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Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

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Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#51

Post by theteapot »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #16

There's two sides to this story. Claiming that tourism is just a negative is just plainly wrong: [1] 2021: Barcelona started to recover, recording direct tourist spending of €3.7 billion with 4.5 million visitors. This marked a significant improvement as the city began reopening and international travel resumed. [2] 2023: Tourists in Barcelona spent €9.6 billion in 2023, up 14.7% from 2019 More than 12 million people…

There's winners and losers behind any aggregate economic statistic like GDP and the ones you cite. I think that should be obvious. Do you think those people with the water pistols are winning?

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#52

Post by alecco »

Tourism is a drop in the water compared to mass immigration. Catalonia, and Barcelona metro in particular, had a flux of African immigrants who in turn have families with 6 to 10 kids. And insignificant new housing. But they choose to bother tourists because it's cool.

https://www.epdata.es/evolucion-emigracion-inmigracion-comun...

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#53

Post by addicted »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #16

There's two sides to this story. Claiming that tourism is just a negative is just plainly wrong: [1] 2021: Barcelona started to recover, recording direct tourist spending of €3.7 billion with 4.5 million visitors. This marked a significant improvement as the city began reopening and international travel resumed. [2] 2023: Tourists in Barcelona spent €9.6 billion in 2023, up 14.7% from 2019 More than 12 million people…

Any evidence that the money went to the actual people living in Barcelona, and whether the money that did go offset the rent and other cost increases?

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#54

Post by jerlam »

ryandrake wrote: post #45
llamaimperative wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subtext, which is absurd when made explicit, is that if not for tourism then those 100,000 people would not have jobs. In reality, jobs are created in response to demand, and you can obviously have arbitrarily large economies that are ~0% reliant on tourism and there's no reason to suspect Barcelona et al couldn't or wouldn't produce such an economy for itself in lieu of tourist demand.

Moreover, whenever someone says "XYZ brings money to the area " you need to look at who in particular it's bringing money to. It's not like this money is being dropped out of a helicopter uniformly over the area's people. It's largely going to a relative few businesses and property owners, who spend a fraction of it in the local economy, who itself spends a fraction locally and so on.

The jobs being created aren't high-paying professional jobs either, they are largely service jobs in areas too expensive for the workers to live. So they have to commute long distances on often underdeveloped infrastructure.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#55

Post by dtboogie »

llamaimperative wrote: post #36
lemoncookiechip wrote: post #16

There's two sides to this story. Claiming that tourism is just a negative is just plainly wrong: [1] 2021: Barcelona started to recover, recording direct tourist spending of €3.7 billion with 4.5 million visitors. This marked a significant improvement as the city began reopening and international travel resumed. [2] 2023: Tourists in Barcelona spent €9.6 billion in 2023, up 14.7% from 2019 More than 12 million people…

The subtext, which is absurd when made explicit, is that if not for tourism then those 100,000 people would not have jobs. In reality, jobs are created in response to demand, and you can obviously have arbitrarily large economies that are ~0% reliant on tourism and there's no reason to suspect Barcelona et al couldn't or wouldn't produce such an economy for itself in lieu of tourist demand.

All the waiters and tour guides can't just re-train as semi-conductor technicians.

Even given time, it's not obvious that Barcelona or Spain has the necessary pre-conditions to be globally competitive in another industry that would bring in the same amount of dollars per capita.

It's an extremely ambitious, all-hands-on-deck type of national undertaking to shoehorn your way into something. Japan did it with auto-manufacturing in the 30s. East Asia in general with high tech manufacturing.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#56

Post by Scoundreller »

smdyc1 wrote: post #9
7e wrote: post #3

This is the utterly foreseeable consequence of the HN-funded Airbnb, which effectively lets rich tourists drive up the cost of living of city residents.

I'd shift the blame somewhat on the owners of the Airbnb properties and Airbnb itself rather than the tourists. They're the ones getting rich at the expense of the locals.

Meanwhile every Euro “destination” town/city will have residential units all over sitting mostly empty owned by some rich person/family.

But that’s not as visible. And nothing new.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#57

Post by kingsloi »

bilsbie wrote: post #28

We really just need more places. We basically have the same number of tourist destinations as when the population was 1/3 the size. No one is making more places to visit.

I agree - either lower people's standards or try push a "beauty is in eye of the beholder" mindset

For example Gary, Indiana. You only hear the bad things, but never that it has great beaches and trails, if you're willing to settle for a bit less on everything else. Here's a video I took a few months ago https://imgur.com/PItmK2v, I don't think people necessarily picture these sort of views from the armpit of Indiana but it's a daily reality here.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#58

Post by Scoundreller »

itsoktocry wrote: post #7
7e wrote: post #3

This is the utterly foreseeable consequence of the HN-funded Airbnb, which effectively lets rich tourists drive up the cost of living of city residents.

And it manifests itself as anti-immigration, too, as evidenced by elections in nearly every country. Mortgage financing and infrastructure, at least here in Canada, was designed to help get people into home ownership. Over the past 10 years that's turned into cheap, easy leverage to become a landlord.

> was designed to help get people into home ownership.

I wouldn’t call it “designed to” if it was more accessible to those with large amounts of capital already at their disposal.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#59

Post by addicted »

trevor-e wrote: post #50

I've visited Barcelona a couple times as a tourist and their anti-tourist feelings were always very odd to me, never experienced it elsewhere. Throughout the city is lots of graffiti in popular spots saying "Death to tourists" and such. Then there was a protest march at night where everyone wore masks, chanted through many streets that had outdoor dining, and physically made people put their phones away if they tried…

Most likely reason is that the protestors are a minority.

The “blame politicians” is a terrible approach. In a democracy politicians are elected by a majority of people. If people actually wanted to end tourism in large enough numbers, someone would elections on an anti-tourism platform.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#60

Post by allemagne »

morkalork wrote: post #20

Why is mass tourism such a problem today and not the 90s/2000s. Is it really all thanks to platforms like Airbnb allowing cities to host so many more tourists that is the problem?

It's because the supply of housing for tourists and residents alike has not kept up with demand.

Maybe in someone's ideal world we can put everyone in a city into the categories of "outsiders" and "residents" and enforce a strict regime where "outsiders" are strictly prohibited from occupying housing that rightfully should go to "residents", but we don't live in a world where that's possible.

If Airbnb didn't exist someone else would have come up with it. If somehow the idea was preemptively disallowed, then the complaint would be that there are too many hostels operating under-the-table.

Without building more housing, there is nothing you can fundamentally do about tourism except make Barcelona a worse place, in comparison to everywhere else, for everyone.

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