Louvre shuts down with staff sounding the alarm on mass tourism | Hacker News Reader

Louvre shuts down with staff sounding the alarm on mass tourism

washingtonpost.com

As an European, and Italian specifically what makes me more sad is the poor work our governments and tourism ministries do at promoting less known, yet amazing places.

There's many overcrowded spots on one hand, on the other hand, there's plenty of amazing places that get very little tourism, and if they do, they get it like 1/2 months per year at best. Florence vs the rest of Tuscany is a great example of this. Florence gets the lion share of the tourism in the region, despite all the provinces having major attraction places during all seasons for different reasons.

It's also time more governments and municipalities do something to increase prices in very hot spots. Squeeze those that want to spend properly and try to keep out lower budget travellers to less crowded places?

Low cost airplanes are part of the problem but privates renting their own apartments are the worst. They effectively double the places to sleep in major cities while also having locals abandon them completely.

I don't mind this too much.

I am happy that I can explore rather "unknown" places without having to look at the Instagram idiots taking their template selfies.

As for the Airbnb-problem, I agree it's a shame that tourist spots are becoming places exclusively for tourists, and not being able to maintain even lowest amount of authenticity.

Thankfully, Italy and France are also full of tinier towns which are delights to visit, but thankfully not interesting enough for the Instagram herds.

Not to sound snotty but for some reason the more popular a place is the less inclined I am to visit it. But for a lot of people having your picture taken in front of well known places like the Eiffel tower is none negotiable. I love the lesser known places. They tend to be less expensive, less rushed and also have their own history.

I am not in favour of making popular spots like the Louvre so expensive so that only rich people can visit. As much as I hate the thought of it the only suggestion I can think of is to have some sort of booking system that limits the numbers yearly. With spots for schools, locals and so on...

> Not to sound snotty but for some reason the more popular a place is the less inclined I am to visit it.

You're not snotty, it's hard to enjoy very crowded places. Florence is probably the place I've enjoyed visiting less on this planet for this reason. It's too small for the number of people.

Also, you really don't get to see any real city, it's a theme park, same for Venice. Locals are hard to come by/see.

I feel lucky as an Italian/European to be able to visit the less known places with ease, having the time and being in proximity is great.

But often I read tourists on reddit asking for those tours of Rome/Florence/Venice over 7/8 days and I struggle to imagine how they can really enjoy such a tour de force in very overcrowded places..

I'm of a like mind when it comes to travel; I specifically target the lesser-known spaces so I do not have to fight the types of crowds a hotspot like The Louvre would attract. The previous commenter was probably worried about sounding snotty because doing this gives the impression that we think the hotspots are sort of dumbed down and over-hyped in order to have mass appeal, especially to American tourists, which is admittedly true at least part of the time. Even with all the amazing works in the Louvre, the crowd would still prevent me from enjoying it, milling about like guided cattle the way people do when cruise ships make port.

Other similar travelers we have talked to have given me the (possibly false) impression that there is also an underlying current of preservation in how we travel. Let the masses go to the Louvre or see what Venice wants them to see, etc...it keeps the other areas pure in a way that augments the experience for the savvy traveler that is trying to gain a better understanding of the place itself as opposed to just sightseeing. Tourism tends to cheapen the experience overall, leaving one with a few photographs of expensive memories and a t-shirt. I just don't find that appealing.

Perhaps now I sound snotty, but that is how I feel.

Well, the Louvre is truly unique so it is definitely worth the trip, plus possibly Orsay and 2-3 lesser museums.

the more popular a place is the less inclined I am to visit it

While I don't disagree with you per se, it is also worth remembering that most super popular places are super popular for a reason, and there often is a good reason to see it for yourself. I was indifferent towards Eiffel Tower for example, until I actually was in Paris and climbed up it and got to really see and experience the scale and design and engineering that went into building it up close. Now I get why the Eiffel Tower is considered impressive.

Same with Venice. You can read about it and look at pictures, but until I walked up and down all the streets and alleyways, and went into the old buildings, I never really got what a truly interesting and unique piece of urban planning Venice really is, and what efforts must have gone into building and maintaining it. Now when I read about the history of Venice it comes alive in a much different way than before I visited.

Same story with Sagrada Familia, Notre Dame, St Peter’s Basilica, most of the major art museums etc. etc.

So as much as dislike 'tourist traps' I'm at the same time super glad that I've gotten a chance to visit most of the big ones, and don't regret the time I had to spend to do so.

I think there are two major problems with those lesser-known spots:

1. Discoverability, which is going to be majorly affected by LLMs. On one hand they already feed on preexisting corpus of recommendations, naturally biased towards the popular pots, on the other hand part of business model is bound to be "sell biases", therefore better known spots are going to be at an even higher disadvantage. Even if you do try to go out of the beaten path for e.g. wine tastings, information regarding those is going to again be biased towards the ones selling mediocre wines with an overpriced "we ship a box to your country, just give us an address" service.

2. Reachability. Suppose you want to visit the relatively famous Gelateria Dondoli at San Gimignano. Starting at Florence using public transport it's IIRC two transfers with a transport mode change! If your goal is any agriturismo-style spot - car is the only reasonable option. Spending a bunch of time traveling already limits tourism opportunities, doing that by car is definitely not for everyone as you are effectively limited to enjoying wines at home. This dynamic naturally biases towards larger spots, covering variety of touristic needs.

Those places all have ticketing systems and operate at capacity to maximize money flow. Rising prices won't change much I'm afraid, but forcing those places to run at a fraction of their capacity, possibly with some subsidy, would.

I am French and I agree with you to some extend.

I would say that the small places are not advertized as the next place to go after the famous one.

Take Paris. Everyone will obviously go there first, than Versailles which is nearby.

But people will not possibly know that there is Chartres nearby. Or Normandy where you can spend a great week. Or the Loire region.

They will not replace Paris, but could be advertized as the next adventure, a great one very different from Paris

This is from Bezos post, the strike is not against mass tourism. The staff is on strike because they are fighting for better working conditions and more colleagues to support the large tourism flow. The title make is sound like they are against the mass tourism and it seems that newspapers don’t understand why people do strike.

The Louvre charges 22 euro per head admission and limits the number of tickets sold. This sounds like a labour dispute with the staff, not an issue with mass tourism as such.

Also "parts of the building are 'no longer watertight'" is not really a problem of mass tourism.

https://archive.is/TJy20

I have always wanted to go to Paris, but I have heard nothing except claustrophobia-inducing reviews from people visiting the Louvre for the last decade.

I'm sure there's a solution, I just hope it isn't simply increased prices to lower the number of people who can visit.

Go outside the tourist season. Summers are horrible in Paris anyway, since it tends to get quite hot and humid, and public transport only barely starts having AC.

You may get cold and rain in the winter months, but those can be worked around: a sweater and an umbrella will do the job. When it's 40ºC outside and 60% humidity, there's nothing you can do.

Winter definitely sounds like the way to go, thanks for the idea. I've heard about the awful summers but never even considered going in winter for some reason.

I can second visiting Paris in February. Instead of 40+ degrees and massive hoards of tourists. You'll have 10 degrees, rain, and merely large hoards of tourists.

Louvre is not the only place in Paris. Paris is full of parks with statues, museums, historic buildings and what not.

Yes, but it is the only place you can see the works on display at the Louvre -- and is the first word of the topic we're discussing.

January/February is a lot easier. Fewer tourists but even better the pickpockets and scammers and thieves all go back to Eastern Europe when the tourist season ends.

I was there a few month ago. The Louvre is huge and most people are in a few rooms in and around the Mona Lisa (and even that wasn't anywhere near as bad as the horror stories I'd heard). The top floor for example with Northern European art and Dutch and Flemish masters was almost empty when we were there. There were entire wings of the museum where I was basically the only person there.

This was my experience at the MET - nightmare crowds in some areas, empty in most others. Thanks for the reality check!

I had no crowd problems at the Louvre one Janurary except at the Mona Lisa for obvious reasons. The place is huge and there is plenty of room.

This is during tourists peaks. I go there in October, November, February etc. and there is neither a queue nor many people.

I cannot talk about the secret entrance at the Lions Gate because it would not be secret anymore.

I cannot talk about the secret entrance

For what it's worth, that's the entrance Google maps brought me to when I asked for walking directions to the Louvre when I was in Paris last.

Ha, now even Google leaks such secrets :) Trust no one :)

But on a serious note, this is the best entrance when there are crowds at the pyramid. The only drawback is that you land at the end of a wing, so there is a lot of walking to do to reach the Egyptian or Middle Ages section for instance. There are great paintings on the way, though.

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