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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

#91

Post by eesmith »

alecco wrote: post #52

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...

From your source: Cataluña, Población 7.710.136 personas, Emigrantes 61.597 personas, Inmigrantes 102.420 personas - https://www.epdata.es/datos/poblacion-inmigrantes-emigrantes...

"The most-visited region of Spain was Catalonia, with 18 million foreign visitors. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia." "The coastal city alone, with its many internationally famous sites such as La Sagrada Familia, received more than 12 million tourists last year." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-09/why-are-people-protes...

40K net immigration/year is much smaller than 18 million.

Even if those 18 million are in Catalonia for only a day, that's still 49K people.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#92

Post by eesmith »

alexpc201 wrote: post #79

The Catalans worked for 30 years to position Barcelona as a premium tourist destination, with advertisements even on buses in London, only to now intimidate tourists by splashing them with water and blaming them for all their problems.

Catalans are not uniform, and those with the money to promote tourism are likely those who benefit the most, an not those who face the strongest negative consequences of that tourism.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#93

Post by tjansen »

The thing that most of tourism protestors don't see is that tourists are what makes their city attractive. They want an attractive city without all the crowds, but that won't work since without the tourists all the money is gone. The bars and stores, and the museums and other attractions are mostly financed by tourists. Without the tourists, it will be just another city with empty storefronts because all the locals shop online.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#94

Post by jodleif »

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.

Yup and usually it has a really bad effect on the housing market, especially for cities that are touristy the whole year

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#95

Post by Fluorescence »

tjansen wrote: post #93

The thing that most of tourism protestors don't see is that tourists are what makes their city attractive. They want an attractive city without all the crowds, but that won't work since without the tourists all the money is gone. The bars and stores, and the museums and other attractions are mostly financed by tourists. Without the tourists, it will be just another city with empty storefronts because all the locals s…

I've lived in a number of hotspots. Locals rarely use the same businesses as tourists. Any "attraction" that is not the historic buildings / culture / scenery etc. are likely trash. Tourist infrastructure is dead space for a local, not an asset. Any claim that e.g. transport is an asset, is typically only solving a problem tourism has created.

When people say they "bring money in", worth seeing where the money goes. Tourists spend in the most scammy cynical price gouging businesses and in multinationals. The profit margins of these businesses is not local wealth - the financial impact locals see is property price inflation. In most tourist cities, you don't need to walk far from the main attraction to see desperate poverty.

There is opportunity cost. When a political administration leans into the "tourist industry" they are not growing other industry and enterprise that creates high value jobs for locals. The jobs tourism creates are entry level service workers that will likely served by immigrants also attracted by the same dynamics as tourists and more easily exploited by a loathsome industry.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#96

Post by tjansen »

Fluorescence wrote: post #95
tjansen wrote: post #93

The thing that most of tourism protestors don't see is that tourists are what makes their city attractive. They want an attractive city without all the crowds, but that won't work since without the tourists all the money is gone. The bars and stores, and the museums and other attractions are mostly financed by tourists. Without the tourists, it will be just another city with empty storefronts because all the locals s…

I've lived in a number of hotspots. Locals rarely use the same businesses as tourists. Any "attraction" that is not the historic buildings / culture / scenery etc. are likely trash. Tourist infrastructure is dead space for a local, not an asset. Any claim that e.g. transport is an asset, is typically only solving a problem tourism has created. When people say they "bring money in", worth seeing where the money goes.…

I also live in a city, Duesseldorf, that's a semi-hotspot. Very crowded during trade fairs, Christmas markets and events like the Euro Cup; not so much in between. Visitors are definitely the reason why there are a thousand bars and stores still open. City centers of comparable cities nearby are dieing. The difference between a thriving city and a mostly dead city are 5.4 million overnight stays.

(Admittedly, Barcelona seems to have about 20 million overnight stays plus cruise ships, but it also has almost three times the population of Duesseldorf)

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#97

Post by alecco »

eesmith wrote: post #91
alecco wrote: post #52

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...

From your source: Cataluña, Población 7.710.136 personas, Emigrantes 61.597 personas, Inmigrantes 102.420 personas - https://www.epdata.es/datos/poblacion-inmigrantes-emigrantes... "The most-visited region of Spain was Catalonia, with 18 million foreign visitors. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia." "The coastal city alone, with its many internationally famous sites such as La Sagrada Familia, received more than 1…

Tourists typically stay one week. Inmigrants stay forever and accumulate.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#99

Post by itsoktocry »

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…

>Claiming that tourism is just a negative is just plainly wrong

This is strange framing, and apparently the opposite of my reality.

Tourism is seen as good, and this indicates there are bad sides, too.

Re: Mass tourism protesters squirt water at Barcelona tourists

#100

Post by mid-kid »

dtboogie wrote: post #55
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.

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-manu…

Barcelona is surprisingly competitive in the tech sector. Primarily foreign companies though.
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