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Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

bbc.com

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Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#201

Post by Geimfari »

derefr wrote: post #164

Iceland should make up its mind. Flights to Iceland (from pretty much anywhere) are extremely cheap, presumably due to some sort of Icelandic tourism-board subsidy. This attracts people who choose vacation destination based on price... who might not be the most motivated to nurture (or even pay attention to) the local character of the place they visit.

Flights to Iceland are cheap because the airlines' business model is being a hub for cross-Atlantic flights. Later on, advertisers started marketing towards those who were already crossing the Atlantic, encouraging them to spend time in the country since they were already there.

It would be possible to tax tourists more for their stay, limiting low-value tourists. It would also be possible to just put a hard limit on the number of visitors, which to me sounds like a reasonable solution, as no country can handle this growth in visitors in such a short time.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#202

Post by d-sc »

I’ve lived in touristy areas all my life. The phenomenon of locals being disinterested in the tourists is not a new one and existed long before social media. Mysteriously they don’t seem to mind the money from those same tourists (or live on trust funds).

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#203

Post by magduf »

jschwartzi wrote: post #73
randogogogo wrote: post #14

I was just there a couple weeks ago. The only incident I saw of this was a recently married couple taking photo's on a cliff, they went out over the ropes, a misstep probably would have killed them. Also when you rent a car there, they inform you that going off road is prohibited. I guess some people choose not to listen.

Yeah, people die taking selfies pretty much every year on one of our local hikes here in Washington. It's the easiest trail with a spectacular view(~1200ft of gain) in the entire metro area, so people flock to it in droves. It's a hike out to a cliff that looks down on a valley floor. Every single "outdoorsy" girl on Tinder has a picture of themselves there, standing in front of the precipice. There's also the easies…

What they need is a "stupid hiker fee". Some states require hikers to buy a hiking pass, and the fees for this fund rescues, but if someone doesn't get the pass and needs to be rescued, they can be charged the entire cost of the rescue.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#204

Post by growlist »

driverdan wrote: post #181
growlist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass tourism has ruined travel for me.

Why? There are millions of places to visit, the vast majority of which are nearly empty. You don't have to go to the big name locations, there are plenty of others that aren't crowded.

But the unspoilt places inevitably require more effort both upfront and whilst there. The holiday starts to become more like work than relaxation!

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#205

Post by magduf »

henryaj wrote: post #2

Typo in title: should be "Icelanders".

Unfortunately, you're wrong here. This is from BBC, and they're using a very peculiar and annoying British-ism where they refer to an entity in the plural sense. They do it all the time with companies, saying something like "[Company] have announced earnings" instead of "[Company] has announced earnings" as in American English. Their reasoning is that the company (or country in this case) is composed of many people, so you should use plural. But it's awkward-sounding and annoying, and really doesn't make sense. An individual person is composed of billions of cells, but we don't refer to him or her with the plural tense.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#206

Post by tomxor »

magduf wrote: post #199
tomxor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do these super talented artistic photographers see the photos they take, even once, after they have taken it? Nope, similarly the affect of using cameras in museums has been studied before. In real life it's pretty blatantly obvious that 99% of people don't go to museums and galleries for their interest any more, it's all about being pretentious and shoving as many pictures on facebook as possible so their friends…

I take tons of photos when I go on vacation in a foreign country, but I don't put them on Facebook. I do put them on Google Photos so interested people (who I specifically invite) can look at them if they choose. (GP also has some convenient features, like being able to add descriptions/commentary to each photo, and being able to see on a map where it was taken.) Getting a photo book wouldn't help me though. I like t…

> I like to take photos of many things that tourist photos don't show: random city streets, bicycles, vending machines, cars, graffiti, other tourists, locals, shopping districts, residential districts, trains, signs, Apple stores, grocery stores, etc. I like to try to capture what life is really like in a place, good and bad, and a book of tourist photos isn't going to show you that.

That's great, it's good to take photos like that as a tourist and I wouldn't judge anyone taking photos of any kind in that whole category. But to be clear, i'm talking about something quite different, they are not photos, they are just an extension of social network selfies, "proof I was here", it's about excessive concern with self-image and nothing else - when taken to the extreme in the ways I so commonly see now, it has absolutely no relation to how one takes a genuine photo to capture happy moments, personally unique interests etc when visiting or exploring. These other people have become the extremities of a robot feeding an algorithm.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#207

Post by magduf »

akuji1993 wrote: post #21
tomxor wrote: post #6

I think this is a potential basically everywhere, unfortunately most people do not respect the environment and given access will treat nature like a city. Where it becomes an issue is more a matter of forces acting to encourage "normal" people with no previous interest in nature to go and e.g have their piece of the pie for their worthless facebook pic. Anecdotally, I've seen this multiple times on smaller scales in…

Went on a roadtrip through England in 2017 with a friend. Your second paragraph was the reason we didn't like it at Stonehenge. Busses and busses of people, littering everywhere. They had to prohibit going near the rocks, as people would break off parts of it to take home (who in their right mind would fucking do this), draw on them, damage them otherwise... Huge bummer for me and my friend. On the other hand, wander…

I visited Japan a couple months ago during "Golden Week", which is their big national vacation week. Several of the sites I visited were absolutely packed with (Japanese) tourists. No one was vandalizing anything, littering, or even acting rude and obnoxious, or in any way I could see breaking any of the rules. As an American, it was rather weird because American tourists wouldn't be like this at all. It's pretty amazing to see a culture where people know how to act properly even when there's a high degree of crowding.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#208

Post by usrusr »

throwaway847272 wrote: post #39

Until recently, I worked at a company that sends these people to Iceland, among other places. Influencers end up in that career for a reason. They are, in general, everything you'd expect them to be: flaky and privileged almost as a rule. They're not bad people per se (no tantrums that I've seen), and are often well-meaning, but most are desperate to be famous. These are the same people who competed to be on The Bach…

Not just bigger egos: instagrammers naturally compete for attention, it's basically their job to one-up their peers. Regular tourists may occasionally want to do so as well, but it's entirely optional for them.

It's like professional vs recreational sports: some hobbyists might be misguided enough to take PEDs, but for a struggling professional they will appear like a possible livelihood-saver.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#209

Post by tomxor »

magduf wrote: post #207
akuji1993 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Went on a roadtrip through England in 2017 with a friend. Your second paragraph was the reason we didn't like it at Stonehenge. Busses and busses of people, littering everywhere. They had to prohibit going near the rocks, as people would break off parts of it to take home (who in their right mind would fucking do this), draw on them, damage them otherwise... Huge bummer for me and my friend. On the other hand, wander…

I visited Japan a couple months ago during "Golden Week", which is their big national vacation week. Several of the sites I visited were absolutely packed with (Japanese) tourists. No one was vandalizing anything, littering, or even acting rude and obnoxious, or in any way I could see breaking any of the rules. As an American, it was rather weird because American tourists wouldn't be like this at all. It's pretty ama…

There are pros and cons of that culture though, Japan takes it to the other extreme from what i've read.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#210

Post by magduf »

klyrs wrote: post #194
magduf wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should just forbid or discourage tourists from countries that cause the most problems, such as Britain and the US. I'm sure Japanese tourists never litter there.

Problem being that tourism is one of Iceland's biggest sources of income. Selling out sucks, but starving is worse

What they really need to do is come up with a "preferred tourist visa", where people (regardless of national origin) are only able to get this after being interviewed to make sure they're properly respectful of the local culture and environment, and if they get caught doing something wrong (like littering, going into off-limits areas or past safety barriers, etc.), get their good-tourist visa revoked. Interested countries like Iceland can then only allow people with this visa to travel there.
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