There may come a time where tourists are tagged with GPS trackers. Those who go off the beaten path could face fines.
Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
51–60 of 252 posts
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#52Okay, so restrict their entrance and live without their tourism money. :')
That would require withdrawing from Schengen, and probably the EEA, impacting Icelanders’ travel rights to Europe.
> That would require withdrawing from Schengen
No, Ireland isn't in the Schengen zone. Irish people are free to visit Europe (since part of the EU). Also a Schengen VISA DOES NOT allow one to visit oversea French territories. You can't visit The Guadeloupe with a Schengen VISA. So things are a bit more complicated and wouldn't necessary impact Icelander's ability to travel to Europe, it entirely depends on what kind of deal Island signed with the rest of the EU.
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#53Easy: Hand every tourist a brochure about the Do's and Dont's. Aka, like Singapore prints warnings (DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS) on their landing cards. If laws and rules are disrespected fine the sweet bejeezus out of those assholes (like in the thousands of $ range) and ban them from the country (or ideally, from the Schengen room) for 5 to 10 years. The problem will solve itself in short time.
Love the idea. One improvement: let's make this an international effort and ban them from travel to any other participating country as well.
> Love the idea. One improvement: let's make this an international effort and ban them from travel to any other participating country as well.
Yeah and let's make it possible to add arbitrary names to that list with minimal oversight! We could call it the international No Fly list.
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#54A while back someone posted a comment on another story about travel and tourism - I forget who - basically saying that travel is the ultimate extension of selfishness and narcissism. I disagreed, and I still do, but I will agree with that statement entirely when it concerns Instagram influencers.
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#55I 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…
Go on just about any cave tour in the US, and there’ll be at least one chamber filled with graffiti from sometime before the cave was protected/commercialized(1) as it will have been a popular youth spot. It’s never cleaned up because it’s now historical and gives the guides a good opportunity to lecture against vandalism. (1) choose your preferred description
> sometime before the cave was protected/commercialized
It doesn't matter what official designation it has or when it attained it, I'm using "nature reserve" to distinguish it from non-descript fields and planes. The point is that some parts of these amazing places got very easy access for uninterested people as roads and suburbs sprawl... and then the damage happens, but it becomes even worse due to selfies.
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#56Okay, so restrict their entrance and live without their tourism money. :')
That would require withdrawing from Schengen, and probably the EEA, impacting Icelanders’ travel rights to Europe.
That's one option, but another would be taxes: increase landing tax for flights, hotel tax, car rental tax, tourist services tax, etc.
Or simply limit numbers: require that people buy tickets to enter particular places (including national parks), and restrict entry once the place is "full".
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Love the idea. One improvement: let's make this an international effort and ban them from travel to any other participating country as well.
That escalated quickly. In law there is a principle of proportionality [0]. It's the reason why jaywalking isn't punished by 60 days in prison or by getting sent back to your country and banned from ever travelling to any country that has pedestrian crossings. Also laws should apply equally to everybody. How would such a law apply to locals? Withdraw citizenship? I think hitting them with fines or paying damages is a…
I don’t know which country you live in, but in the United States of America, all this talk of “fairness of law” is a fairytale at best.
And no, you can’t convince me otherwise.
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mass tourism has ruined travel for me.
If and when I go somewhere, I try to go in off season. And if there is no such thing as off season for a place, I just avoid it.
Yeah. Much of the 'real world' is turning into something like a Center Parks (if you know of it) experience, where what we believe to be reality is nothing of the sort. At least some trips are immune though, like a tropical chill out on the beach. It's the long dreamed of trip to Florence, for example, that is likely to be marred.
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't even remotely comparable to the tragedy of nature being so carelessly trashed.
I think it's an analogy, not a comparison. "Eternal September" being a time when there is a ceaseless influx of those who are unaware / uncaring of the rules.
It's not really a ceaseless influx if those people are inevitably leaving.
Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
#60I hate to sound cynical but the reason it seems like everyone knows someone who's gone to Iceland in the past 5 years is because the government has been heavily subsidizing flights and hotels to this exact end. There really was no other outcome :( Also the government only needs to levy a 1000 USD fine on a few people in order to stop a lot of this because the American press will seize on it immediately.
This isn't exactly accurate.
WOW air, the budget airline that was offering cheap flights from the US is now bankrupt. They were able to offer the flights so cheap because they were operating at a loss trying to take market share away from Icelandair.
The biggest problem has been the government's inability to control the tourism industry, which more or less runs amok, taking all of the profit and contributing little back other than general tax revenue.
Members of parliment have proposed various solutions to deal with tourism, but most often there is no agreement, and no concrete actions put into place.
Basically there are laws that prevent the government from taxing people differently, so it's illegal to tax tourists different than locals, so it becomes difficult to take advantage of tourism money for government to create facilities, hire people, build infrastructure, etc.
It's happening, but it's not what it could be.
Various "nature pass" fees have been proposed, hotel taxes, flight taxes, etc.. but no matter what the idea is someone is always against it, which has made curbing the situation hard.
With WOW air just disappearing recently, the economy is still adjusting to that.