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Comment by sillyquiet | Hacker News Reader

I call this the 'Disney World' effect of nature tourism. Self-involved, entitled people who treat national parks and the wilderness like an amusement park that has been set aside for their entertainment. They expect the natural world to cater to their whims the same way a Disney world employee does, and they just do not understand that's not how the world works.

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It's worse than this - their entire life needs to be Instagram worthy. Everything they do is in the name of getting the next perfect shot, so they can influence others in the name of social advertising to make a quick buck. They either become proficient photographers, videographers and writers or they team up with those who are, capitalizing on the latest trends in photography to consolidate their brand.

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.

Just wait until social influencers receive Libra's based on the amount of likes their pictures get.

It would make sense for them to get it based on the amount of profits their work generates.

Libras based on the value of ads FB sold while people were liking the post then.

Yes, I did get that chain (pun intended), but I thought GP meant it literally.

Has nothing to do with making a quick buck. Has everything to do with getting social validation from their peers.

Having that behaviour reinforced by rewarding it with payment doesn't exactly discourage it though, does it?

Nice rant, but the problem described by the GP has been there since long before social media. (Since I was a kid in the 70’s at least.) At best, social media exacerbates the problem but I’d say growing population and wealth have had a bigger impact.

The first time I experienced this in nature was last year in Yosemite. So many people were climbing over barriers and walking in places where they shouldn't, it was horrible.

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.

Yosemite has always had tourists doing the things you mention. Like you say, it's horrible. The focus on "influencers" in this article is contrived; the issue is that some people behave in baffling ways in nature parks.

Yellowstone is truly the worst for this. It's an extremely fragile natural wonder populated by some of the most disrespectful tourists the world can offer.

I actually cannot conceive of how the park rangers there manage to keep their cool day after day.

Why do they allow it at all? Are there no rules or laws that they can invoke / enforce for this?

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area has some of the same issues. Campsites inside an 'easy to get to' area are just stripped. Trees cut down, bark stripped off of trees, the fire pit seating hacked at, and food stuffs from washing on the shore.

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.

IMO that situation is not exactly ideal, but it is campsites working as intended. They concentrated the human impact into a small, actively managed area.

Can confirm that's how it's happening in Iceland, too.

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.

Our whole society is based on trying to make things easy and convenient. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people have the same attitude towards traveling and nature. Iceland could fix this easily by making places less accessible but then the tourist money would stop flowing. In the end they have to make a choice. Limit accessibility or number of tourists and lose some money or accept the negative consequences and keep the money flowing.

what about stepping up enforcement and fines though? If the rangers of these parks are overstretched, it seems reasonable to re-invest some of that park money towards more staff and fines that effectively offset the damage being done.

They could do that. But that also costs money and it doesn’t solve overcrowding.

It could largely fix the negative consequences though.

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.

I don't think blanket bans are a good idea, there are good and bad people everywhere. Hefty fines enforced during peak season would be a nice start.

Don’t do that. People in high enough quantities are a problem no matter where they are coming from.

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.

You could build this on China's social credit system...

It would be similar. Any "vouching" system is kinda like this, and how useful the system is depends on how much you trust the entity that does the vouching.

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.

Slightly Off topic ( Not relating to nature and bad behaviour ). We have far too many tourist problem everywhere, and some locals aren't too happy with it. Its not that they don't like tourist, there are just far too many.

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?

If carbon emissions get taxed higher between now and 2050, expect the cost of airplane tickets to go up substantially.

Tourism represented 42.0% of the export of goods and services in Iceland [1]. I suspect that if the number of tourists fell significantly, they would be greatly missed by the locals.

[1] https://www.ferdamalastofa.is/en/recearch-and-statistics/tou...

A lot of places have permissions you need to buy. If these are more expensive you get less people but I am not sure where the sweet spot is between less people and still making money.

I think your described 'Disney World' effect of nature tourism is a symptom of the misguided notion that pieces of nature can be cordoned off and preserved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/against-sustainab...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/green-is-good

I feel it’s worse

> 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.

I’ve seen many National Parks in Australia that gave me the Disneyland feeling, but on the other side they made a lot of work to keep the NP accessible.

In Spain some call it Decatlón tourism, from the low-cost chain selling outdoor accessories.

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