Anger Over Tourists Swarming Vacation Hot Spots Sparks Global Backlash | Hacker News Reader

Anger Over Tourists Swarming Vacation Hot Spots Sparks Global Backlash

wsj.com

34 pointsmudil76 comments

To give a contrarian view, what do people have against other people? If the goal is exclusivity, Then this is faux experience. The places are now, temples to humanity and humanity is what they contain.

I have touristed in places packed with locals, the physical effects are no different. It just cultural supremacy to believe because they are "local" somehow your experience is distinct from having a hoarde of little old ladies with rainshields on around you. (Nara for instance, which is jam packed with Japanese of all ages and religions, but few westerners when I was there. The queue to get local food at lunchtime was unbelievable.)

>To give a contrarian view, what do people have against other people?

When you flood a place with people who don't share the same culture as the locals, it's disruptive to the culture and it can even permanently destroy it.

The article is talking about remote areas (NZ - Lord of the Rings), beaches, camping trails etc. These areas didn't get a lot of traffic. Now they do which is leading to the undesired outcomes. It's not talking about locals vs tourists. It's mainly talking about sudden influx of people coming into an area.

I'm a kiwi, I don't think people are against visitors per-se - it's the enormous amount of poo they leave behind that they ought to be packing out - it's particularly a problem because we have a culture of 'freedom camping' - stopping on the side of the road for the night, but now we have tens of 1000s of camper vans without builtin facilities piling on the roadside poo

PS: Lord of the Rings was a movie it's not actually what we're about

Me too. But I'm a bit out of touch. I'm aware roadside camping waste has been a mainstream issue for a while, but are many in NZ talking about pressure on environmentally sensitive areas? Is that a very big part of the conversation? (This article might cause one to believe as much).

If I look at the local newspaper and the periodic airing of grievances, it's all about camper vans and piles of poo, and then maybe about people who can't safely drive on the left side of the road

I think there probably are isolated areas that are now seeing more people than they ever have but most locals don't get there either - DoC (the government conservation arm) is quite capable of closing places if required

Maybe start requiring rental campers to have built-in facilities? This seems like a bit of hypocrisy to complain about visitors pooing just like the locals.

some of them do, there's a move afoot to require all of them, but some are tiny and pretty barebones.

The locals generally aren't travelling the country and pulling over into a picnic area when it gets dark, they're going there for a few hours and aren't as likely to need to poo, but it's their back yard.

Ideally we simply start building more public toilets, but the cost of that's going to fall on local property tax, there's no easy mechanism to separate enough money from tourists in vans to pay for this - our new government seems to be looking at an airport arrivals tax ($20 or something) to try and cover both this stuff and some of the costs of providing more protections in the National Parks, which the previous govt starved.

Meanwhile we fine people caught camping where they shouldn't and who make a mess, but about half skip out without paying them (from Monday's local paper)

We've had the same problem here in Iceland over the past 3 years, and it's only getting worse. We (the locals) call them "toilet paper tourists". It's a classic example of what economists call ´externalities´; i.e. great for the camper van companies (they make "shitloads" of money, pun not intended), great for the toilet paper tourists, who have a vacation on the cheap, but the cost is dumped (again, not intended) onto innocent 3rd parties in the form of degraded environment and diminished experiences. Oh, and good for importers of pot noodles and cat food.

1) in this case, Iceland has 300k people, so people might expect a difference experience 2) people also travel to see and understand a different culture, see how life is in another place, so yes, they can be annoyed by tourists that invade an area.

It’s not about us versus them. It’s about the carrying capacity of a particular location. For these remote destinations in particular, more people means more damage and trash.

People always seem to want more privacy than they were able to afford.

Yup.

I visited Reykjavik last winter and was astonished at the number of tourists visiting in mid-January. I had wrongly assumed it would be a down-time because of poor weather and short days. Nope, tour agencies just cut prices enough to entice people to travel "off-season".

We had a long weekend, so stuck to the main tourist sites within a few hours of the city. They were all crowded with buses and vans full of tourists.

Not only were the crowds themselves an eyesore, a huge number of the tourists were poorly behaved. Not just inconsiderate in the face of large crowds, but actively damaging to the area. Littering, hopping "do not cross" safety lines, wandering too close to the water's edge (Iceland has rough seas and it's easy to get swept into the ocean).

I don't know if there's an easy answer. All the tourists do bring money. But, I did get the impression that Iceland was being ruined.

I also recently returned from a trip to Peru, where we hiked part of the Inca Trail and visited Machu Picchu. While the crowds were large, I was pleased to learn Peru has limited visitors both to the ruins and the trail to try and ensure both are maintained for generations to come. The Inca Trail limit used to be 2000 people/day and is now 500 (that includes guides and support staff, so ~200 tourists).

Wasn't that because of WOW Air?

In part, yes. WOW and IcelandAir both run substantial tour programs, allowing split tickets for those heading from Western Europe to the US, bundled with discount lodging and tours to popular sites.

That, along with Instagram, make Iceland a desirable place to visit.

this is largely incorrect. wow air does not run any tours, tour groups, transport, lodging, etc. it's just a budget airline and they are only interested in transport.

They do allow "stopovers". Where you can stay in Iceland for few days between the flights. Those are heavily marketed during the flight too.

All of the legs of the flight are the same price regardless of whether you book them together or separately.

They're not really selling a "stopover" so much as just convincing you to buy plane tickets for what they already cost.

IcelandAir definitely has a tour package subsidiary or formal partnerships. I assumed WOW did the same.

It's definitely a big factor, the financial crisis also played a huge role.. and there are a number of other factors such as the government really not doing anything or being able to reach conclusions about things and basically letting the tourism industry run amok.

People are upset, but with the amount of hotels that are still under construction, the problem looks to get much worse before it gets better.

I believe so. I live in Calgary and you can fly to Iceland for less than the cost of a flight from Calgary to Toronto. From Toronto, you can sometimes get there for less than $200. I'm not even sure you could fly Toronto to Montreal for less than $200.

This is not as shocking as it sounds if you look at a globe though

Calgary to Toronto is 1675 miles. [0]

Calgary to Reykjavík is 3211 miles. [1]

It's often cheaper for me to fly 3211 miles than 1675 miles.

0 - http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=yyc-yyz

1 - http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=yyc-rkv

And yes, I realize I'm contributing to the problem by visiting these places. And yes, I probably never would have visited Iceland if it hadn't become a "hot" destination. That, and it was about half the price of visiting someplace warm in January.

The southwestern section of Iceland is the most touristy. If you get outside of it, things are a lot better.

I did a drive around the island and it was quite pleasant until I got around the the southwestern side again. The roads filled with cars and buses, there were crowds at most roadside stops, and I started seeing poorly-behaved tourists.I understood then why some of the Icelanders felt annoyed at all the tourists.

The rest of the Iceland did have tourists, but they were in much smaller numbers and the experience was much more pleasant. The tourist buses also disappeared. This was in late September.

In talking to Icelanders at some of the small municipal swimming pools (those were the best), there were a lot of complaints about how tourist money flowing into the economy was driving up prices for everyone who lived there.

Iceland was really nice to visit. It's unfortunate that they are being overwhelmed.

Absolutely, friends have done th full ring road and it remains uncrowned for the time being.

I've visited around summer solstice few years back and didn't find it too bad really. Of course, we rented our own car and did the ring road so we were only around Reykjavik a day or two. Certainly, outside of the golden circle you won't see many any other tourists at all. Hard part is finding places to stay though as there isn't much out there!

I generally only tell my family and close friends about the spots I find. It won't last forever, the masses might find out another way, but mostly the urge to show off lessened over the years. I have my pics and my memories, and that's enough for me.

Congestion pricing. Cities like Venice and Barcelona are beautiful and should absolutely have the right to control tourism, why not do it with a (steep) tax? A double benefit: fewer tourists and more public funds. The tax could be dynamically adjusted to control visitors

Im generally an advocate for low taxes, but why shouldn’t cities benefit from being desirable rather than suffer for it

Because you may find yourself completely locked out of places you might want to visit in the future. Yes, there are always people richer than you, who don't want your company, either.

Which is in effect saying that the residents' right to control access to their city is subordinate to random tourists' right to visit whenever they like. That doesn't sound like a reasonable position.

Maybe a lottery system then? 5k free "tourist visas" per year, that sort of thing.

This is how they do mountains here. You enter yourself and your party in a lottery for a permit. A limited number of permits are also sold on a first-come first-serve basis, so if you wanted to summit Mount Adams at the last minute you could show up at the ranger station at 4:00 in the morning and camp out in line like you're buying a PS4 on launch day.

In some cases (major world heritage sites), one could argue the tourists' right to visit should be considered along with residents' rights. It's a tough balance and I don't have answers. But, I would hate to be locked out of the Vatican because they realize they can charge $5000/day for visitor passes.

A lottery of some form might work, if prices are kept reasonable.

>Which is in effect saying that the residents' right to control access to their city is subordinate to random tourists' right to visit whenever they like. That doesn't sound like a reasonable position.

Interesting position. Competing against that thought you have stuff like United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights #13: Freedom to Move. "We all have the right to go where we want in our own country and to travel as we wish"

The UN isn't talking about tourism.

My initial instinct was to handwave as well but I don't think that holds up. Not explicitly naming tourism doesn't mean it's not applicable, as the point of calling them 'universal' is that they apply no matter the context. Person, government, country, planet. Universal. What do you consider to be a definition of 'travel' that applies to that statement, that wouldn't also include tourism?

The kind of restriction on tourism we're discussing here appears to run contrary to that particular line. Even at it's most conservative reading it seems to set the bar at 'if you're a citizen of a country then you can travel freely to any public place within it'. The idea of locking down a city to prevent that is exactly what's being proposed here.

Or are we talking about only international tourism here?

The context of the entire thread is using money to "control" tourism which is already common. I have been to many places where tourists paid more or had a special tax. Or were required to have a local guide.

The UN charter is specifically about citizens not foreigners. Additionally they are talking about no militay checkpoints, preventing a marginalized ethnic group from traveling from point A to point B, etc. It isn't about not charging rich Americans a little bit more because they want to see New Zealand.

Tourism is a subset of "travel".

"Which is in effect saying that the residents' right to control access to their city is subordinate to random tourists' right to visit whenever they like. That doesn't sound like a reasonable position."

Suddenly, I'm having flashes of California, particularly SF, residential problems, including the hated NIMBY-ism.

And that is free market at it's best. If something is in high demand with limited availability then I would expect the price to rise.

Keeping the price artificially low would be like the policy of the old socialistic ideologies.

Isn't that what the free market evangelism teaches? As there is only one Venice, I would hope that the price reflects the amount of demand as well as the the amount of externalities that the tourism is producing.

This last aspect should be covered by taxes to ensure that the tourism not harms the city/environment, as not to fall into the trap of the tragedy of the commons.

Except taxes are almost explicitly not the free market. If hotels want to raise their prices they can, if not, then not.

Taxes are the definition of market distortion. It would be a crying shame if all the world's greatest sights were restricted to the rich due to government interference.

EDIT: It would also be a shame if all the world's greatest sights were destroyed by mass-tourism, so who knows? But pretending it's as simple as an Econ 101 problem would be naive.

Taxes are a distortion, but also one way to deal with the tragedy of the commons (in this case, previously remote locales that cannot absorb the influx off tourists).

Lottery or some other system to limit access could also work.

It's really funny you mention this, because I'm in St Barts today as I posted the comment, and that may well be true here!

Also, there should be an externalities tax on air travel (especially for vacationing) since it has such a disproportionate effect on atmospheric CO2.

https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=air%20travel%20climate%20chang...

If you want to subsidize business travel or the shipping of high value goods, it's probably better to do that separately from the externality tax.

There are many items for which imposing congestion pricing has the potential to be more of a burden for less-well-healed locals than for wealthy tourists - a city can spoiled for its residents just as much by unaffordable prices as it can by mobs of tourists (more imo, in fact).

On the other hand, regulations and fees on hotels, car rentals and tours historically did serve as a limit and a tax on tourism. However, institutions like AirBnb, uber allow the equalization of prices paid by tourists and prices paid by locals. Hypothetically, one could role back these things by regulation but sadly that seems to be opposite of how things are going.

Does it mean that you want to marginalise people that are not too wealthy? Because if you increase prices those better off would still be able to come.

>> Does it mean that you want to marginalise people that are not too wealthy? Because if you increase prices those better off would still be able to come.

Obviously the answer to that is yes. Maybe not the ‘want to’ part, but surely the effect of taxing certain forms of tourism heavily will shut out less fortunate people. The follow-up question would be whether this is the kind of ‘unfairness’ that needs to be fixed. Maybe it’s just a fact of life we all should accept, that there will always be places that you will never visit, or activities you will never be able to experience, because they are out of reach? It has always been like this, and in some sense it will always be: even as someone fortunate enough to be able to travel all around the world, I will most likely still never be able to visit many places because it would be too expensive. What entitles me to say this is unfair and I should also be able to e.g. travel to Antarctica?

Discussions like this always feel awkward because I realize I’m part of the problem. Nonetheless I sincerely think mass tourism and making every place of the world accessible to as many people as possible ruins them and spoils them for everyone, and in particular for locals who don’t benefit directly from the tourist industry. If prohibitive cost is the tool to preserve these places, so be it. There’s enough other interesting things to discover for me than some hill that featured in LoTR or some cathedral I can see on a million pictures on the internet.

That's fair. I think you're right.

Isn't it ironic that tourists themselves are complaining about other tourists. It's like somebody concerned about climate change saying "I used to drive my overpowered car without any worries because there weren't enough car owners to cause a problem but now the world is full of cars and they're polluting it! Let's do something about those other car owners!"

It sounds a bit entitled to want the scarce things for yourself any not have to share them with poor people who can now afford them more than they used to. Wanting those poor people to stay in their slums where they belong, and perhaps be subjects of tourism themselves but not rise to the level of tourist themselves.

Maybe it's just a sign of greater global economic equality, which is widely seen as a good thing. Let's have more of it!

This resonates. I was recently in Seville, Spain, and felt myself on the verge of a claustrophobic panic attack while touring the cathedral because of the thundering herds of tourists pressing in from every side. Big organized tour groups where 20, 30, or more people are led around by a single guide speaking to them through mic and bluetooth headsets are the worst because they distort and concentrate the tourist density. One minute it might be fine to go up in the giralda and a few minutes later an hour+ wait if a couple of these giant groups decide to queue up at one time.

I've always thought this was a great opportunity for VR. Pop on your favorite VR headset and see the sights without having to fight the crowds or spend a fortune getting there.

And being VR it could add the optional time-travel element so you could go back to see whatever historical event made the place famous... :)

And it is only going to be a bigger and bigger problem in the future.

Great that people are talking about how much free time people are going to get in the future. But where are they going to spend it?

I was always, how bad can in be living in tourist hotspots like Venice or Barcalona. But having lived in Copenhagen, and seen the number of tourist in the inner city increase by 10% every year for the last 5-6 years at least. I have changed by mind, and there are a lot places worse then here.

At some point it is just not going to be sustainable anymore. And I don't see alternative but to put some kind of limit on the tourist horde.

This is one reason I refuse to go to typical tourist destinations. The other reason is, tourists are fleeced. My parents paid 6, 7 Euro for a bottle of water in Europe!

Tapwater is drinkable in many parts of Europe, they should have refilled the bottles instead. Also generates less waste.

Just gotta know where to go. A local vendor at small Mediterranean town I visited sold 1.75L of one the most delicious red wines of my entire vacation for barely €3.

Given the article’s subject matter, the location stays a secret with me ;)

I bet it was Croatia, or possibly Albania. ;-)

Try the following facebook link redirect[1] if you can't get past the paywall: https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...

[1]: You can add the following as a bookmarklet to your browser and click on it when you hit the paywall on wsj to get the redirect link.

  javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

my simpler first approach: right click 'web' and open in an incognito window.

My simpler first approach is to use a ref control[1] plugin ;)

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hn...

I expect many destination cities will experience economic inflation, rendering them only available to the international wealthy. People's homes will become where they vacation, as, after all, that'll be the only place many can afford. "VR Vacations" will actually become what people do when they take vacation.

> Anger Over Tourists Swarming Vacation Hot Spots

Anger at hot spot marketing department for successfully selling! How dare they!

Is this site compliant with GDPR? I thought restricting the user experience depending if user would give up his personal details is forbidden? This site also doesn't say it doesn't cater to Europeans. I am confused.

Obviously personal information is a commodity, which we can trade for comfort, and it doesn't have much value since most of the people are happily giving it up... so I'm not too surprised about this

Slow motion version of Larry Niven's "Flash Crowd" ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Crowd

Having been to tourist hot spots in China, it's bad there as well - unless you take the old roads on foot. Nobody takes the long ways any more, so if you want that genuine experience, walk.

Best option is to find some other place in the country to visit. Find an old trail go for a hike. Throw away the traditional bucket list and focus on having fun.

http://archive.is/zE2dN

...well don't go to China lol!

can't read the article due to paywall but can grok the content based on the title. When you break it all down it's pretty much a supply/demand type issue where supply is constantly limited, or in reality decreasing, and demand is increasing rapidly. The only thing that can adjust the speed of the above is pricing and regulations. Unfortunately, many "destinations" are hungry for the tourist dollars and don't think about (or know how to) building a sustainable industry.

Regulations can help; some examples: --Antarctica treaty limits size of boats that can make landings, number of people that can be on land at once and the minimum ratio of guides/tourists. --Bhutan limits the number of tourists allowed in the country annually, requires they tour with a guided company, and mandates a minimum spending amount per day. --Ecuador limits boats in Galapagos to maximum of 100 passengers, limits the port of calls allowed based on boat size and has consistently increased entry fees to balance demand --Even in San Francisco they passed an ordinance banning tour buses in certain neighborhoods as they were a constant nuisance of noise and pollution.

Beyond regulation, its just a matter of price and accessibility. There's tons of wilderness still throughout the world but very little is easily accessible or of interest to typical tourist. If there's only one or two flights in/out per week to a remote destination you know tourists numbers will be limited. Anyone with 30-60k can visit the north pole. Ive seen pictures and it looks boring AF but at least it's exclusive. Even climbing Everest now is described as an escalator up the world's highest garbage dump. Comparatively, Venice is a city of 50-60k ppl but sees 20M tourists a year! They are starting to put some things in place to control the insanity but it's probably too little too late.

Unfortunately, at the risk of sounding racist, a big part of the problem for more typical destinations is newly rich asian middle class hungry for luxury but completely unaware of local culture/customs, uneducated on the sensitivity of ecosystems, etc. Seems like everyone agrees that the Chinese have taken the lead position as world's worst tourists... and they've already reached 2x the size of Americans (which are admittedly also pretty terrible) int'l annual travel volume.

Also, the internet must share some of the blame! you used to have to work hard to discover a new place, research a desination, meet locals to find out the best secrets... now the Internet lays all to bare and its simply a competition of who has the most impressive instagram roll. Even, the park next to my house used to be a relative deadzone but now gets all sorts of tourist traffic because it was featured on some hidden gems of SF type website.

Getting a lot of these WSJ paywall articles in here. Seems like people who have a subscription would probably read these on their own, and we can just leave them off HN so they stop annoying the hell out of everyone else.

I can always get to paywalled articles on WSJ, NYT, WaPo and other news sites via http://archive.is/

I this case: http://archive.is/5zMmn

Paywall, can't read.

Try the following link redirect: https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...

I've been lucky enough to travel to almost 40 countries and unfortunately many locations designated as a must visit have been completely ruined by over tourism including Boracay, Varcala, and Mue Ne just to name a few. Often times by the time the travel press is heralding a place it's character has been changed. Cartagena and Iceland are good examples of this where 10 years ago they were infrequently visited and were replete with services aimed at locals, now many of the shops and restaurants cater to serve the needs of tourists. Good for the proprietors but bad for the authenticity of local culture.

http://outline.com/pWwZXX

http://archive.is/5zMmn

Reply on news.ycombinator.com