Hacker News Reader

Comment by lorecore | Hacker News Reader

The locals are living their lives on an organic cadence. They're not maximizing entertainment value or whatever. They will certainly know entertaining things to do, but it's literally not their job to entertain tourists. Maybe seeking out a Disneyland like experience in someone else's home is the problem? Bourdain, Rick Steves, et al. are fun to watch, but I can't help but feel they've actually made the world a worse place by romanticizing tourism. There are many sayings about how travel reduces prejudice... but if you actually look at it at scale, it's almost always a global negative.

View on HN

While the folks like Bourdain did romanticize tourism, and TV shows are known to regularly kill businesses that don't know how to manage the increase in customers, they did at least project the proper attitude of embracing the differences in other cultures when they traveled to places.

The current issues with tourism are significantly more to do with "influencers" and social media. Many places are overrun by people that are just there to get their photos and have zero interest in engaging with the culture or treating locals with respect.

Its shocking how different some places have gotten due to "influencers". Last year I was in Kuala Lumpur for a few days and took the person I was with to a bunch of the places I had visited when I was there a decade ago. It struck me when walking around a couple places that there are photos I took during my first trip that would simply be impossible to get today because of the number of people in the way.

> Last year I was in Kuala Lumpur for a few days and took the person I was with to a bunch of the places I had visited when I was there a decade ago.

Usually explained by a different time of week/year/month. If you stay in a place for a while you get a sense of patterns. Often there's waves of tourists depending on neighboring country holidays and if you're a local you learn to avoid popular landmarks during those times.

> TV shows are known to regularly kill businesses that don't know how to manage the increase in customers

You make it sound like that's the problem and not increasing rent. If one day your place looks much more profitable everyone involved will try to get a piece.

>Usually explained by a different time of week/year/month

I hadn't thought about that and checked the dates of the photos I took on both trips. Coincidentally apparently I was there within a week of exactly 10 years apart!

Many big holidays don't coincide every year on the same date in Gregorian calendar, and in a few places I lived such that central landmarks can be absolutely flooded on particular days of week because it's a tourist destination or for religious observances.

Not to say you're wrong, maybe there's more tourists, but from experience it can be misleading.

Ah yes all those other people who want to take photos ruining your chance to take photos...

Whenever someone complains about tourists ask them what they are going to do for their summer holiday.

Tourism is a huge benefit for many places and brings lots of money into their economy. But at the same time over-tourism can significantly harm locals and the environment.

My photo example is just a example anecdote that proved a point, being a major city having a very localized area get busier is pretty inconsequential, but if its a lake view somewhere it definitely draws a risk of irreparably damaging the environment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com