Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
bbc.com
bbc.com
If you don't like China's social credit system, what do you think of America's "TSA PreCheck" system? It doesn't bar people from traveling, but it does give special privileges to some.
I honestly don't see a problem if some countries decided to cooperate and implement their own "tourist blacklist" system to keep out tourists who have proven to cause problems: it's their right to refuse entry to any non-citizen they wish.
I have been wondering, if there are any bills, tax or something in similar effort to bring the cost up, like any market would do with high demand. In ways that government can collect and ( in theory ) redistribute back to local via benefits or subsidies?
Taxing on hotel, flight?
[1] https://www.ferdamalastofa.is/en/recearch-and-statistics/tou...
The problem is we as a culture are both enabling and encouraging this by following these influencers, in effect paying them to do this. And not just a couple of hundred bucks here and there, these social media influencers have gone from nobodies to multi-millionaires almost overnight.
So it's not all about self involved. This is one of the negative consequences of the age of social media.
My kids follow these social media influencers who may as well be today's answer to Gucci, Donna Karan, Versace, Armani. There's make up influencers for the big beauty conglomerates. There's clothing influencers for the the fashion industry. There's tourism influencers for the tourism industry, all making millions of dollars a year trying to win the hearts and minds, or rather money, of the social media generation.
I've experienced this a lot in Amsterdam too, however. Tourists are treating Amsterdam like it isn't a real city. Especially the British seem to have no respect and treat Amsterdam like it's Vegas, but with less American cops.
I actually cannot conceive of how the park rangers there manage to keep their cool day after day.
The forest service ends up digging the toilets out of some really rough pickaxe type terrain, since most of it is a thin layer of soil over the glacier carved granite. God help the poor soul who dumps trash in the outhouse and gets caught.
Took a tour up there a while back, and our tour guide stopped to yell at people putting themselves in life threatening situations to take pictures. Happened multiple times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/against-sustainab...
> Some instagrammers are sponsored by companies and don't obey pretty easy rules just to get a more spectacular photo from a slightly different angle.
Their followers are of course to blame to encourage these behaviors, but this whole situation where there’s strong financial incentive to act dickishly is guaranted to never stop.
I was thinking, perhaps when punishment gets really severe, but then I imagine all these videos about how they got around the rules or defied authority.
In Spain some call it Decatlón tourism, from the low-cost chain selling outdoor accessories.
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 Bachelor or Dancing with the Stars as a means to improve their marketability. They have no real marketable skills other than marketing themselves.
Thus it should surprise no one that they are terrible tourists. If I could speculate, it's a combination of cluelessness, lack of interest in researching anything about their destination (other than good photo spots), and a low-key sense of privilege that "it's not that big of a deal" if they do something that might be harmful. In other words, they are a lot like average tourists but with bigger egos.
is it even them?
1 instagrammer is ok, if they have 1 million followers though and a fraction of those people follow the same path then everything get's trampled.
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.
Also in 2011, WOWair debuted with it's $99 flights to Iceland.
Instagram launched in 2010.
Maybe it's less "people are garbage" and more "we should make it more expensive to come here."
I do understand the difficulty in importing food to an isolated island with only 100k people. I'm just not sure that fully accounts for the increasingly high food prices across the board.
A person's pictures showing how and where they travel is a very good indicator of their socioeconomic status since it's hard to fake, and so is a valuable part of signaling status, which many people may find useful for dating and otherwise going about their social lives.
When you're called an asshole once, it's easy to assume the other person is having a bad day. But if numerous people are calling you an asshole every day of the week, chances are you are an asshole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_fi...
They badly needed foreign currency.
It's not really a problem unless you think people are a problem and then it gets philosophical
The higher up without accessible road or further in towards tougher trails and you start to have people there who have the will and stamina to be there and take the necessary precautions.
> The good instagrammers try to show different ways of enjoying nature. We don't tag places that are off the beaten path that we want to protect as long as possible. Some places have become "insta-famous" without ever mentioning where they are but eventually they become known to everyone.
Wait, what? So you take a picture. Put it on instagram (because you are an 'instagrammer'), but you don't mention the place. But since you are an instagrammer, people want to figure it out and now flood the country in search for that place. Trampling all the nature on their way...
I get the idea of taking a photo once in a while. Mind you, I really enjoy photography. But I found that a photo never does justice to the moment. So I choose to savour the moment before anything else.
Let's hope the future learns people that most of these instagram shots are basically digital waste.
At least, with paper-printed photos, you have|had material stuff to inherit with some context and history.
The Internet Archive, of course.
Pics or it didn't happen.
That's very condescending of you. Lots of people like having real visual memories of places they've been.
In the last couple of years I've not taken photographs of things from which I was sure already tens of thousands of photos exist.
In my opinion people forget the importance of the experience itself. It seems as if there must always be some form of evidence to show others that you've been to some place. Preferably while you are still there.
The memory trigger wouldn't be as strong with a stock photo.
I also don't think taking a picture and being present in the moment are mutually exclusive at all. It takes five seconds for me to snap a quick photo. It's really not that big of a deal.
Some of my clearest memories of places I've been are of places I took photos, for exactly this reason.
As already linked: https://xkcd.com/1314/
For a long time I've shared the same view that all the good pictures have been photographed, but with all this commercialization of the information it becomes nontrivial to find a good free hi-res image even of relatively known places without watermarks and outside of walled gardens.
I'd stay on the topic at hand. Most people are nobodies at instagram and they just want to share with their friends. I do not have instagram nor post pictures elsewhere, but I also don't feel entitled to tell others how to live their life. The real problem here is breaking the law (e.g driving off-road), influencer or not, tourist or not.
Hannah Arendt
EDIT: It's also certainly not just westerners, but again, my experience has shown me that there are societies that do better at training citizens not to litter.
They could have just as well been more specific and simply said 'China' or name the specific parks rather than to write 'east Asia'.
Those rivers and cities are all in the manufacturing regions that supply goods to customers in the west. The root cause of the pollution is our consumerism coupled to the governments of Eastern countries enabling exceptionally cheap labor that we exploit. To blame the nations of East Asia for the problem is a pretty poor analysis on your part.
Germany may pollute the air/rivers less than China but come to Berlin; in some neighbourhoods you might think you teleported to a third world country where trash are simply threw in the streets to rot for weeks if not months before the public services finally do something.
Sure, in the same way that there is a difference between the individual and the state/corporation/organization.
I don't see how this makes allocating carbon footprints any more accurate, nor does it indict "individuality" or any other ambiguous concepts.
I'm not sure what you are referencing in the first part of that sentence. I was replying to "Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search." which is false because it compares two things that are close but have no points of comparison. Heavily polluted asian rivers doesn't mean asians are more or less individualist and has nothing to do with the way they handle urban trash.
It's a very individualistic city.
No offense to good Berliners of course.
Isn't it because they have armies of cleaning people in the streets ? A friend of mine told me about it, I think he was in South Korea, Seoul perhaps, at the time. He told me people mostly act the same but their cities are more efficient at cleaning the mess before it piles up. I don't know if there are other laws similar to that [0] but it probably explain some behaviours too.
I agree with the underlying point though, some people just don't give a shit. I visited a small greek island last year and was appalled to see that locals were throwing their trash, old furnitures, construction materials, &c. over a cliff, straight to the ocean.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore
However, I don't think Chinese do a great job of separating their trash that well despite having recycle bins and trash bins clearly labeled on the streets.
https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/stor...
Whereas in the West, we just tell ourselves stories like all cultures are equal, and even though it's obviously not even remotely true, most people seem to believe it.
Source: live in Shibuya for 3 months every year.
Doing something good today, just because of peer pressure, means a person might take part in a progrom tomorrow, for the same motivation. I'd rather say collectivism and thought are directly opposed.
> The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.
-- Hannah Arendt, "On Evil"
And when it comes to large scale pollution, plastic flowing into the ocean, Asian nations at the very least don't seem any better than western industrialized ones, do they?
I think the _recent_ issue is in the title, and it's global, it's social networking. I can't think of any other force in the world that pushes huge numbers of people who have basically no interest or respect for nature, to go out into it, not learn anything, not gain any respect, and then destroy it... Selfies are a natural resource for social networking, and the natural world is full of them, ripe for exploitation.
> [..] it is an economic function of photography to supply the masses, by modish processing, with matter which previously eluded mass consumption.
-- Walter Benjamin, 1934
It's like people shifted from even that, to needing to have a photo with themselves front and center. Trample nature, then mess up the photo, too, and of course, burn a whole lot of kerosene.
To be less bitter about it, if people had more imagination and confidence, they wouldn't need to see everything first-hand, and wouldn't need to collect external proof that they're "someone". That seems achievable and worthwhile.
I think it’s just a problem with tourism.
This is a ridiculous stereotype. I’ve seen Chinese travelers around the world and they’re as sophisticated as anyone
Just look at what China did to its own environment to get a sense of how much that society values the environment.
They do this because they are educated and have the value inculcated in them very early on that "red means stop and green means go." They also learn that behaving in compliance with this rule is critical for the orderly functioning of society. Interestingly, when people are out of their cars, suddenly their ideas about the iron law of traffic lights get way more loosey-goosey. Part of this is because they sense, deep down, that the traffic laws aren't designed with non-car road users in mind, so cyclists think it makes more sense to treat red lights as stop signs and pedestrians resent not being able to walk wherever and however they please.
But a bigger part of it is that all the social conditioning is based on driving and not on walking. So that deep-down sense of "This is wrong" that keeps people in line doesn't exist once they're out of their cars. This guidance even applies in the car for signage that isn't common. Stop signs and traffic lights are explained to you from when you're a child. But Yield signs and 4 way stops are not always and, consequently, you see a lot less compliance among drivers on this front.
In places like Japan, it's not some property of the "communitarian culture" that magically makes people more likely to pick up after themselves. It's drilled into them from childhood. Kids are expected to tidy up at home by themselves. It's a standard part of the pre-K and early childhood education to clean up your spaces regardless of who made the mess. And when the cleaning staff comes by to do the deep cleaning, the children are generally told to THANK THEM for their contributions rather than taking them for granted.
Culture isn't some exogenous force that falls out of the sky or is bred into our genes. It emerges as a consequence of how we socially condition ourselves, what we teach our kids, what we expect from each other, and what we are willing to put up with. To put up with shitty aspects of our own cultures rather than adapting or changing is a choice we make.
Especially with concepts as ambiguous as "individualism".
My understanding of these instagram folk is that it's definitely about social status and very often about making money. "Influencer" is a career. Maybe if Iceland offered to promote these influencers' work in exchange for good behavior, some concept of mutual benefit could be worked out.
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.
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.
Last summer was absolutely terrible, with tourists not getting informed.
Don't get me wrong, I do not blame the tourists at all. The tourism board has put out a whole lotta campaigns, social media marketing and shit. But they didn't do anything to prepare and inform this huge influx of people.
"Unspoiled and authentic" is the message. People go trekking across the mountains, and into the private property of farmers. One farmer has threatened to shoot tourists, with messages of "Tourists fuck off to your own country".
At least one person has died. A drunk festival attendee, I believe. It can get foggy extremely quickly. They fell to their death off a mountain, because they couldn't see where they were walking.
This could have been prevented by guided tours, but that would ruin the "authentic, unspoiled, whoa nature" image that the tourism board is going for. Alternatively, educating tourists on do's and don't's. A pamphlet at the airport and the dock.
Or, another take on it: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/david-sedaris-was-right-...
1. sort vacation destinations based on actually wanting to go there, and then filter based on ability-to-go;
2. sort vacation destinations based on ability-to-go, and then pick the top one.
AFAIK, there’s no correlation between wealth/class and which algorithm people use. Rich people are sometimes rich because they’re thrifty, and so are no less likely to employ algorithm #2; poor people are sometimes poor because they tend to splurge on the things they want whenever they come into money, and so are no less likely to employ algorithm #1.
My point is rather that people who employ algorithm #2—regardless of who they are—tend to not actually care about the place they’re going to (since they never had it in mind to go there at all, never did any research or looked forward to visiting, etc.); and that, by making tourism as cheap as possible, Iceland is encouraging people who employ algorithm #2 to visit, without really increasing the number of people who visit due to employing algorithm #1 (who, presumably, are the ones they’d actually like to have as tourists.)
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.
Iceland was the goto choice for my colleagues at a startup in London. A few days before they typically went and forked out top dollar for premium outdoor gear (Rab / Fjallraven) and discussed their plans to mount Kirkjufell.
Iceland is the mecca for many hipsters at least for the UK.
I put it down to Sigur Ros, Game of Thrones and that its still not a very touristy place.
Like most hipsters, they know the price of everything but not the value. They check into their AirBnB place and use their phone as their main method of interacting in the area, rather than interact with the locals and build an appreciation of customs and the lay of the land.
Anyways back to the story, one of these well kitted out souls managed to sprain their ankles going for a leasurely walk in the boggy areas of Iceland, only 5 minutes after leaving their hotel.
I just worry now that the Scottish government are trying to market the highlands and outer islands as the "Iceland of the UK".
I've long wanted to go, myself—but it's a touch out of range. It's expensive enough to plan a trip to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or the Yukon (from Toronto)!
Back the tourists used to be nature lovers, either individual travelers or in small groups with local guides. Now you have mass tourism (at least compared to the old days). And with that you get all the problems that come with it.
Do these super talented artistic photographers see the photos they take, even once, after they have taken it?
And yeah, trashing is a never ending issue. You should see the early morning clean up at Times Square, on new year's day - it is quite a sight
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 think they are cultured. every time I go there are people who never look away from their phone, just take a picture, next, take a picture, next... all the way.
I find it difficult not to be disgusted by it. If all they really wanted was a picture they could have bought a book far more easily, but they don't want a picture, and they aren't interested, they just want to put it on facebook.
I try to ignore them but they often try to make you get out of the way for their important pictures of EVERYTHING if you dare to appreciate something with your actual eyeballs for more than 20 seconds.
Ok enough this thread is not helping my attitude towards people.
Getting a photo book wouldn't help me though. 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.
Think of photography in that situation like a hobby, just like people might want to learn programming languages or whatever. There’s a personal sport to it - challenging yourself to get a great shot or document what you’ve seen. Each to their own.
Actually, you don't: I usually just take a picture of them taking the photo of the girlfriend.
As for flashes, these days with everyone using their smartphones, the phones are smart enough to usually not activate the flash when you're outside. It's not as bad as the "old days" when I used to see dumb tourists with disposable film cameras taking flash photos of the Grand Canyon at night, thinking somehow they were going to light up the entire canyon.
When I was young, my grandparents had a little un-winterized summer cottage in upstate NY in an area that was still pretty active with NYC metro area tourists... basically boorish and annoying people swarming everywhere. ("Hey, look at the cow! Moo! <throws rock at cow> Why don't you mooo!") That isn't a thing now anymore, and of course the folks like from every city globally venture off to Mexico, the DR, and various nature-y places now.
Yuck.
Also when you rent a car there, they inform you that going off road is prohibited. I guess some people choose not to listen.
Every single "outdoorsy" girl on Tinder has a picture of themselves there, standing in front of the precipice.
There's also the easiest snowy mountain in the state, which everyone hikes up every year in tennis shoes as soon as the trailhead opens. One year Search & Rescue was called 4 times in one week because some hikers got stranded in the snow because they chose not to do any basic research about the conditions and assumed that since they wear tennis shoes during the winter, hiking through foot-deep snow in them is definitely okay. That week the county sheriff went on the news and asked people to please stop hiking that mountain for a couple of months.
e.g.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-457...
"Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team said the walkers' attire had included shorts and leggings, but no jackets."
I've never actually said to people I've passed that I thought they were inappropriately dressed (though maybe I should do) - but I have given people maps and directions when they admitted they had no idea where they were or their phone batteries had died (I take backup printouts of maps so not a big deal to give a copy to someone).
I've also seen a ton of hikers go 3 or 4 miles in without any food, water, or emergency gear at all.
I've heard of people on St. Helens doing the climb up the summer route in shorts and T-shirts with no other gear and becoming hypothermic at the top and requiring rescue. And that's a permitted route, meaning you have to win a permit lottery the year that you plan to do it.
Hiking in Washington is... frustrating to say the least.
I've even seen whole families with small children show up to snowy trailheads in tennis shoes expecting to do the full hike while I'm walking out with an ice axe dangling from my bag. They don't check trail conditions ever. I'm surprised more people don't die or get injured around here especially in the winter.
Now I try to find hikes that require some route finding as the people you come across on those hikes are generally people who are actually into hiking and not ig likes.
/Pretentious rant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAubG28uODM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uba84Q6qwKM
Sadly, I also noticed the same thing on Skye last month.
It goes beyond just numbers of tourists (a problem in and of itself, and one I'm obviously part of). Some people are just selfish pricks.
Anecdotally, I've seen this multiple times on smaller scales in nature reserves in the UK, social networking and selfies definitely play a big role. It's usually the places with easy access, almost no commitment or effort required, easy selfie opportunities... in these locations in recent years i've observed massive amounts of litter and disrespect, to add insult to injury these intruders tend to be ignorant of safety in general, hurling rocks, boulders and bottles into the path of walkers and climbers bellow from cliff tops.
The reaction from local authorities is to add more fences and gates, locking previously available easy access routes... basically keep the barrier for entry into nature reserves high enough for careless people to stay away.
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, wandering through Dartmoor, meeting 5 people the whole day was absolutely one of the best memories of the trip. Easy access, no effort required is exactly the tourist category that we didn't enjoy in the end.
Sure, Japan has some issues such as too much overwork in their culture, but America has that too. How many Silicon Valley engineers only work 40 hours? And how many poorer people have multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet and they still can't afford health insurance?
(1) choose your preferred description
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.
Instagram does affect people a lot and the same people deny it. I am not on Instagram, never got onto it as I realized the impact FB was having in my life when it was the most popular medium. Uninstalled the FB app as well, I do access it through the browser occasionally, necessary evil and all that. But of course, instagramers (don't know if this is even a word) think they are inspiring people. What do I know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hope Instagram goes through their new change of not showing the number of likes to viewers. Would be interesting to see whether that has any modification of societal behavior of people hooked onto it.
Rightfully so!
My city recently opened up a direct flight to Reykjavík.
Sadly, I've seen how people treat our national parks.
I hope Iceland use the increased tourism revenue to up their ranger presence and fine and/or deport the offenders.
To Iceland if you're listening: we're not all bad, I promise :)
Iceland is a role model in this regard.
That might lead to weird rise in BDSM tourism to your area
Guaranteed to stop bad behavior.
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.
https://www.inspiredbyiceland.com/icelandicpledge/
The people that need to read it the most though, either don't or don't care.
It's really a sad reflection of where we stand that this does not seem to be the case.
Thanks for the link.
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.
Or simply limit numbers: require that people buy tickets to enter particular places (including national parks), and restrict entry once the place is "full".