Do you think tourism to your country is a curse?

37 comments

1. Certainly in some places.. Think in norway the curse is much about the cruise tourism. Large cruise ships going into narrow norwegian fjords.. the tourist having paid for most of their stuff on board in the ship, so doesn’t need to spend that amount of money while leaving the cruise ship. Probably heard about cruise tourism and venice or likewise from other countries.. just imagine those huge cruise-ships going into tiny places in norwegian fjords with hundreds/thousand of people leaving those ships…. or seeing this [sight ](https://www.dagbladet.no/images/79467318.jpg?imageId=79467318&width=980&height=559&compression=80)out of your window..

2. I definitely think there’s too much tourism here in Prague. I just commented about it in the r/Prague sub today.

   Parts of the Old Town are just tourist attractions. It’s literally like a theme park, there’s just overpriced tourist traps, no normal establishments for locals like shops or affordable restaurants. Barely anyone lives there – Prague’s Old Town has 6k inhabitants but receives over 7 million visitors every year.

   We have some of the most unaffordable housing compared to local salaries and Airbnb definitely isn’t helping that. Nothing is being done about this.

   I don’t work in the tourism industry and it doesn’t directly benefit me in any way. I think there are very few people who seriously benefit from this. In daily life you mostly see the negatives, like the noise, the mess, and the fucking lime scooters.

   But who can tell what would happen if tourism decreased? Maybe other industries would develop, as you suggest, maybe we’d just be poorer, idk.

3. No, I see them as valuable to the economy, and I’m also proud of my country and want people to have some great experiences here as I have had.

   I don’t think England is too heavily dependent on tourism economically, so I don’t see that as a problem.

   Tourism does have some pretty awful effects with traffic, overcrowding, hiking up prices etc. But that can be managed properly by for example, advertising other parts of our country to visit instead of just the usual London+Stonehenge, Oxford etc. Also, improving public transport, promoting visits outside the busy summer season, regulating Airbnbs, and implementing tourist tax….

   It can only be a curse if authorities won’t take the measures to make tourism a more sustainable industry.

4. The amount of cars that flood my village just so they can get to Stirling is just excessive and horrible. It really doesn’t feel much like a community anymore. Sure, it helps the Scottish economy. Whatever. I’m still not big on it though.

5. Let me put it this way: I go to the city centre of Vienna only in the winter. And by winter I mean January and February. Because even in December they are here because of the Christmas markets.

6. Not really – they seem to only want to go to about four places: central London, Edinburgh, the Cotswolds, and Skye.

   If you live in one of those places (except London, which is massive enough to absorb the many tourists it gets) then it must suck. If not, then you probably don’t see many tourists at all.

   We do have a bit of issue with domestic tourism, where places like Devon and Cornwall are flooded with people every summer. The locals get priced out and the infrastructure can’t really cope.

7. Only in Brugge imo. Everywhere else it’s reasonable. But in Brugge they’re catering to tourists and making the city worse imo. Like selling waffles on a stick. No Belgian wants waffles on a stick. It’s the worst way possible to consume waffles. Yet it’s selling because tourists buy them. It sickens me. I take waffles very seriously

8. No, in fact I’d show them places they wouldn’t think of visiting.
   So they won’t only visit Amsterdam and see other places in the country.

9. Tourism is a good thing… as long as it is in places that can support its many varieties.

   Nobody would give a hoot if hordes of tourists were to reside in dying towns in, say, Garfagnana or Cilento to attend a massive festival/party outside a major city where attendance limits would be largely arbitrary: the alternative was basically either emptying, or losing character by hook (tourism accomodations) or crook (remote workers) anyway, plus whatever damage they might cause bothers a very tiny group of people (if it does bother anyone, that is).
   Similarily, if tourists in Venice and Rome were entirely the upper-middle and upper class staying at hotels for two weeks or more, then 99% of the problems caused by “overtourism” wouldn’t exist.

   But when you open yourself up to mass tourism, if you don’t truly prepare yourself to deal with the flows, things get dicey. This became doubly true since B&Bs went from “quirky little thing some penioners might organize to profit off a spare room” to “the main way to profit off a house” thanks to online aggregators. Ultimately one would need to spread the visitors out to make it more sustainable, and redirect specific sorts of tourism into areas more suitable to them, instead of creating massive centers of “can-do-every-activity-as-visitir” cities that hurt the social fabric.

10. Nice thing about Finland is most tourists want to go the most sparsely populated inhospitable place in the country, Lapland. There’s plenty of space for everyone there and tourists give a nice boost to the economy there which wouldn’t have that much going on anyway.

11. I don’t mind them most of the time, but I also don’t really leave my city. Area is quite tourist heavy in the summer. They definitely bring more than take from us. Only thing reslly is that they should understand that the cobblestone streets are for cars as well. Hate it when I have to stop or brake because a tourist decided not to check if a car was approaching or they just stop in the middle of the road to take a picture. It’s fine to cross it anywhere or walk on it or even take pictures standing on it and even locals do it, but be mindful of the cars.

    Most smaller stores here probably wouldn’t be open if tourists didn’t visit them and buy souvenirs.

12. It brings money and is also a very important part of soft power. Im from the most visited country in the world. Tourists are part of our landscape. We love to hate them but overall it’s beneficial.

    Beside the well known Paris things I will take example of Corsica as the situation there can be compared to small tourist dependent countries (economy of the region is tourist dependent). We can objectively say that over tourism is a plague for locals and the eco system. There are only 2 medium sized city (Ajaccio, Bastia) and some other smaller cities (Corte, Ile Rousse, Bonifacio…) and they are crowded in summer, empty in winter. Same with villages. Infrastructures aren’t adapted which leads to problems with traffic… in terms of fragile ecosystems it’s killing them (marine and mountain)

    However, before tourism, Corsica was a region people were quitting due to no job opportunities, hard life, no food money… Tourism is doing bad to locals and to the Island. But without it life would be way harder. I think goverments need to regulate tourism to prevent damages to nature but repercussions are much further than for people working in tourism industry, there would be lot of ghost towns without. And for some countries not as rich as France (we can help Corsica), it’s not a choice if they don’t want their population emigrate.

    It of course goes by making sure to develop other industries and do everything to keep doctors, scientists… Regulation should also go into ensuring they are making better salaries than restaurant and hotel workers. Unfortunately this goes by education of the tourists who love to tip (as you guess im thinking at Americans) which is destroying the local economic equilibrium by bringing young people who studied at university into low qualification tourism jobs where they can earn more

13. Yes and no…

    Tourism is obviously a good thing, and also source of pride. Especially when it is tourism for the History, architecture, culture… Even nature, nowadays, preserving nature is a source of pride (and should be even more). Also, tourists and travellers bring new things, exchange with the locals, and that’s nice.

    I think economically, tourism could easily become a curse. One needs to think of it as a natural resource so to speak, and so it can produce a mild case of the “Dutch disease”. Locking the economy into easy exploitation of an easily available resource, desincentive investments in other fields (science, industry…) or in the local population even. Why educate engineers when the tourism and restaurants industry is more in demand? I schematize broadly here, but that’s the concern with tourism. As you said: focusing on Airbnbs instead of focusing on the actual citizens needs.

    I prefer a France which builds Eiffel towers over one welcoming visitors to an old steel tower. At least in the French case tourism is fostering a strong ecosystem of high-end industries, and spice the traditions up, so that’s a good use of the “resource”. But I feel for countries abroad where tourism equals “mass tourism”: drunkenness, giant hotels after giant hotels, leisure factories

14. Malta : yes. It’s ruining the country. And the greed of the Maltese who benefit from it is out of control.

15. Paris was so nice during Covid, when we had very little mass tourism

16. Without tourism, we die.

    But god this island is crowded in summer..

17. Seeing a city where you live, work, study, socialize… slowly become a souless tourist attraction, replacing local and unique commerces with tourist traps, rising prices of housing and turning most of the flats in your building into airbnbs or short rentals by bedrooms (less laws apply to them than with long stay whole place rentals) is a sad experience. It’s gotten to a point where you feel the outsider in your own city. Places where you once gathered with friends are now tourist spots with expensive offers. Your daily life has to cut through a sea of tourism. This country focused on tourism during its dictatorship, so we had a head start for this issue. It’s ugly.

18. In Italy, people living in Venice have been literally thrown out of the city, become unaffordable due to aggressive tourism.
    So, yes.

19. In Catalonia it’s definitely a curse and only a very, very small fraction of the population are getting the benefits of it. For the rest it means gentrification, massification and lower standards of living.

20. Lisbon and Porto yes. Too much. To the point that the local population is avoiding the center, the traditional places are replaced one by one by a tourist trap. Also everything is a hotel, hostel, ou airbnb. Also long term I don’t see a bright future in Disneyland cities.

21. At this point any tourism is a blessing, please come here, spend some money here and turn some attention to our country

22. Most of it: Nah there’s jack shit

    Amsterdam: Used to live and work there.

    Centre is just a tourist trap. But by virtue of living 20 minutes away by public transport you’re paying out of the nose cause gentrification

    Fuck tourist Amsterdam

23. I don’t think the problem is tourism. The problem is social media. Nowadays everybody wants to visit the same places.

24. People deeply overestimate how much Italy relies on tourism. It accounts for 9-10% of our GDP, not 90%.

    The thing is, *some places* in Italy live off of tourism and tourism only, such as Florence, Venice (the island), Amalfi and Cinque Terre. During COVID lots of places there were closing down and crying misery because there were no tourists, so they had no source of income. That’s when you know tourism is a curse.

    Or when it saturates a city’s rental market with Airbnb’s, such as what’s happening in many of the major Italian cities, squeezing the locals out of the city center and forcing them to relocate further and further away.

    However, it can be an additional resource to diversify your economy. It just needs to be kept in check. I’d say you’d need to

    1. Make tourist taxes higher.
    2. Put a cap on the number of Airbnb’s per square kilometer a city can have and how much money they can make. Also, make it so that they can use their room/house for short-term rentals only for up to 2 years, after which they’re forced to convert it into a long-term rental.
    3. Put a cap on the prices of some of the goods sold in the city center of touristy places (e.g. ice-creams in the center of Florence might cost up to 10€, which is ridiculous).
    4. Put a cap on yearly rent increases for locals.
    5. Carry out monthly, surprise checks on restaurants and cafés operating in heavy touristy places, because many of them don’t pay their workers adequate wages and are keen on tax avoidance.
    6. Advertise other less-known places and itineraries to avoid congestion in tourist hotspots. I can’t count the times people on the r/ItalyTravel subreddit turn up with the same itinerary (Amalfi coast-Rome-Florence-Cinque Terre-Venice-Lake Como-Dolomites). Then they complain about the crowds.

    I guess. Other than that I have no idea.

    The places I go to aren’t touristy, or they’re simply popular with Italians and not with foreign tourists, so I’ve never felt like me being there was a curse for the locals.

25. Ohh yes!

    Housing market has gone crazy due to the short-term ROI an Airbnb rental gives compared to long-term rentals.

    So most home owners, being greedy and wanting to take revenge for the decade during the bankrupcy when the rents collapses, have turned to short-term rentals for tourists. Whole apartment blocks where none is local and they only work as quasi-hotels.

    Short-term rentals like Airbnb should not be legal. Its choking the whole housing market.

26. I mean I could say I can’t stand going to London at all anymore, it’s over crowded and over priced and full of people taking selfies in front of red buses. But then I’ve got two holidays abroad booked next year where I’ll be standing in front of landmarks taking photos of myself and contributing to the crowds. So…. 😬

27. Those cruise ships are awful polluting rabbit cages.
    It’s a poor man’s holiday and they stuff thousands of ppl on them
    They get all their food and drink on board and leave fuck all money in the countries they visit other than buying a cheap Chinese made souvenir.

    Then they tell all their mates “yea, I’ve been to Norway” – even though they only docked for 8 hours lol.

28. Mass tourism is terrible imo. For everyone really. But then again, I’m currently traveling (for work tho) to a very tourist city, and am staying in a ‘hotel’ that should def be normal housing. It’s a terrible hotel as well.

29. In contrast to famous cities, my town is a “new” ski destination. We only got well known around the turn of the millennium.

    From before that I remember the issue of people moving away because there was no work. homes were abandoned, sold for cheap. but nobody wanted them. most people were farmers. only the very talented got a vocational job, the less fortunate had to settle for unskilled work. money was so very scarce.

    then a couple of daredevils took on a huge risk by investing money they scraped together into a ski resort. within ten years we went from rags to riches. the whole village profited in some way or another.

    now, 25 years later people start complaining about too many guests. they want “the old days back”.

    people have real bad memory to forget how horrible it used to be. I for one do remember my grandpa saving up used christmas wrappers for the next birthday and easter and christmas,… always cautioning us kids not to tear it. and we weren’t the poorest in the village.

30. No but the shop keepers who live from tourists are a curse. I can’t even walk down the road in the central area because I get harassed by waiters who give me dirty looks or say hello aggressively to make me feel bad and not come back. Locals are unwanted, especially if they’re just walking around, not spending money.

31. Yes, it first destroyed the Mediterranean coast and the islands and now it’s began destroying non coastal cities as well. A lot of places in Spain rely almost entirely on tourism, and tourism has been systematically displacing local residents and small businesses throughout much of the country. It’s entirely unsustainable and in a few years there will probably be less locals than tourists in most coastal areas + Madrid, Toledo and Seville. Now that temperatures are rising the tourism threat has shifted towards the Northern coasts as well, which were previously largely undisturbed. It’s a machine of unfettered destruction and we’re losing our country to it. As for your last question, I can tell you absolutely no one in Madrid sees tourism as a good thing except those whose businesses rely on tourists (the bosses, not the waiters working minimum wage at tourist bars) or those who live off of illegal Airbnbs

32. It’s out of control here in Lisbon where we host 20 tourists a year per inhabitant. I don’t think it’s a pleasant experience for the tourists either since there is now a portion of the city that is pretty much tourists only.

    The only good thing is that this month the tourist tax was doubled from 2€/person/night to 4€/person/night. If this doesn’t slow down tourism then we might as well double it to 8€ (and then 16€ and so on).

33. There’s nothing inherently wrong with tourism, but it needs to be managed better.

    First of all, there’s a problem with the mass tourism, not because there’s not enough capacity for everyone, but because people tend to congregate in few small places. It would help if they spread out more equally – there is incredible number of beautiful places all around Europe that get close to no tourists, and at this point are often much more attractive than “the highlights”. If everyone goes to Paris, Rome and Barcelona, we have a problem. If we somehow managed to convince people to move at least part of their trips more off the beaten path, it would be better for absolutely everyone (including tourists themselves).

    As for AirBnB, that just needs to better regulated. Some locations managed that quite well, other less so. In a nutshell, AirBnB is an evil concept and buildings zoned for residential purposes should simply not be available for short term rent.

34. Yes, especially for some specific areas.

    I luckily live in an area with very few tourists, although in our province there are three UNESCO sites, several lakes, beautiful towns, nice castles and villas etc., but some areas of the country, like Venice, Florence, the Cinque Terre, the Amalfitan Coast and a part of the Tuscan countryside are invaded and practically too deeply devoted to tourism.

    Venice for example, the main island at least, has lost much of its inhabitants, and with them her personality. Local restaurants are disappearing in many parts of the country in favour of pizzerias, McDonald’s, kebab places or “the standard Italian restaurant”.

    I was in Como last week with my girlfriend, I hadn’t been there since 2020, and it was weird hearing way more foreign languages rather than Italian, seeing the prices, seeing only restaurants as local activities. We had to walk a lot to find a restaurant that did not serve carbonara, amatriciana or lasagne, but some actual local fish and polenta tóch from Bellagio.

    The return in terms of GDP is too low to accept the gentrification of some areas of the country honestly.

35. I love it tbh!

    Theres always people to meet and show around your town and the American lads that come over are 90% so cool and really interested in where their family came from despite how insufferable the Irish-Americans online can act!

36. No I think it’s good. I’m from Northern Ireland and love it when people visit here as it has such a bad reputation.

    And a lot of tourists who visit Ireland just go to the republic.

37. It is an absolute curse when it’s mass tourism:

    – it completely tips over the housing market, displacing locals

    – it destroys cities, gentrify neighborhoods, removing local business, overflows streets with foreign fauna, kills identity and authenticity

    – it only helps create shit jobs, many qualified people end up working in the industry because these are the only jobs available

    – it fuels a vicious circle where investment is only focused in the tourism industry and not in other sectors, technology, science…

    – it puts all the chips of a country into turning into a massive theme park, forfeiting progress, culture and welfare

    – it only makes a handful of rich fucks even richer, helping nobody

    – this is a personal viewpoint, but the kind of tourism attracting masses has zero human value. Just trash people coming to get drunk, eat food thAT iS sO cHEaP, and lie on the beach, not interested in our history, or culture (I actually appreciate tourists who have come out of their way to visit large parts of our country because they are genuinely interested in something that awakens the intellect even just a little)