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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

There's no silver bullet. Tackling overtourism means limiting the number of tourists. One way to do that is to impose high enough prices.

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This problem has been solved a long time ago by the Departments of Fish and Wildlife for hunting and fishing. A lottery that is tied to an identity, no transfer allowed. Psuedo-RNG, so that each time you enter the lottery and are not selected, your chance to be selected increases next time. The money from the lotteries are used to help conserve the resource that they draw on. Example: https://idfg.idaho.gov/press/bighorn-sheep-lottery-tag-raise...

This is not a new or unique problem, and hunters and fishers figured out the solution a long time ago. This could easily be applied to local, state, and national parks. Well, easily is perhaps not the correct word, but there is a known solution to the problem that _can_ be implemented.

EDIT: Hunters and fishers figured this out because they fucked up big time and nearly eradicated large populations of animals (see Bison). They (or the D of F & W's) realized they had to do things differently if they wanted to sustainably continue to hunt && fish.

Why would the people of Norway, Barcelona, Venice, or anywhere else make efforts to ensure foreigners can visit cheaply?

It may make sense for your own citizens to visit irrespective of money, but I would want foreigners to have as much as is needed to keep the number of visitors under control.

I think we'll get there at very famous, very limited places like Venice.

Another way would be to charge a modest lottery entrance fee and limit the number of winners to a sensible quota.

Scalpers in that market would be intense haha. Legal or not, people would find a way to make market prices

This is why tickets have to be nominative and identity checking enforced.

Rationing is not a very fair way to distribute goods or services to people. Some people may value it just enough to pay the entry fee, while others might value it a lot more, but now they have the same chances of receiving it. If you prohibit people from on-selling their tickets, then you also causes losses when people change their minds but are already locked in by the lottery.

It's not a perfect solution, granted, but it's less likely to result in implicit selection of only the wealthiest people.

Why is that a problem? Plenty of resources are allocated to meet supply and demand. Is traveling to specific locations inherently different?

It depends on the values of the host society. They may want to promote democratic access to their country.

What does "democratic access to their country" even mean? The tourists visiting their country don't vote, so you don't mean literally. And any random rationing system you put in place will be inherently unfair in some dimension.

The work "democratic" does not always directly relate to governing a country, but also making something accessible to all without unnecessary limitations - similar to the right to vote.

> similar to the right to vote

Do I as non-citizen have a right to vote in whatever country I want, just because I have an opinion on the matter being voted? Access to citizenship is also limited by descent, wealth, or your conscientiousness. It is also ‘unfair’ if you interpret this word as ‘not instantly accessible to anyone who expresses interest’.

> Rationing is not a very fair way to distribute goods or services to people.

So?

No one said life was fair. There is no human-right to vacation in a given destination. I have to apply for lottery hunts for various game animal in my state. It's just a means of controlling scarce resource.

> then you also causes losses when people change their minds but are already locked in by the lottery.

Good! Better be sure you wish to take part.

This kind of argument only works if everybody has the same amount of money (or other tokens) to spend.

In the real world, market prices for this kind of thing simply select for rich people, not for who values the experience the most.

The value of something (especially a luxury like travel) is literally how much you'd be willing to spend on it.

"Value" is an extremely overloaded word. Even within the narrow universe of money, economics, and finance, there are many different notions of value (e.g. market value, book value, replacement value). More broadly, what most people intuitively understand as value is independent of money and hard to quantify, but that doesn't make it less important.

I do appreciate that people want to make something as important as value quantifiable, but like all measurements there are pitfalls, and I merely pointed out a rather important pitfall when attempting to measure value using money.

But if you lock it down by pricing out average travelers, that's not fair either.

For this point: "If you prohibit people from on-selling their tickets, then you also causes losses when people change their minds but are already locked in by the lottery."

You could just have a return program. 30 days out it is free, 10 days out and you pay a small percentage but get your money back. You don't need to rely on selling tickets to others to get your money back

Aside from the fairly large costs involved in running multiple large international lotteries, you'd have to build checkpoints around massive areas, stop people from buying tickets off of the winners somehow, deal with the corruption issues, and other exciting unintended side effects.

All because a tax on a luxury (which tourism certainly is), wasn't fair enough.

Actually, lottery is how they do it for various exclusive/special destinations & tours in Japan and it seem to be working in their case.

This is used for rides on the Yamanashi maglev test tracks, tours to the Kurobe gorge railway upper track and other places with inherently limtted capacity.

And then only the wealthy may have holidays.

That's how it is now, from a global perspective.

This unfortunately pleases the state, the tourist service providers and the wealthy.

All three of them not being particularly known for their respect of culture, tradition and delicate (eco)systems.

Blah.

The wealthy are less well-known for their respect of culture, tradition and delicate ecosystems than the not wealthy?

Holidays doesn't mean "travelling to another country in a plane" or "let's take a credit to tour Italy".

Quite true but if some can and some can’t the social class implications will be picked up on very fast, whether the reason is money or political connections.

People will find a way to separate themselves into classes no matter what. And those of higher class will separate themselves from the proles using any means available.

Even in Soviet Union the running joke was that all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others.

There is another running joke "Everyone is born equal, then God sort them out".

Yes it does, "holidays" is interchangeable with "vacation" in some English speaking countries.

Vacation doesn't mean "travelling to another country in a plane" or "let's take a credit to tour Italy" either.

And poor people can go to Estonia or Sweden, or whatever other nordic nation. I think humanity might survive only rich people being able to go to Norway.

Norway is already very expensive to visit

It really isn’t. Between the existence of Norwegian Airlines and the fact that the Norwegian crown is hovering at 9 to a dollar, flights are almost never over $200 one-way from New York and it’s now cheaper for an American to drink an Aperol Spritz here than in Manhattan.

You cannot limit the number of visitors and let everyone have this sort of holidays.

The most beneficial way to limit the number of visitors for local communities is to increase prices.

If they want to reserve a number of places for people to be able to visit at a low(er) cost (e.g. through a lottery) then good for them, but there is no entitlement to go on holidays to others' countries or to unique places.

>The most beneficial way to limit the number of visitors for local communities is to increase prices. //

Can you expand on that, it doesn't seem self-evident to me.

I'm assuming that the money goes to the local communities (even countries).

If it does then it seems quite obvious that more money is better than less money.

Sell me your brain?

It seems like communities can be ruined by richer tourists in ways that not so rich tourists won't. For example, in Pembrokeshire and areas of Devon some communities have been partially replaced by clusters of second-homes because rich people like to have their holidays there. Locals can no longer afford to live there because they lack the wealth to outbid incomers. Maybe that's not quite in scope for "tourism".

I can imagine other issues, like facilities being tailored to richer people (all your green spaces get turned into golf courses, or whatever, all the pubs cost a fortune); teachers, services workers and such can't afford to live locally.

Richer people maybe cause more environmental damage? 3 cars, private plane, large concreted property, ..., yes at a holiday home, as one goes further up-market?

Perhaps good if you want to work in service industries.

> 3 cars, private plane, large concreted property, ..., yes at a holiday home, as one goes further up-market?

What? We are discussing visitors on holidays, not people moving in or buying second homes.

Isn't it a progression?

in overcrowded locations that have reached their maximum capacity.

> One way to do that is to impose high enough prices.

Norway is already too expensive for us (a German lower middleclass family).

Alternatively we could try to make them not all go to the same few spots, ie make more spots tourist friendly.

With the current state of the environment I think that keeping areas that do not see many people that way is more important than indulging people's desire for holidays.

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