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How cities can fix tourism hell

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Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#51

Post by longerthoughts »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #49
longerthoughts wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very clearly did not ask who avoids travel because of total costs. The question is in what case does somebody avoid booking a trip that they otherwise would’ve taken because they just can’t stomach the tourist taxes once they’re already paying hundreds for flights and lodging?

Most people don't even know how much they're paying in tourist taxes. I certainly don't. It's a hard-to-see line item on lodging, attractions, event space, etc. What's the total cost? I don't know. Probably more than 1 percent and less than 5? How many more people would travel if costs were reduced by 5 percent? More than zero, less than a lot. I was responding to a post arguing for MORE tourist taxes. I think we sho…

Right, people hardly even consider tourist taxes and they’re often not visible when you’re rate shopping. So help me understand this claim from your original post:

>Tourist taxes are how you destroy diversity and trap people into the tiny bubble in which they were born

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#52

Post by CryptoPunk »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #39
CryptoPunk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like thinking that a city exporting its goods to a foreign market with high income consumers causes inflation in the city. The businesses that cater to this influx of tourist spending employ locals, which pushes up local wages and spending. The goods/services produced are also not scarce. They can be increased in supply. In fact higher volume retail shops result in more economies of scale, which can reduce loc…

This is simply not true. Look at Santa Barbara for example: high tourism, high prices and locals are forced to distant outskirts. Local spending doesn’t increase because prices simply go up and locals shop at cheaper places outside of tourist hub. I doubt their wages are any higher either.

Why do you assume that local businesses generating more revenue doesn't contribute to local incomes? It does, almost by definition.

In a housing supply restricted market, tourism can contribute to higher housing costs, but that can be fixed by removing constraints on housing supply, like zoning. And even when this effect is present, its effect on quality of life is counter-acted by the positive effect of tourism spending on local incomes.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#53

Post by sologoub »

kaffee wrote: post #34
frio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is roughly where my thoughts lie. When my partner and I were travelling around Europe, many of the popular cities charged a bed tax — usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx. Back home, there’s been debate about doing this too. I hope the pro-tax side wins. Our country is su…

Check out Chicago or Montreal. The tourist tax is just massive.

Montreal looks to be only 3.5% extra, not exactly massive.

Their sales and goods/services taxes are high, which works out to close to 20% total tax on a room. Still not that crazy.

Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g155032-i51-k6671607-H...

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#54

Post by Ftuuky »

pythonista-82 wrote: post #29
alexashka wrote: post #19

Can somebody explain what problems tourists are creating? I live in Toronto and was surprised to hear that the population doubles during the summer, because of a large number of tourists. Having spent most of my life here, and some of it right next to the biggest tourist attractions - I never thought any of it was a problem. It hasn't affected my quality of life in any way that I'm aware of.

Edinburgh born and resident here, our city centre has become a tourist only zone with tartan tat shops, overpriced restaurants and during August (The Fringe) it’s pretty much impossible to move through town due to the amount of people in this small city. There aren’t really any “locals” in the centre any more as most of the flats have been bought up for AirBnB or student flats. AirBnB flats are notorious as “stag par…

It's exactly the same thing in Lisbon.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#55

Post by toofy »

I’m a far cry from an economist, but I’m curious if the sharp rise in tourism over the last couple of decades is an indication that people have much more disposable income than we previously had access.

As the article mentions, travel and lodging has definitely gotten cheaper, however I still feel like, due to stronger economy and more disposable income, world travel is no longer limited to the obscenely wealthy.

If my read on history is correct, world travel just wasn’t available to so many people as it is now.

Is this simply better economics or has our new(ish) interconnected and open world also made travel less scary? Like, since we interact online and trade with people from all over the world, do their different cultures no longer terrify us?

I mean, I try to make it to at least one new country a year, and when I travel it terrifies my Midwestern grandparents. It seems that in their generation, foreign countries and foreign cultures are so distant and extremely scary—I don’t want to imply as if they’re bad people, just that the world was much much bigger and out of reach to their generation for whatever reasons.

[edit] clarification.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#56

Post by icsllaf »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #28
tompccs wrote: post #22

Gadgets? No thanks. The fundamental problem with tourism isn't crowds (although they are unpleasant), it's inflation - tourists have more money to spend and businesses will naturally align themselves to suck up that money. Compare with situation of huge student populations in small towns in UK: their interests don't align with the incumbent community, therefore tension ensues. The effect is two-fold: increased prices…

That's like thinking that a city exporting its goods to a foreign market with high income consumers causes inflation in the city. The businesses that cater to this influx of tourist spending employ locals, which pushes up local wages and spending. The goods/services produced are also not scarce. They can be increased in supply. In fact higher volume retail shops result in more economies of scale, which can reduce loc…

>The businesses that cater to this influx of tourist spending employ locals

Tourism is an industry that pays less than most. Most tourism/hospitality jobs are low-income and menial which compared to the exponential rise in both property value and everyday goods, is peanuts.

Hawaii, a state whose largest contributor to GDP is tourism has 1 in 6 residents living under the poverty line. The lack of other jobs and focus towards locals drives most people to poverty.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#57

Post by ip26 »

toofy wrote: post #55

I’m a far cry from an economist, but I’m curious if the sharp rise in tourism over the last couple of decades is an indication that people have much more disposable income than we previously had access. As the article mentions, travel and lodging has definitely gotten cheaper, however I still feel like, due to stronger economy and more disposable income, world travel is no longer limited to the obscenely wealthy. If…

Well, while we are speculating, in a world with better communication, there can be more places of interest to travel to- including ones which are closer to you.

Once people toured the seven wonders, but now most of my friends stay within the country visiting niche spots to recreate or eat a different variety of food. That's a lot harder to do if Joe Small-town can't get the word out about why you should visit.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#58

Post by ip26 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #15
elbasti wrote: post #3

At risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Pigovian taxes have been a thing for fifty years, yet they are still seldom used. It seems like such an obvious solution to me that the fact it's not used more often (ex: towns banning airbnb vs taxing it) suggests to me that I'm missing something obvious.

Part of it is also restricting location. Every large city has a tourist quarter that becomes devoid of everyday services for residents in favor of trinket shops and expensive, mediocre restaurants (e.g. Times Square in NYC). By introducing AirBnBs everywhere you run the risk of turning residential quarters into these dead zones. In contrast, hotels are very easy to restrict using zoning.

The promise of Airbnb (I'm not a booster though) is that if you spread out the impact, you don't have to have any dead zones.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#59

Post by forrestthewoods »

longerthoughts wrote: post #51
forrestthewoods wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't even know how much they're paying in tourist taxes. I certainly don't. It's a hard-to-see line item on lodging, attractions, event space, etc. What's the total cost? I don't know. Probably more than 1 percent and less than 5? How many more people would travel if costs were reduced by 5 percent? More than zero, less than a lot. I was responding to a post arguing for MORE tourist taxes. I think we sho…

Right, people hardly even consider tourist taxes and they’re often not visible when you’re rate shopping. So help me understand this claim from your original post: >Tourist taxes are how you destroy diversity and trap people into the tiny bubble in which they were born

People know hotels are expensive. People know that bullshit taxes and fees get piled onto the advertised price when they try to checkout. People regularly scoff at the final price. Who among us hasn't? If someone closes their browser is doesn't matter if they do or not understand what the taxes or fees are for.

To reiterate, my original reply was someone asking for MORE tourist taxes. We can probably agree that travel is already expensive. We can debate about what percentage of that cost is from tourist taxes and how impactful that added cost is.

Making travel more expensive will obviously cause fewer people to travel. If you make travel sufficiently expensive then fewer and fewer people will travel and more and more people will stay in whatever place they happened to have been born. I can not give you the equation for what increase in price leads to what decrease in travel.

Growing up in rural Tennessee I remember conversations about travel. The number of high school students who had ever left the country was tiny. The number who had never left the south eastern US was decently large. The number who had never left their home state was alarming.

I'm fortunate to work in tech and be able to travel. If I want to see half my family I have to travel to them. They can't afford to travel to me. I have on multiple occasions paid for travel costs for family. Because they otherwise couldn't afford travel costs for events such as our grandfather's funeral. I find the idea that people who want to make travel even more expensive to be morally reprehensible.

Re: How cities can fix tourism hell

#60

Post by nikanj »

toofy wrote: post #55

I’m a far cry from an economist, but I’m curious if the sharp rise in tourism over the last couple of decades is an indication that people have much more disposable income than we previously had access. As the article mentions, travel and lodging has definitely gotten cheaper, however I still feel like, due to stronger economy and more disposable income, world travel is no longer limited to the obscenely wealthy. If…

The narrative nowadays heavily encourages people to #yolo and live on credit. When everyone around you is getting into debt via epic trips, getting into debt no longer seems like a major problem.
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