maybe 400-500 people packed just to say they were there, or maybe wait in hopes of getting a clear shot. All of this just to brag in social media. I think the problem would be better if people didn't brag on social media about every single place they go to.
The USSR tried to build the New Soviet Man for only what, 70 years...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There’s at least one benefit of tourists: you get more and a better selection of restaurants I live in a part of Oslo with a vibrant restaurant scene, and one of the reasons is the extra business tourists drum up
This seems to be more about carbon footprint and sustainability than "overtourism"? Does all the oil Norway extract count towards their carbon balance, or is that the consuming country's problem? Norway just collect the profit, to pay for all this green cleansing at home?
Yes (it counts). We're (also) hard into the green certificates shell game;we should stop extracting fossil fuels . We're one of the few nations that could realistically stop.
— sincerely, an Aussie who lived in Norway for 2 years, and protested against Statoil ('Equinor') trying to get oil off the southern coast of Australia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found this to be the opposite in Barcelona. I had a discussion with people who live there who said that since the majority of restaurant customers are tourists (a lot of whom travel on a budget, i.e. young backpackers) and will never come back, most (~70%) restaurants can get away with okay or even substandard food and bad service and still make a profit. So tourism is actually lowering the quality of restaurants.…
Interesting... here in a relatively touristy part of Melbourne, anecdotally, it's pretty much those backpackers who are working the tables in half of the trendy restaurants and cafes. There's definitive trends on making food 'instagrammable', but the overall quality and competition between all the restaurants is undeniably good. Although now that I think about it, you take somewhere like Lygon street famous for its I…
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-...
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…
That's a pretty interesting idea. Get the stuff that's really particular to your interests, undiluted by what's just generally popular.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes (it counts). We're (also) hard into the green certificates shell game;we should stop extracting fossil fuels . We're one of the few nations that could realistically stop.
Hopefully Norway thinks about other countries as highly as they think of Norway. — sincerely, an Aussie who lived in Norway for 2 years, and protested against Statoil ('Equinor') trying to get oil off the southern coast of Australia.
But not helping with colonial/foreign exploits would mostly just be a change of funding/profit (eg BP would take over Equinor projects) - while a ban on fossil fuel extraction in Norway would seal up those resources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Living Iceland, the increased amount of tourists means that everything can no longer be written in the local language so that the tourists can understand, and that when you go to a restaurant, you often can't even order food using icelandic as the staff won't understand you, walking down the street, everyone is speaking English to each other, things that used to be free and offered to the public, now have to come at…
...you often can't even order food using icelandic as the staff won't understand you... One doubts that the restaurant staff are tourists? You seem to be saying that they aren't Icelandic, however.