I recently went to a very.. rich area that’s for sure a destination (there’s a boat tour around the lake to look at mansions, of which there are dozens. It’s really gross. I did not enjoy being there.)
People looked at me funny when I picked up trash that wasn’t mine while walking.. but like there’s a trash can RIGHT THERE! Why wouldn’t I??
But that’s just the vibe in touristy areas.. not my home, not my problem. And that’s gross.
It really depends. Most people are incredibly friendly, give lots of local tips, are interested in where I'm from. People are genuinely excited and welcoming. But I've also been yelled at—"fucking tourist!"—for stopping on the street to reverse parallel park...an hour south of the border for the numberplate my car had 🤷
I don't think it's much tha you meet people that hate tourists, just that you meet any other asshole that hatess the things that aren't them. So of course they hate tourists too. Good thing the majority of society aren't at all like that.
I always hated the whole “local economy good” schtick. Not everyone in that city personally benefits from the things the local economy is supposed to be dependent on, and to expect them to be stoked when, say, oil is doing good, or lots of tourists are coming around, but only bad things happen to you as a result of it while rich people around you become richer and the wealth gap increases is just irritating.
Also when I worked in a tourist town doing construction there like 9/10 of the tourists were rich, fat, rude Americans that just made a mess of the beautiful town I was in and were super ignorant to everyone around them. I was so glad to be finished that project man.
I would certainly believe it easily can be 70%. Been to other seaside towns before when visiting family and especially in the main part of the town everything is now rented out.
I suppose I do also live in a seaside town but it isn't popular with tourists, we have a beach but as its on a peninsula and just like the rest of the beach that stretches on for like 100km or so around the coast there is very little reason for anyone to come here for it unless they live here.
Comments in this thread are weirdly one sided. I get the airbnb shit, mass tourism, and all that, but to me it's more a symptom of late stage capitalism.
At which point do you stop becoming a tourist yourself? Has nobody ever been to another city or region? Are you not sometimes a tourist in your own city, region, or country? You always stay home and never go anywhere?
As a Montrealer, am I a nasty tourist for going to Québec City? Should I stick to my own city? Am I a bad tourist for going to another province? Is Vancouver too far or too rich? Is Toronto too far too? Would I be a bad tourist for going to visit and spend a night in Toronto, coming from Montreal? Am I a nasty tourist for going camping in Ontario? Should I stick only to local campings?
Is it only bad when we go to what... 10 km away from our home? 100? 1000? Where is the line? When we need hosting?
I don't really understand the logic of "fuck tourists", unless they just want everyone to stay home and never go anywhere.
People are pissed that they can't afford rent, where housing is inflated by massive profits of short-term renting. You see more tourists than before, you just want them gone that's all
It's just that the same people can afford to own all those houses because they get them rented out to tourists who pay an exuberant amount of money to stay somewhere for a week or two.
If there would be less tourists, the houses should be rented out, because an unused house is money lost. And if locals can't afford them , and tourists don't use them, the only option is to lower the prices.
And there is a lot of large landowners that would start losing a lot of money fast if they wouldn't manage to rent out their houses. Makes me think of a bubble of sorts.
I think there is certainly an element to travel tourism that has soured a lot of people, but also the world has become a very cynical place to live in. Mass tourism machines like cruise ships have several layers of issues to them, but they are also the economic centers of many marine locations that wouldn't be what they are without them, but that's also sort of the problem with them.
Add into it the cheap air fares, etc... and it opened up the world to the average Joe, who has not the best manners or realistic expectations all the time.
Then, add in the fact there are too damn many of us on this planet that anywhere remotely interesting to visit is packed from dawn to dusk and it gets annoying having to wait for things all the time, especially at home for the 3 months or so people want to see your little stretch of the world.
I get it. I don't agree with it all but I get it. I work in tourism to a degree. We are spread too far, everywhere you go there is more of us.
Mass tourism machines like cruise ships have several layers of issues to them, but they are also the economic centers of many marine locations that wouldn't be what they are without them, but that's also sort of the problem with them.
Very bad example for your point. The port towns visited profit very little from the cruise ships. People sleep, eat and shop on their ship, the local economy sees almost no benefit but the streets are clogged by their day trips.
I'm talking about how bad things like cruise ships are and you are saying I am wrong and then backing me up? Small ports rely heavily on cruise ship visits, large ports fucking hate them. Alaska is basically oil and gas and cruise ships that keep it floating.
anywhere remotely interesting to visit is packed from dawn to dusk
That's a bit of an exaggeration, I've been having the time of my life here in vietnam, just ask the locals for some ideas and check Google maps for traffic to avoid the one everyone is already going to, and you'll have a beach, mountain, beautiful twisty roads along rivers and mountains, local swimming hole, etc to yourself and like 3 or 4 locals who you have to flee before they invite you to lunch, introduce the whole family, then dinner, then to sleep at their place, marry their daughter, etc.
Its not an issue of too many people, just everyone goes to the same exact place because some influencer recommended it.
Add into it the cheap air fares, etc… and it opened up the world to the average Joe, who has not the best manners or realistic expectations all the time.
Should only rich people should be able to travel? People with more money also have more manners?
add in the fact there are too damn many of us on this planet that anywhere remotely interesting to visit is packed from dawn to dusk and it gets annoying having to wait for things all the time
There is a football stadium near my home. Those fans should all stay home. I bet some don't even come from my city. They make public transit busy when there are games! Why do we have to share this world with others?!
EDIT: I don't want to seem like I entirely disagree but again, capitalism and mass tourism. Social media is also to blame. Societal hype. But if you think you have to wait everywhere that's "worth" visiting, maybe you can try to spread out. We don't all have to go visit the Eiffel tower or the same national park in Croatia.
I don't don't think it should be just for rich people, but when i was a kid it was rare to travel far abroad, and with it came a sort of feeling of responsibility to represent your place of origin well through good behavior, and be respectful to the place you are visiting, even as a kid i understood that without being told.
That aspect is definitely gone in the era of mass tourism. Every place can be reached quickly and for cheap, it sort of devalues the experience of travelling.
This is all I was alluding too. Change in access is not inherently a bad thing, but it has cheapened the experience over all and expectations have changed along with it. Add in today's culture of Now Now Now and things are getting tense out there.
Personally, even when I am a tourist, I hate tourist shit. Almost always overpriced, overcrowded, often polished turd quality at premium prices. Go from store to store and it's the same mass produced shit with branding themed for whatever local attractions that place has. Staffed with kids who don't really give a fuck because they are the cheapest available (not that I blame the kids for not giving a fuck, I know I wouldn't in their place).
My last vacation was to visit a friend and that was nice. Instead of doing any touristy shit, we mostly hung out at his place and checked out places he liked to go to, which was a way better experience IMO than something curated by people whose main focus is getting as much money as possible from you.
there's things that are designed for visitors, and then there's things that are designed for "vacationers" who spend way too much fucking money to just sit around not actually enjoying things for some god forsaken reason.
the former is great, make things enjoyable regardless of where you're from or how long you're staying.
You can be from the other side of the planet and as long as your respectful doesn't really matter. But there is certain types of people, typically those who come in large coaches with lots of other people, that can tend to be rather obnoxious and shove their way to the front, so they can take the same picture that everyone takes in front of whatever local monument you wish to substitute.
Weirdly, chinese tourists in China are completely different from chinese tourists outside of China, and the effect increases the further you go.
I suspect the ones with money to travel further and to wealthier countries are the kids of new money petty bourgeois who are used to not giving a shit about social consequences.
Has nobody ever been to another city or region? Are you not sometimes a tourist in your own city, region, or country? You always stay home and never go anywhere?
While not a city, tourists have ruined the town I work in... It used to be a working town and the surrounding area was where people actually lived. Then the area got popular for rich people to come walk around in the summer... They bought all the housing for their vacation homes/air b&b and the bought up local businesses, turning them into seasonal shops...
The locals who dislike tourists are most likely not the same locals who profit from tourism. Wealth is too concentrated, that's also true for e.g. big hotels or shops in the picturesque old town. If every second or third resident had a room rented out to a tourist that'd likely be a different story. But same as always, some people profit, but all the people suffer the increased traffic, noise, waste, rent etc.
Daily experience in Hawaii. Litterally had a neighbor whose entire ability to survive is based on his wife's business doing wedding photography complaining about "immigrants and tourists"..
Like bruh. You are a kept man and a poorly performing house husband. Maybe just have the grace to accept things as they are?
This is why the Airbnb ban comes up super controversial too. From an unanalyzed/ outside perspective, the narrative "we need homes for locals" makes sense. Then you find out the entire campaign was pushed entirely by the hotel industry lobby in Waikiki (the counsel member who pushed the ban her husband was litterally on the payroll of the hotel lobby). Then the ban went into effect and it killed thousands of small, pop up businesses that had been cleaning, landscaping, maintaining the rentals. And it didn't do one iota of good in terms of reducing or stabilizing rent; if anything, it made things worse. The airbnb' almost all went down one of three tracks: either the owner kept it going illegally (the highest end with wealthiest owners), the owner stopped renting and has left it vacant, or the owner remodeled or sold to a flipper, in which case the house resold for a price quite litterally no locals can afford in rent.
What people don't want to hear about Airbnb bans is that that they significantly hit the non-corporate, local economies far, far harder. It moved tourists out of local neighborhoods and back into Waikiki, meaning that the dollars those tourists might spend on breakfast, grocery, something on the side of the road in some community outside of Honolulu. It further consolidated power into the very already very small number of hands who own all the hotels in Waikiki, while it did basically nothing to stabilize rents.
That's because that city's economy didn't start dependent on Tourism.
Tourism was just some kind of "silver bullet" that the local incompetent politicians chose because they were incapable of managing the place properly and make it better.
Further, Tourism isn't exactly an activity that can bring a place to the forefront of Economic and Technological development: almost by definition you have to be behind those who are at the forefront and have cheap enough prices to attract tourists from those other, wealthier places - Tourism it's the ultimate "second" World activity.
I'm from one such city, Lisbon, and it's become a joke of a place, sort of an open air entertainment park on top of an historic city, slowly losing character and with the locals getting priced out of buying a home there which is pushing all other Economic activity out, especially things that rely on younger people (who are the ones most hit by the housing costs) such as Tech.
The country spent tons of money in training people to be Doctors, Engineers, Architects and so on and now the Economy is ever more based on cleaning rooms, making beds and serving drinks - literally half of the students graduating from University leave the country.
Betting on Tourism is betting on Mediocrity.
There really is no better proof of the profound incompetence, mediocrity and provincialism of Portuguese politicians than their bet of almost 20% (and growing) of the country's Economy on Tourism.
the advent of airbnb and consorts did far more to the downwards spiral of beautiful places all over the world than the tourists themselves could ever do on their own.
suddenly the tourists don't book the hotels but occupy space meant for regular people . a handful of greedy assholes profits while easily dodging taxes, health or privacy standards and any accountability really.
tourists obviously take the perceived cheapest comfortable accommodation closest to their goal. the large airbnb owners even cosplay as this normal local guy
Went up to London a couple of months back to see Pulp. Hit up AirBnB to look for a cute place to stay.
It quickly became apparent that the vast majority of places listed on there are owned by investment firms, or at the very least, firms that own a large portfolio of AirBnB properties. Ended up staying in a cheap, no frills chain hotel near the O2, because fuck that shit.
If I think too hard about how much companies like AirBnB, Uber, Amazon and such have fucked our local economies, I get really angry. So I tend not to.
In my experience economies based around tourism have much greater inequality, with a few wealthy landowners/business owners raking it in, scumbag tourists throwing their weight around and any non wealthy locals forced into low wage service work and treated like shit in a high cost of living environment. Fuck tourism and fuck tourists.
Its generally the people whom capitalism has rewarded who can afford tourism. And goddamn are they obnoxious about it. Maybe buy a house in your community and spend 4 months there and vote in your elections. Fuckin' scum.
Homie there's a lot of families who have to save for years to go on one family vacation, it's not all Uber rich lol.
Additionally local issues in tourist destinations like low pay for service workers is entirely unrelated to the tourism itself, rather shitty business practices.
I think there's little difference between the unrecognized harms that tourists do and the increasingly recognized harms that expats do, see for instance the Andrew Callahan Channel 5 piece recently on the flood of American expats in Mexico causing gentrification, housing shortage caused by air bnb and skyrocketing prices, along with them not acculturating and exploiting and abusing the people who natively live there any number of ways. Solidarity forever with those affected by American expats, as plenty have fled the cities to live in permanent vacation with their shady money here at home too.
I'd argue that is also an oversimplification to one region. I grew up in an eastern EU country, and I worked hard to get a good education so I can get a job that is more on the side of R&D and making new things. But then western EU companies bought up everything that does stuff like that, laid off all the engineers and only left menial manufacturing jobs in the country.
And when I then grab my things and move over to their countries where those jobs went, you know, we all signed "freedom of movement of people and capital", people there are complaining that the best paying jobs are not in their local language but in English now. And then that they are indignant that they have to do at least a fraction of what I needed to do, like be comfortable using 2-3 languages professionally, with a foreign one being the default. And that I can pay more for an apartment than them or their kids, driving up prices. Like I want to pay that much money.
So yeah, I love to live in a country that has people call me names instead of my own, but this is globalisation.
Lived in Banff for 18 years. Some days those tourists are just the fucking worst; feeding animals, littering, having fires anywhere they want. I got real possessive of my home. But the many are decent, outdoor lovers who don’t suck.
When I went to Banff many years ago, the chipmunks near our lodge were the fattest that I'd ever seen. It was obvious people had been feeding them and they had become dependent on it. Very sad.
I live on a sea side resort in UK. It's a big and very popular one and gets crazy busy in the summer. Some of the visitors show us just how bad humans can be. Litter everywhere, some people just leave it all where they were sitting on the sand. Some people buy tents and just leave them fully pitched and leave full of all their rubbish. Parking, people just park wherever they want even though they shouldn't. Yeah they get a ticket but I guess they think the price of a ticket is worth the convenience of parking somewhere stupid.
Fires are also a serious risk here. On the heath and woodland it is signed everywhere no smoking, BBQs, etc. and yet people still do.
I'm sure there are visitors who are respectful and decent, not everybody is awful. Also a huge shout out to the volunteers and workers who tidy up after these people leave. And the fire services who deal with heath fires every year.
It's not that we live in a direct democracy where the people have a say in the decision to turn the city into a tourism place. More often than not people are born there or moved there long before tourism was so big
I grew up in San Diego. I can't afford to live there anymore and had to move halfway across the country because of those tourists. Comic Con would be the worst. Just fucking shambles. And then all the people who feel like Comic Con is their home leave their "home" covered in fucking garbage and piss soaked streets. And then some of those tourists started to enjoy San Diego so much, that they all started moving there with their trust funds and high paying remote jobs. By the time I left 5 years ago, I'd meet people and they'd almost all ask, "Where are you from?" to which I'd reply, "From here" to which they'd reply, "No, but where are you from originally?".
Seattle it's standard small talk to ask where someone is from. The almost five years I spent there I only ever met one person who said they were from Seattle
For Seattle, my experience is that most of the people are there for tech work. Those folks could have been working anywhere from "just came to this city" or "have been working for 10+ years".
There's not that many tourists, the few ones that come visit mostly congregate in pike place and around the space needle.
Traditional fishing village, no fishermen can afford to live there anymore because of tourists, air B&Bs and holiday homes pushing the price of houses up.
I mean they often only want the place they live to be affordable and focused on catering to its residents and not people coming a week or so every year being the focus of the local amenities and that's a fair opinion to have.
Had 3 or so americans in the train. The kids screaming and even came up to my ear to yell in it!
They didnt have their kids under control.
Or american "woo!"-girls in the inner city talking so loudly you could hear them 2 streets down about how "its so primitive here.", we "should have a parking spot for them in the center." So they "dont need to walk so much".
There are lots of respectful people tourists. But i have yet to meet a respectful tourist from USA
I’m like this as an american who lives in another country. I get that face when i hear english being spoken because the tourists are usually jackasses.
Tourists frequently treat the laws as though they are suggestions instead of the law because they'll be leaving and won't deal with whatever they did.
They drove my mother off the road and the tourists walking nearby just watched and did nothing even though she needed medical help as she was on a bike. Luckily she was fine.
Others would argue with me, a kid, about where shit was.
"How do you get off the island"
"One way on and off, it's the way you entered"
"No, there's a way off here"
"There is not"
"Fuck you" they'd say, to a kid, before driving off and finding no no. Kid is right.
Whenever we traveled we were slammed into us to be polite, follow all local laws, be kind, and I just. It feels like a lot of the shoobies just were raised in a fucking barn.
Yeah, I'm sure the average person living in a tourist town gets tons of dividends from the extra taxes and capital earnings. It "trickles down" or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
I grew up in a tourist town, and it actually does. I loved being able to use services made for 200 thousand people in a town of 14 thousand.
Like you get a small-ish town, but you get multiple supermarkets competing and driving prices down, you get dozens of restaurants you can go out ot and order from. You can get groceries at 3AM. Hell, I moved to a non-touristic city of 400 thousand later, and I had worse services.
St Lucia seemed generally excited for their tourism. There's a million all inclusive resorts, but youre encouraged to walk the island, visit the locals, shop anywhere. Every single person i met was pleasant and generally excited to speak with me. I never felt unsafe like they warn about at other tourism destinations
A few years ago I was hanging out with an elderly friend of mine and group of tourists walked by and one of threw threw some flowers at my friend's face and called him 'f*g' and just walked away with his friends. Nothing I or anyone could do about it besides just watch and feel humiliated.
Another time I was smoking a joint outside (as long as you don't do it near as school or some shit the cops don't care because there is typically a DV going on just around the corner and a needle in every fourth arm in my city) and this dude who probably was a cop back home (he just had that look in his eyes) out of the fucking blue started staring me down. Or tried to because by the time I realized what he was doing his friends where already pulling him away and he was just staring at me with such anger like I had just called him gay or something.
At least where I live there is enough cross over of touristy areas and the really bad areas that I get to watch tourists be made uncomfortable when something happens like a homeless woman squats on the sidewalk and takes a piss waving an empty plastic bag in one hand and screaming.
Maybe they lived in the place before the landlords turned the economy over to tourists.
If I lived in Barcelona and got kicked out of my apartment so it could be a peak-season AirBnB and stay 75% vacant the rest of the year I'd be pissed off too.
I don't really care about tourists hanging out in the tourist areas. But could they just drive the speed limit. I get that it's beautiful, pull over and take some pictures you've got 3 cars behind you. They could also make sure their tires aren't bald when they drive up in the winter, yes good tires are a must around here. Also if they wouldn't litter out in nature that would be great too. Or if they would start hikes early in the morning instead of it getting dark out and calling 9-11 for a rescue because they're lost now. Or just learn how to use caltopo, it makes orienteering trivial.
P.S. if you have to shit, walk off the trail somewhere out of sight. No one wants to step on that.
Living in a forest and lakes area that attracts tourists year round now, it's the damage they cause to the surrounding forest and even private property that makes us locals dislike them.
Yes. 100%. Every time I see a tourist in SF blocking traffic to take a picture from the top of a hill in the middle of the street, I want them to get hit by a bus.
I think the problem is not necessarily being a tourist, but egregiously bad tourist behavior.
I have family in, and we're moving to, a tourism hot spot. I honestly don't mind about 95% of the tourists. I even like a lot of them, since the fun ones are great to have around and you can learn about people's lives in so many different places.
The relatively small fraction that acts like total shitheads is what really stands out to me.
There's a strong correlation between how shitty a tourist is and how likely they are to make posts like OP's demanding that locals get with the program, remember their Disneyland training, and welcome them on their special holiday.
Yeah for sure, but I was mostly reacting to the phrasing in the original meme that it's "entirely based" on it. And I still don't think I was lying, it would suck bad but the city wouldn't collapse.
3 million jobs come from tourism to Paris. Something about that 3% seems off because without those 50 million visitors annually, I doubt the Franprix across from the other Franprix would be open.
As always it's the amount that makes something healthy or lethal, Tourism is fine, Over-Tourism is not. And while on normal levels of tourism, many people profit, over-tourism brings money to a few big places, and leaves the rest suffering the consequences like unaffordable rents.
People usually talk to me in their native language. No matter Spain, Greece, Sweden, Britain, Italy, Serbia, Croatia, Germany… I just don’t behave like the typical tourist lol
Well I did get talked to in English while in Thailand… must’ve been my nose
88 billion a year apparently gets spent by tourists in NYC, that's a bootload of money for even a city as big as NYC.
Of course the negative part is that a lot of those dollars get spent at the tourist traps, not small local businesses. But I know when I was there, I walked around and tried to visit completely unknown looking pizza places and bars too. And a taco truck.
I visited a town that is in a great spot for cycling trips. The locals painted 🚳 on every sidewalk, hung up posters and give cyclists on sidewalks a talking-to while the main roads often lack even dashed bicycle lanes and feel really dangerous to ride on. At least there is no free car parking.
Sounds more like your issue is with the drivers. The law states (at least in Europe) that cyclists should be on the road when there's no bicycle lane. And that's what they do everywhere I've been so far and it's fine. Drivers complain sometimes that they have to slow down for a few seconds before they can pass, but whatever, screw them.
If cyclists are allowed on the sidewalks, where are pedestrians supposed to go? Especially since often they're barely wide enough for 2-3 people. Hugging the wall every minute to let a bicycle pass isn't fun.
the main roads often lack even dashed bicycle lanes and feel really dangerous to ride on
This does not, in fact, sound like a great spot for cycling trips. People come to a town without biking infrastructure and congest the pedestrian sidewalk with bikes, yet the townies are the assholes? That's quite the take. Pedestrian infrastructure is not for vehicles.
I kinda wanna go there, rent a giant American car, rev the engine outside their houses at 2am with the speakers blasting, and tell them I wanted to ride my bicycle instead but the signs said no bikes.
Big touristy towns are to expensive for locals to live in, because rents are unaffordable. This also means that pubs or small stores can't exist there anymore because higher rent means higher prices for the customers. Useful stores like cleaners, garages or doctors move out, and overpriced souvenir shops move in.
At the end there is no city left for the locals to live in, only hotels and places serving tourists.
While those places exist. That's an extreme representation of places like Vale, lake Tahoe, etc.
There are many tourist towns that aren't in the middle of nowhere. And have access to all those things. I live fairly close to a slew of them and have friends who work, live, and do extremely well compared to if the tourists weren't there.
I've seen and at still seeing exactly what the previous poster describe happen in my hometown, Lisbon, as the politicians for the last 2 decades invested ever harder in Tourism as the solution for the country's problems (which are mainly rooted in a management culture of profound incompetence - I lived 20 years abroad so I can see it for the shit it is by comparison - and insane levels of cronyism) rather than, you know, actually trying to solve them (the local politicians are basically the worst managers from what is maybe the worst management culture in Europe, so their "management" of the country reflects that).
Towns which mainly grew up from some little fishing village or similar through Tourism and which are mainly dedicated to it now is one thing (and there are many of those in Portugal, especially in Algarve), established cities which got taken over by Tourism is a whole different thing: it's one thing when 3 or 4 small fishing operations end up closing down because the Tourism Economy took over and a handful of people have to leave in search of jobs in their area, a whole different thing is when an entire established Economy of a city of a million people starts being undermined by Tourism and things like Tech are slowly pushed out because the city has become too expensive for the young people that normally work Tech or in fact for just about every recent University graduate (basically if you weren't earning enough to buy your house back in the time before Tourism took over, you're screwed).
Tourism will pull an Economy up from low value added activities such as Subsistence Agriculture or Fishing, but it will pull an Economy down from higher value added activities such as for example Tech - you don't need Engineers to make beds in hotels or serve drinks to tourists.
In the Netherlands they want to spread out all the Amsterdam tourists around more. There are increasingly more tourists coming to my city now... I hate it. Leave them in the shitty Amsterdam, don't ruin my city. Amsterdam is a city full of self centered assholes and it's a tourism theme park. No harm in leaving it that, way.
I hate my customers too. I get it.
Customer service inspires a certain level of misanthropy
Can't say I blame them. Tourists can be obnoxious, especially in swarms.
ring ring KOM OP VAN HET FIETSPAD, KANKERTOERIST
Dutch is such a beautiful language!
It's not "a" tourist, it's "a milion" tourists they don't tolerate
And the messes they leave. If they could pick up after themselves and not treat our service staff like shit, that'd be great.
Edit: spelling
I recently went to a very.. rich area that’s for sure a destination (there’s a boat tour around the lake to look at mansions, of which there are dozens. It’s really gross. I did not enjoy being there.)
People looked at me funny when I picked up trash that wasn’t mine while walking.. but like there’s a trash can RIGHT THERE! Why wouldn’t I??
But that’s just the vibe in touristy areas.. not my home, not my problem. And that’s gross.
Curious… was this in the US? If so, which state?
Yes, Lake Geneva, WI
It really depends. Most people are incredibly friendly, give lots of local tips, are interested in where I'm from. People are genuinely excited and welcoming. But I've also been yelled at—"fucking tourist!"—for stopping on the street to reverse parallel park...an hour south of the border for the numberplate my car had 🤷
I don't think it's much tha you meet people that hate tourists, just that you meet any other asshole that hatess the things that aren't them. So of course they hate tourists too. Good thing the majority of society aren't at all like that.
No, they all suck 😂
I always hated the whole “local economy good” schtick. Not everyone in that city personally benefits from the things the local economy is supposed to be dependent on, and to expect them to be stoked when, say, oil is doing good, or lots of tourists are coming around, but only bad things happen to you as a result of it while rich people around you become richer and the wealth gap increases is just irritating.
Also when I worked in a tourist town doing construction there like 9/10 of the tourists were rich, fat, rude Americans that just made a mess of the beautiful town I was in and were super ignorant to everyone around them. I was so glad to be finished that project man.
Or thanks to tourism you will never be able to afford to live in the area you grew up in and have to move somewhere cheaper.
Yup, this is happening to me. A whopping 70% (not exaggerating) of houses in my hometown have turned into AirBNB's in the last 10 years!
I would certainly believe it easily can be 70%. Been to other seaside towns before when visiting family and especially in the main part of the town everything is now rented out.
I suppose I do also live in a seaside town but it isn't popular with tourists, we have a beach but as its on a peninsula and just like the rest of the beach that stretches on for like 100km or so around the coast there is very little reason for anyone to come here for it unless they live here.
Yeah that also sucks ass.
Comments in this thread are weirdly one sided. I get the airbnb shit, mass tourism, and all that, but to me it's more a symptom of late stage capitalism.
At which point do you stop becoming a tourist yourself? Has nobody ever been to another city or region? Are you not sometimes a tourist in your own city, region, or country? You always stay home and never go anywhere?
As a Montrealer, am I a nasty tourist for going to Québec City? Should I stick to my own city? Am I a bad tourist for going to another province? Is Vancouver too far or too rich? Is Toronto too far too? Would I be a bad tourist for going to visit and spend a night in Toronto, coming from Montreal? Am I a nasty tourist for going camping in Ontario? Should I stick only to local campings?
Is it only bad when we go to what... 10 km away from our home? 100? 1000? Where is the line? When we need hosting?
I don't really understand the logic of "fuck tourists", unless they just want everyone to stay home and never go anywhere.
It's almost as if the meme presents an oversimplified view, and you've run with that oversimplification.
that only happens on reddit
People are pissed that they can't afford rent, where housing is inflated by massive profits of short-term renting. You see more tourists than before, you just want them gone that's all
But the same asshole still owns all the houses when the tourists leave. Just because they are gone doesn't mean the locals will get anything.
It's just that the same people can afford to own all those houses because they get them rented out to tourists who pay an exuberant amount of money to stay somewhere for a week or two.
If there would be less tourists, the houses should be rented out, because an unused house is money lost. And if locals can't afford them , and tourists don't use them, the only option is to lower the prices.
And there is a lot of large landowners that would start losing a lot of money fast if they wouldn't manage to rent out their houses. Makes me think of a bubble of sorts.
I think there is certainly an element to travel tourism that has soured a lot of people, but also the world has become a very cynical place to live in. Mass tourism machines like cruise ships have several layers of issues to them, but they are also the economic centers of many marine locations that wouldn't be what they are without them, but that's also sort of the problem with them.
Add into it the cheap air fares, etc... and it opened up the world to the average Joe, who has not the best manners or realistic expectations all the time.
Then, add in the fact there are too damn many of us on this planet that anywhere remotely interesting to visit is packed from dawn to dusk and it gets annoying having to wait for things all the time, especially at home for the 3 months or so people want to see your little stretch of the world.
I get it. I don't agree with it all but I get it. I work in tourism to a degree. We are spread too far, everywhere you go there is more of us.
Very bad example for your point. The port towns visited profit very little from the cruise ships. People sleep, eat and shop on their ship, the local economy sees almost no benefit but the streets are clogged by their day trips.
I'm talking about how bad things like cruise ships are and you are saying I am wrong and then backing me up? Small ports rely heavily on cruise ship visits, large ports fucking hate them. Alaska is basically oil and gas and cruise ships that keep it floating.
That's a bit of an exaggeration, I've been having the time of my life here in vietnam, just ask the locals for some ideas and check Google maps for traffic to avoid the one everyone is already going to, and you'll have a beach, mountain, beautiful twisty roads along rivers and mountains, local swimming hole, etc to yourself and like 3 or 4 locals who you have to flee before they invite you to lunch, introduce the whole family, then dinner, then to sleep at their place, marry their daughter, etc.
Its not an issue of too many people, just everyone goes to the same exact place because some influencer recommended it.
Should only rich people should be able to travel? People with more money also have more manners?
Just dropping this here: Debunking ‘overpopulation’
There is a football stadium near my home. Those fans should all stay home. I bet some don't even come from my city. They make public transit busy when there are games! Why do we have to share this world with others?!
EDIT: I don't want to seem like I entirely disagree but again, capitalism and mass tourism. Social media is also to blame. Societal hype. But if you think you have to wait everywhere that's "worth" visiting, maybe you can try to spread out. We don't all have to go visit the Eiffel tower or the same national park in Croatia.
I don't don't think it should be just for rich people, but when i was a kid it was rare to travel far abroad, and with it came a sort of feeling of responsibility to represent your place of origin well through good behavior, and be respectful to the place you are visiting, even as a kid i understood that without being told.
That aspect is definitely gone in the era of mass tourism. Every place can be reached quickly and for cheap, it sort of devalues the experience of travelling.
This is all I was alluding too. Change in access is not inherently a bad thing, but it has cheapened the experience over all and expectations have changed along with it. Add in today's culture of Now Now Now and things are getting tense out there.
Personally, even when I am a tourist, I hate tourist shit. Almost always overpriced, overcrowded, often polished turd quality at premium prices. Go from store to store and it's the same mass produced shit with branding themed for whatever local attractions that place has. Staffed with kids who don't really give a fuck because they are the cheapest available (not that I blame the kids for not giving a fuck, I know I wouldn't in their place).
My last vacation was to visit a friend and that was nice. Instead of doing any touristy shit, we mostly hung out at his place and checked out places he liked to go to, which was a way better experience IMO than something curated by people whose main focus is getting as much money as possible from you.
there's things that are designed for visitors, and then there's things that are designed for "vacationers" who spend way too much fucking money to just sit around not actually enjoying things for some god forsaken reason.
the former is great, make things enjoyable regardless of where you're from or how long you're staying.
It's not distance it's behaviour.
You can be from the other side of the planet and as long as your respectful doesn't really matter. But there is certain types of people, typically those who come in large coaches with lots of other people, that can tend to be rather obnoxious and shove their way to the front, so they can take the same picture that everyone takes in front of whatever local monument you wish to substitute.
Often they seem to be Chinese.
Weirdly, chinese tourists in China are completely different from chinese tourists outside of China, and the effect increases the further you go.
I suspect the ones with money to travel further and to wealthier countries are the kids of new money petty bourgeois who are used to not giving a shit about social consequences.
I think you'll find a lot of your answers here.
While not a city, tourists have ruined the town I work in... It used to be a working town and the surrounding area was where people actually lived. Then the area got popular for rich people to come walk around in the summer... They bought all the housing for their vacation homes/air b&b and the bought up local businesses, turning them into seasonal shops...
Locusts...
The locals who dislike tourists are most likely not the same locals who profit from tourism. Wealth is too concentrated, that's also true for e.g. big hotels or shops in the picturesque old town. If every second or third resident had a room rented out to a tourist that'd likely be a different story. But same as always, some people profit, but all the people suffer the increased traffic, noise, waste, rent etc.
Daily experience in Hawaii. Litterally had a neighbor whose entire ability to survive is based on his wife's business doing wedding photography complaining about "immigrants and tourists"..
Like bruh. You are a kept man and a poorly performing house husband. Maybe just have the grace to accept things as they are?
This is why the Airbnb ban comes up super controversial too. From an unanalyzed/ outside perspective, the narrative "we need homes for locals" makes sense. Then you find out the entire campaign was pushed entirely by the hotel industry lobby in Waikiki (the counsel member who pushed the ban her husband was litterally on the payroll of the hotel lobby). Then the ban went into effect and it killed thousands of small, pop up businesses that had been cleaning, landscaping, maintaining the rentals. And it didn't do one iota of good in terms of reducing or stabilizing rent; if anything, it made things worse. The airbnb' almost all went down one of three tracks: either the owner kept it going illegally (the highest end with wealthiest owners), the owner stopped renting and has left it vacant, or the owner remodeled or sold to a flipper, in which case the house resold for a price quite litterally no locals can afford in rent.
What people don't want to hear about Airbnb bans is that that they significantly hit the non-corporate, local economies far, far harder. It moved tourists out of local neighborhoods and back into Waikiki, meaning that the dollars those tourists might spend on breakfast, grocery, something on the side of the road in some community outside of Honolulu. It further consolidated power into the very already very small number of hands who own all the hotels in Waikiki, while it did basically nothing to stabilize rents.
Thanks for providing an insightful alternative perspective on an issue I was quite convinced about.
That's because that city's economy didn't start dependent on Tourism.
Tourism was just some kind of "silver bullet" that the local incompetent politicians chose because they were incapable of managing the place properly and make it better.
Further, Tourism isn't exactly an activity that can bring a place to the forefront of Economic and Technological development: almost by definition you have to be behind those who are at the forefront and have cheap enough prices to attract tourists from those other, wealthier places - Tourism it's the ultimate "second" World activity.
I'm from one such city, Lisbon, and it's become a joke of a place, sort of an open air entertainment park on top of an historic city, slowly losing character and with the locals getting priced out of buying a home there which is pushing all other Economic activity out, especially things that rely on younger people (who are the ones most hit by the housing costs) such as Tech.
The country spent tons of money in training people to be Doctors, Engineers, Architects and so on and now the Economy is ever more based on cleaning rooms, making beds and serving drinks - literally half of the students graduating from University leave the country.
Betting on Tourism is betting on Mediocrity.
There really is no better proof of the profound incompetence, mediocrity and provincialism of Portuguese politicians than their bet of almost 20% (and growing) of the country's Economy on Tourism.
That said, it's not the fault of tourists.
the advent of airbnb and consorts did far more to the downwards spiral of beautiful places all over the world than the tourists themselves could ever do on their own.
suddenly the tourists don't book the hotels but occupy space meant for regular people . a handful of greedy assholes profits while easily dodging taxes, health or privacy standards and any accountability really.
tourists obviously take the perceived cheapest comfortable accommodation closest to their goal. the large airbnb owners even cosplay as this normal local guy
Went up to London a couple of months back to see Pulp. Hit up AirBnB to look for a cute place to stay.
It quickly became apparent that the vast majority of places listed on there are owned by investment firms, or at the very least, firms that own a large portfolio of AirBnB properties. Ended up staying in a cheap, no frills chain hotel near the O2, because fuck that shit.
If I think too hard about how much companies like AirBnB, Uber, Amazon and such have fucked our local economies, I get really angry. So I tend not to.
In my experience economies based around tourism have much greater inequality, with a few wealthy landowners/business owners raking it in, scumbag tourists throwing their weight around and any non wealthy locals forced into low wage service work and treated like shit in a high cost of living environment. Fuck tourism and fuck tourists.
As usual, seems he underlying problem is capitalism, not people wanting to visit nice places.
I think it's entitlement. People feel entitled for some reason? I have no idea why, but they fucking do.
Its generally the people whom capitalism has rewarded who can afford tourism. And goddamn are they obnoxious about it. Maybe buy a house in your community and spend 4 months there and vote in your elections. Fuckin' scum.
Homie there's a lot of families who have to save for years to go on one family vacation, it's not all Uber rich lol.
Additionally local issues in tourist destinations like low pay for service workers is entirely unrelated to the tourism itself, rather shitty business practices.
I think there's little difference between the unrecognized harms that tourists do and the increasingly recognized harms that expats do, see for instance the Andrew Callahan Channel 5 piece recently on the flood of American expats in Mexico causing gentrification, housing shortage caused by air bnb and skyrocketing prices, along with them not acculturating and exploiting and abusing the people who natively live there any number of ways. Solidarity forever with those affected by American expats, as plenty have fled the cities to live in permanent vacation with their shady money here at home too.
But that wasn't brought up at all before now lmao. I don't disagree with what you're saying at all.
I'd argue that is also an oversimplification to one region. I grew up in an eastern EU country, and I worked hard to get a good education so I can get a job that is more on the side of R&D and making new things. But then western EU companies bought up everything that does stuff like that, laid off all the engineers and only left menial manufacturing jobs in the country.
And when I then grab my things and move over to their countries where those jobs went, you know, we all signed "freedom of movement of people and capital", people there are complaining that the best paying jobs are not in their local language but in English now. And then that they are indignant that they have to do at least a fraction of what I needed to do, like be comfortable using 2-3 languages professionally, with a foreign one being the default. And that I can pay more for an apartment than them or their kids, driving up prices. Like I want to pay that much money.
So yeah, I love to live in a country that has people call me names instead of my own, but this is globalisation.
Yuuup. The people complaining are not the ones that decided that their city should be a tourism dump.
What do the people who study this for a living say?
"Thanks for the grant money, tourism industry"
Why do you think the government wants to spend(grant) money to investigate how the proletariats feel about the bourgeois?
You guys use as many code words as those sovcits.
You DO know that Economics is a field of study, right? And the cost-benefit of tourism has been well-examined by many, oh so many people.
Right?
This. 100%
Whose*
Lived in Banff for 18 years. Some days those tourists are just the fucking worst; feeding animals, littering, having fires anywhere they want. I got real possessive of my home. But the many are decent, outdoor lovers who don’t suck.
When I went to Banff many years ago, the chipmunks near our lodge were the fattest that I'd ever seen. It was obvious people had been feeding them and they had become dependent on it. Very sad.
I live on a sea side resort in UK. It's a big and very popular one and gets crazy busy in the summer. Some of the visitors show us just how bad humans can be. Litter everywhere, some people just leave it all where they were sitting on the sand. Some people buy tents and just leave them fully pitched and leave full of all their rubbish. Parking, people just park wherever they want even though they shouldn't. Yeah they get a ticket but I guess they think the price of a ticket is worth the convenience of parking somewhere stupid.
Fires are also a serious risk here. On the heath and woodland it is signed everywhere no smoking, BBQs, etc. and yet people still do.
I'm sure there are visitors who are respectful and decent, not everybody is awful. Also a huge shout out to the volunteers and workers who tidy up after these people leave. And the fire services who deal with heath fires every year.
It's not that we live in a direct democracy where the people have a say in the decision to turn the city into a tourism place. More often than not people are born there or moved there long before tourism was so big
I grew up in San Diego. I can't afford to live there anymore and had to move halfway across the country because of those tourists. Comic Con would be the worst. Just fucking shambles. And then all the people who feel like Comic Con is their home leave their "home" covered in fucking garbage and piss soaked streets. And then some of those tourists started to enjoy San Diego so much, that they all started moving there with their trust funds and high paying remote jobs. By the time I left 5 years ago, I'd meet people and they'd almost all ask, "Where are you from?" to which I'd reply, "From here" to which they'd reply, "No, but where are you from originally?".
Yep. Fucking tourists.
Seattle it's standard small talk to ask where someone is from. The almost five years I spent there I only ever met one person who said they were from Seattle
For Seattle, my experience is that most of the people are there for tech work. Those folks could have been working anywhere from "just came to this city" or "have been working for 10+ years".
There's not that many tourists, the few ones that come visit mostly congregate in pike place and around the space needle.
I don't know. Who IS economy?
Oh my god bear is economy how can that be?
Traditional fishing village, no fishermen can afford to live there anymore because of tourists, air B&Bs and holiday homes pushing the price of houses up.
Ever seen Bait? It's about that exact scenario.
OP after being kicked out of his home so that the landlord can rent it in airbnb: “well at least the economy is booming!”
I mean they often only want the place they live to be affordable and focused on catering to its residents and not people coming a week or so every year being the focus of the local amenities and that's a fair opinion to have.
Had 3 or so americans in the train. The kids screaming and even came up to my ear to yell in it! They didnt have their kids under control.
Or american "woo!"-girls in the inner city talking so loudly you could hear them 2 streets down about how "its so primitive here.", we "should have a parking spot for them in the center." So they "dont need to walk so much".
There are lots of respectful people tourists. But i have yet to meet a respectful tourist from USA
Your so cute, apparently you have never met well off Chinese tourists.
I have seen what they do online but not encountered them yet, you are right
Yes you have, you just didn't know they were American or you forgot about them because they weren't memorable.
I’m like this as an american who lives in another country. I get that face when i hear english being spoken because the tourists are usually jackasses.
Tourists frequently treat the laws as though they are suggestions instead of the law because they'll be leaving and won't deal with whatever they did.
They drove my mother off the road and the tourists walking nearby just watched and did nothing even though she needed medical help as she was on a bike. Luckily she was fine.
Others would argue with me, a kid, about where shit was.
"How do you get off the island"
"One way on and off, it's the way you entered"
"No, there's a way off here"
"There is not"
"Fuck you" they'd say, to a kid, before driving off and finding no no. Kid is right.
Whenever we traveled we were slammed into us to be polite, follow all local laws, be kind, and I just. It feels like a lot of the shoobies just were raised in a fucking barn.
I think this is the first time I've heard the word "shoobies" said that wasn't on Rocket Power
A good sounding word. Fun to say. So I use it!
Yeah, I'm sure the average person living in a tourist town gets tons of dividends from the extra taxes and capital earnings. It "trickles down" or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
It trickles down so hard that corporations are kicking you out of town by buying up everything and price fixing the rent.
Which some billionaires are doing exactly that.
I grew up in a tourist town, and it actually does. I loved being able to use services made for 200 thousand people in a town of 14 thousand.
Like you get a small-ish town, but you get multiple supermarkets competing and driving prices down, you get dozens of restaurants you can go out ot and order from. You can get groceries at 3AM. Hell, I moved to a non-touristic city of 400 thousand later, and I had worse services.
Megacorps taking over is a separate issue.
St Lucia seemed generally excited for their tourism. There's a million all inclusive resorts, but youre encouraged to walk the island, visit the locals, shop anywhere. Every single person i met was pleasant and generally excited to speak with me. I never felt unsafe like they warn about at other tourism destinations
Honestly tho, it felt weird.
A few years ago I was hanging out with an elderly friend of mine and group of tourists walked by and one of threw threw some flowers at my friend's face and called him 'f*g' and just walked away with his friends. Nothing I or anyone could do about it besides just watch and feel humiliated. Another time I was smoking a joint outside (as long as you don't do it near as school or some shit the cops don't care because there is typically a DV going on just around the corner and a needle in every fourth arm in my city) and this dude who probably was a cop back home (he just had that look in his eyes) out of the fucking blue started staring me down. Or tried to because by the time I realized what he was doing his friends where already pulling him away and he was just staring at me with such anger like I had just called him gay or something.
At least where I live there is enough cross over of touristy areas and the really bad areas that I get to watch tourists be made uncomfortable when something happens like a homeless woman squats on the sidewalk and takes a piss waving an empty plastic bag in one hand and screaming.
Maybe they lived in the place before the landlords turned the economy over to tourists.
If I lived in Barcelona and got kicked out of my apartment so it could be a peak-season AirBnB and stay 75% vacant the rest of the year I'd be pissed off too.
I think you might have just stumbled onto a good description of an important part of the human condition.
I don't really care about tourists hanging out in the tourist areas. But could they just drive the speed limit. I get that it's beautiful, pull over and take some pictures you've got 3 cars behind you. They could also make sure their tires aren't bald when they drive up in the winter, yes good tires are a must around here. Also if they wouldn't litter out in nature that would be great too. Or if they would start hikes early in the morning instead of it getting dark out and calling 9-11 for a rescue because they're lost now. Or just learn how to use caltopo, it makes orienteering trivial.
P.S. if you have to shit, walk off the trail somewhere out of sight. No one wants to step on that.
I was taught to put my garbage in my pocket until I can throw it in ghe trash, so I just shit my pants until I can find a toilet.
Leave no trace rules say you should poop into a bag and carry it out. But I have a little rhyme for you.
"When I shit my pants
I feed the plants
Cause I have no pants at all"
Living in a forest and lakes area that attracts tourists year round now, it's the damage they cause to the surrounding forest and even private property that makes us locals dislike them.
and dig a hole for it if you can, don't just leave it in the open, at least cover it in something
Yes, those are the rules. But I'd be happy with them if they would at least not poop on the trail. Baby steps
Yes. 100%. Every time I see a tourist in SF blocking traffic to take a picture from the top of a hill in the middle of the street, I want them to get hit by a bus.
I think the problem is not necessarily being a tourist, but egregiously bad tourist behavior.
I have family in, and we're moving to, a tourism hot spot. I honestly don't mind about 95% of the tourists. I even like a lot of them, since the fun ones are great to have around and you can learn about people's lives in so many different places.
The relatively small fraction that acts like total shitheads is what really stands out to me.
There's a strong correlation between how shitty a tourist is and how likely they are to make posts like OP's demanding that locals get with the program, remember their Disneyland training, and welcome them on their special holiday.
That's a waste of a good tourist! You could always grind them up for sausage meat.
Edit: ( ͡° ل͜ ͡°)
Ah, Ive seen you've been to Paris.
Tourism represents 3.5% of Paris’s economy. I don't think the city would collapse if it stopped overnight.
A 3.5% economic contraction is really, really bad. The 2008 recession was something like 4%.
Yeah for sure, but I was mostly reacting to the phrasing in the original meme that it's "entirely based" on it. And I still don't think I was lying, it would suck bad but the city wouldn't collapse.
3 million jobs come from tourism to Paris. Something about that 3% seems off because without those 50 million visitors annually, I doubt the Franprix across from the other Franprix would be open.
As always it's the amount that makes something healthy or lethal, Tourism is fine, Over-Tourism is not. And while on normal levels of tourism, many people profit, over-tourism brings money to a few big places, and leaves the rest suffering the consequences like unaffordable rents.
People usually talk to me in their native language. No matter Spain, Greece, Sweden, Britain, Italy, Serbia, Croatia, Germany… I just don’t behave like the typical tourist lol
Well I did get talked to in English while in Thailand… must’ve been my nose
88 billion a year apparently gets spent by tourists in NYC, that's a bootload of money for even a city as big as NYC.
Of course the negative part is that a lot of those dollars get spent at the tourist traps, not small local businesses. But I know when I was there, I walked around and tried to visit completely unknown looking pizza places and bars too. And a taco truck.
I visited a town that is in a great spot for cycling trips. The locals painted 🚳 on every sidewalk, hung up posters and give cyclists on sidewalks a talking-to while the main roads often lack even dashed bicycle lanes and feel really dangerous to ride on. At least there is no free car parking.
I guess not a great spot for cycling trips any more? Let them fuck around and find out
Sounds more like your issue is with the drivers. The law states (at least in Europe) that cyclists should be on the road when there's no bicycle lane. And that's what they do everywhere I've been so far and it's fine. Drivers complain sometimes that they have to slow down for a few seconds before they can pass, but whatever, screw them.
If cyclists are allowed on the sidewalks, where are pedestrians supposed to go? Especially since often they're barely wide enough for 2-3 people. Hugging the wall every minute to let a bicycle pass isn't fun.
This does not, in fact, sound like a great spot for cycling trips. People come to a town without biking infrastructure and congest the pedestrian sidewalk with bikes, yet the townies are the assholes? That's quite the take. Pedestrian infrastructure is not for vehicles.
I kinda wanna go there, rent a giant American car, rev the engine outside their houses at 2am with the speakers blasting, and tell them I wanted to ride my bicycle instead but the signs said no bikes.
I'm on the memes side.
While tourists can be assholes.
It's amazing how many of these "locals" bitching, either made their money off the tourists or recently moved to town...
I have no sympathy for either type.
Big touristy towns are to expensive for locals to live in, because rents are unaffordable. This also means that pubs or small stores can't exist there anymore because higher rent means higher prices for the customers. Useful stores like cleaners, garages or doctors move out, and overpriced souvenir shops move in. At the end there is no city left for the locals to live in, only hotels and places serving tourists.
While those places exist. That's an extreme representation of places like Vale, lake Tahoe, etc.
There are many tourist towns that aren't in the middle of nowhere. And have access to all those things. I live fairly close to a slew of them and have friends who work, live, and do extremely well compared to if the tourists weren't there.
I've seen and at still seeing exactly what the previous poster describe happen in my hometown, Lisbon, as the politicians for the last 2 decades invested ever harder in Tourism as the solution for the country's problems (which are mainly rooted in a management culture of profound incompetence - I lived 20 years abroad so I can see it for the shit it is by comparison - and insane levels of cronyism) rather than, you know, actually trying to solve them (the local politicians are basically the worst managers from what is maybe the worst management culture in Europe, so their "management" of the country reflects that).
Towns which mainly grew up from some little fishing village or similar through Tourism and which are mainly dedicated to it now is one thing (and there are many of those in Portugal, especially in Algarve), established cities which got taken over by Tourism is a whole different thing: it's one thing when 3 or 4 small fishing operations end up closing down because the Tourism Economy took over and a handful of people have to leave in search of jobs in their area, a whole different thing is when an entire established Economy of a city of a million people starts being undermined by Tourism and things like Tech are slowly pushed out because the city has become too expensive for the young people that normally work Tech or in fact for just about every recent University graduate (basically if you weren't earning enough to buy your house back in the time before Tourism took over, you're screwed).
Tourism will pull an Economy up from low value added activities such as Subsistence Agriculture or Fishing, but it will pull an Economy down from higher value added activities such as for example Tech - you don't need Engineers to make beds in hotels or serve drinks to tourists.
Florida in a nutshell.
Looking at you, Kyoto
Oh they're just assholes to anyone, not only tourists. 嫌味.
Oh, for sure. I lived there for a few years.
Sitting in Cape Cod right now, lol
It would be fine if they would simply drive the speed limit instead of 10 under, and stopped littering.
I don’t understand why those two things simply aren’t a given.
In the Netherlands they want to spread out all the Amsterdam tourists around more. There are increasingly more tourists coming to my city now... I hate it. Leave them in the shitty Amsterdam, don't ruin my city. Amsterdam is a city full of self centered assholes and it's a tourism theme park. No harm in leaving it that, way.
Remembering how insufferable the American tourists are, I wish my city would find a way to learn how to earn money without depending on those idiots.
They should go back to their country and stay where they belong