Too Many People Want to Travel

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/crowds-tourists-are-ruining-popular-destinations/590767/

by Deinos • 7 years ago

96 132 7 years ago

lalos2• 7 years ago

Pipe dream but it would be interesting to devise some increasing tax based on the number of flights you've done per year. They already ask for ID when you buy flights so it would be easily track-able. First flight 10%, second 20%, third 30%, etc. Just as a thought exercise but I'm aware of the friction this sort of idea would get. Related gif: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1013088775973556224

dijit• 7 years ago

I was going to complain about people who live abroad (as I do), and them being penalised for returning to see their family, but then I realised that it's actually the inverse in Sweden.

You get a tax break if you travel to visit your home country, I guess it's something they want to promote.

pier252• 7 years ago

I'm from Mallorca, a Spanish island, and residents get discounts on flights to the mainland.

lalos2• 7 years ago

You can tack this tax to jet owners too, easily charged by airports that receive them and also based on amount used. Trying to make it as equal as possible and de-incentivize excessive flights.

bilbo0s4• 7 years ago

This is already done for private jet owners. (A lot more fees too actually.) They just don't call those fees a "travel tax". But yeah, the more you use your jet, the more of these fees you are paying. (But like everything, there's probably some level at which they will give you a break on the fees if you are rich enough and always going to the same places a lot?)

ahoy• 7 years ago

A simpler solution would be to tax the wealthy at a higher rate, reducing their ability to travel as much.

war1025• 7 years ago

I really doubt that would work out. Especially depending what you mean by "wealthy". There is probably a sweet spot in the income bracket where that would do something, but those people would not be considered "wealthy" by most definitions.

oarsinsync• 7 years ago

I know people who fall into the 20% tax bracket, living in London, who are still able to do a return flight to somewhere in Europe once a month.

How do you prevent people who otherwise live frugally from flying frequently?

dagw2• 7 years ago

Traveling these days is incredibly cheap. People can save up enough to travel around SE Asia by working restaurant or retail jobs if they put their minds to it.

macinjosh• 7 years ago

Disincentivizing air travel could have a big impact on climate change as well. I don't understand why those who want to do something about climate change still fly around the country/world like its nothing. A single plane ride from NYC to LA emits about 20% of the greenhouse gases your vehicle does each YEAR. 5 trips in one year and you've essentially been running a second car for that year. [0]

If you care about climate change and you still fly I can't take you seriously.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-pollutio...

harimau7774• 7 years ago

Are there reasonable alternatives? I.e. ones that don't take a week to get there and have a similar price?

throwawaymath• 7 years ago

A single plane ride from NYC to LA emits about 20% of the greenhouse gases your vehicle does each YEAR.

I can't immediately tell from the source NYT cites, but is that 20% of one person's vehicle emission, or 20% of the aggregate vehicle emission of all passengers?

If it's the former, that might not be a great way to frame the problem since cross-country flights typically have hundreds of passengers.

AnimalMuppet2• 7 years ago

Interesting perspective. There are more of the middle/working classes who want to travel, but the upper classes travel more per capita. Maybe the problem isn't just us, the middle and working classes who want to see the world a little. Maybe it's also you, the privileged upper classes, who want to travel far more than the average...

kasperni• 7 years ago

If there is one thing that is for certain, this is only going to get much worse. And peoples wet dreams about a jobless society. Well, you are not going to spend all that leisure time alone on secret deserted locations around the world.

creaghpatr• 7 years ago

Or boring suburbs, for that matter.

ganlaw2• 7 years ago

I think moving and experiencing the city and surrounding places for a few years is more enjoyable than short trips. I am now looking at moving to my 5th different city in 10 years. I spend my vacation days exploring around what is in my "backyard". Taking a 10 hour flight and spending a few days trying to see everything is not enjoyable to me.

Mountain_Skies• 7 years ago

That's an interesting approach. It does seem like one does need to live somewhere for two years to get a good feel for the place and how it changes with the seasons. Do you always move within the same country?

ganlaw2• 7 years ago

It has always been within Canada. I am looking at moving to the US now

bilbo0s4• 7 years ago

I agree with you about taking longer trips. That's always been my philosophy. A "short" stay in Paris for me is about 3 months minimum.

All that said, it's still travel. With many of the comcomitant externalities still in place.

0x445442• 7 years ago

For years I've been looking forward to traveling but the thought that keeps nagging me is the whole canned tourist experience which I hate.

One thought I've been trying to sell my wife on is getting a quality RV/Travel Trailer and tour the country doing contract gigs. This sounds similar to what you're describing.

magduf8• 7 years ago

What makes you think you have to buy a "canned tourist experience"? Traveling (in highly developed countries at least) is easy: buy airline tickets, book rooms at hotels or hostels in the cities you want to visit, then just go there and walk around and see the sights at your leisure, and take the train to the next city according to your schedule. You don't have to buy tour packages or hire guides or hang out with other tourists if you don't want to.

cafard• 7 years ago

This is much less an option if you have children, and probably less so if you have any domestic arrangement at all.

Wohlf• 7 years ago

Easy to say this from a privileged position, less so when it's your vacations or work travel on the chopping block. Free movement for me, but not for thee. Wouldn't want all those unwashed masses ruining your perfect vacation.

throw513194• 7 years ago

Listen, there's too many people for all of us to be at the top of the social hierarchy and enjoy traveling and consuming whatever we want, etc.

The current capitalist based system isn't bad. But we should get rid of the inefficiencies and cronyism and money shuffling.

It should basically be, if you innovate and help people enjoy their lives or live better lives, etc... you get rewarded for that. If you don't, you get to live a normal and healthy life without pomp.

Also, need to limit the number of people. Nobody should be having more than 2-3 kids or they get penalized with an equal and opposite economic penalty.

sjg007• 7 years ago

Ok comrade.

throw513194• 7 years ago

Lol the core of my post is a purer capitalism that has reduced cronyism and money shuffling (and thus scraping).

sametmax10• 7 years ago

It should basically be, if you innovate and help people enjoy their lives or live better lives, etc... you get rewarded for that. If you don't, you get to live a normal and healthy life without pomp.

Except if you can travel, you get experience that will make you better at improving people's life. If you don't, you will have a narrower POV.

But I agree with the sentiment, there are too many of us for our life style. You can't do anything anymore without being surrounded by thousand others, everybody wanting the same experience, and paradoxically, wanting it to be unique.

People keep saying it's not a zerosum game. But we are in a finite environnement. We are not going to live outside earth anytime soon and we are just getting started on consumming everthing.

bilbo0s4• 7 years ago

Nobody should be having more than 2-3 kids or they get penalized with an equal and opposite economic penalty....

That statement was a little humorous to me, but if you're serious, you'll be happy to know that this is already the case. The couple unfortunate enough to have, say, 5 kids is already, um, "penalized with an equal and opposite economic penalty". Each child will always soak up much more than his or her standard deduction. There's no question about that. Operational costs are enormous, and grow over time. And all that doesn't even count opportunity costs.

Yeah, anyone who thinks kids are cheap is liable to be very disagreeably surprised if they ever have one. I'd wager a large part of what keeps the economy going is spending on, for, or by, kids? But I don't have any data to back that up, it's just my wild ass speculation.

throw513194• 7 years ago

Unless they are on government support, right? Then the government subsidizes their overproduction. They get more representation in the next generation for no reason, having others pay for it.

rthomas6• 7 years ago

It's a negative externality. Price it into the cost, use that extra money to offset pollution/whatever, and the problem is solved. It's simple to say but nobody wants to do it because it hurts.

acidburnNSA• 7 years ago

It'd be nice to somehow still allow people who can barely afford a plane ticket today to afford one occasioanlly for family emergencies, etc. Perhaps we do a personal threshold above which the carbon price kicks in or something. Lots of air travel is frequent fliers and they need motivation to stop.

alexhutcheson• 7 years ago

Some of this is overblown. Locals who live at tourist destinations have always complained about tourists, even when those tourists are the economic lifeblood of the area. Talk to anyone who grew up in a beach town.

The multiple snide comments about cruises seem both classist and misplaced. Most of those cruise ship passengers are going to travel somewhere, and having them on the cruise ship effectively minimizes their impact on locals. When they get off the ship, most passengers either take a guided excursion in an already heavily touristed area, or just go to a beach club. Would you rather they rent Airbnbs in the downtown neighborhoods of the cities they'd like to visit? Or would you rather build new resorts and timeshare communities at beach destinations?

Venice also seems like an unusual case that might need special attention. Most cruise ship ports are not beautiful places in need of preservation.

Many places in the world (especially national parks) are successfully restricting visitor volume. The solutions are well known: Require permits (either via purchase or lottery) and/or increase the cost to visit (via entrance fees, additional hotel taxes, etc.)

matwood2• 7 years ago

Talk to anyone who grew up in a beach town.

I grew up and still live in a beach town. Tourists were somewhat bothersome, but they allowed me to make plenty of money in restaurants when I was younger. Today the bigger problem is people are moving here. I rarely go to the beach anymore (unless it's 6am surf session) because of traffic and crowds. Just in the last couple weeks, 4 new stop lights went up near my house. But, with all the growth has also come real jobs. So it's not all bad.

Venice also seems like an unusual case that might need special attention.

Having been to Venice, I never understood why so many people like going. It is basically one giant tourist trap.

dagw2• 7 years ago

I never understood why so many people like going

Venice has some of the coolest and most unique urban planning in the world, it's one of the most historically significant cities in Europe, the Biennales always have fun events (many of them free) and honestly if you avoid peak tourist season and get a couple of streets away from the grand canal there aren't that many tourists around. Sure most of the restaurants and bars and basically all of the shops are tourist traps, but you can always just ignore those. Venice is definitely one of my favorite cities in Europe where you can't ski.

kwhitefoot• 7 years ago

Having been to Venice, I never understood why so many people like going. It is basically one giant tourist trap.

How much time did you spend away from St. Mark's square, the Rialto, and the Grand canal?

My wife and I and our three children went for five days some years ago; we rented an apartment in an old palazzo about ten minutes walk from St. Mark's. We went out for walks all over Venice, sometimes early in the morning before the other tourists arrived, we walked on the north side of the island and saw almost no tourists even though it was the high season. We ate in small restaurants away from the bustle and rip off prices of the Grand Canal. Essentially, we avoided all the high profile locations and never queued for anything.

It was brilliant.

dsfyu404ed2• 7 years ago

But, with all the growth has also come real jobs.

So in addition to fleecing tourists and fleecing people who fleece tourists there's now career paths that involve fleecing people who retired to where they spent a week every summer getting fleeced?

I too grew up in a beach town. I'm rooting for sea level rise.

_ea1k• 7 years ago

Yeah, I really don't get it. I live in a tourist city and can see the areas that get overwhelmed with tourists at times. There's a lot of money in that and those dollars drive a lot of the things about the city that are pleasant as well. Not all seasons are tourist seasons, and maybe it would be more of an issue if they were.

elliekelly• 7 years ago

Ecuador has done a really incredible job balancing the needed economic benefits of tourism with preservation of the Galapagos. They limit who can take tourists to which islands and when and have a carefully choreographed schedule that’s centrally managed. I believe there’s no more than 12 or so people and a guide on a given trail at a time yet the archipelago gets a few hundred thousand visitors a year. I think they even require the tour companies give a steep discount to native Ecuadorians since their tax dollars fund a lot of the centralization.

pier252• 7 years ago

Talk to anyone who grew up in a beach town.

Can confirm. I'm from Mallorca.

NotPaidToPost3• 7 years ago

"Too many people"

That really is the root cause of most of our problems these days.

The reality is that it's not possible to live a "western middle class" lifestyle when that lifestyle is accessible to billions of people. The planet cannot take it.

francisofascii• 7 years ago

Travel is fun, for sure, but I think our society, especially in wealthier and progressive circles, over-hypes it, to the point that you feel like you have to travel to make yourself more interesting. Maybe we need to lighten up a bit and have the attitude that staying home and reading about a far away place, yet never visiting, is cool too.

PopeDotNinja• 7 years ago

If we take arguments like this to the extreme, one extreme interpretation is that their are simply too many people.

duxup• 7 years ago

I'm not sure leisure travel capacity really is a good benchmark for something like that.

NotPaidToPost3• 7 years ago

It's not an extreme interpretation, it's the reality of the situation.

el_cujo• 7 years ago

This is the type of thing that is easy to police other people, but I wonder if the author has an instagram herself filled with pictures from Italy or France.

sametmax10• 7 years ago

Yes, and that's why the logic is wrong: the problem is not too many people want to do x. Wanting is legitimate.

The problem is thay there are too many people, period. And the more fair we make the system, the more they will get to do what they should expect from life, so it's going to get worse.

I often read on HN that this is not a zero sum game. Whatever, we are not leaving this earth anytime soon, and we are not producing innovation fast enough to care for everbody.

Soon, the state of mumbai will be mirrored in other places. Beggers like in LA as well. Venise and phucket are already terrible to live in.

Population is the main problem. It is a problem for food, education, hell, democraty. Eternal growth is not sustainable.

Areading314• 7 years ago

Increasingly, I find that seeing sights around the world turns into: "let's take a selfie, and get out of here" because it's so crowded.

AnimalMuppet2• 7 years ago

That's "I want to have done this" or "I want you to know that I've done this", but "I don't actually want to do this". Which, if you think about it, is kind of weird. We want a photo, but we don't actually want the experience.

Kye• 7 years ago

A recent LeVar Burton Reads has a story that tackles this in a science fiction context where Earth is the hot tourist destination.

https://art19.com/shows/levar-burton-reads/episodes/30648706...

dangus• 7 years ago

The article sort of reads as a list of individual incidents but I'm not sure it's able to present itself as a particularly alarming trend.

Yes, the Mona Lisa is the most popular painting in the world. Maybe the Louvre needs to expand or build a new space for it that can accommodate more people. Maybe ticket sales should be more limited and sell out after a certain point, with a set number of visitors allowed per day/hour/etc. It sounds like mismanagement (hence the workers walkout) than the tourists being at fault.

Yes, people are dying taking stupid selfies, but not really all that many of them, either.

Yes, some landmarks are being damaged, but also, governments completely have the power to enforce their laws and limit admission, and hand out tickets for littering and vandalism.

sametmax10• 7 years ago

Those are just temporary solutions, one day they will not be enough because of constant population growth. And you can't use them forever. Plus they all have a cost anyway.

This is like a doctor treating a symptom instead of the cause of the disease.

kiran-rao• 7 years ago

How is proper management a temporary solution? If the Louvre decided to control the number of people seeing the Mona Lisa through ticket prices, they can simply continues to increase prices as more people want to see it. This will simply generate more revenue.

throwaway500033• 7 years ago

I think I've seen the Mona Lisa... once? I go to the Louvre pretty often but that specific painting is far from the best thing it has to offer. If people really cared about it they'd just go see the one in Madrid [1], but for some reason people only ever want to see the Louvre one.

I get what I say makes me look like a hipster but it's really not what I mean, people should just take a hard look at touristy things and places and consider whether they're really worth the overcrowdedness, inflated prices, and banality of experience. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. What does it really bring to you?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_(Prado%27s_version...

rolltiide2• 7 years ago

As the article states: "while many sites are inarguably overcrowded, very few cities and towns are"

People aren't really going off the path, there is plenty of opportunity to get them to do that and disperse the crowds

I travel a lot and am mostly exempt from these crowds because I'm not rushing on a 5-day trip around a 3-day weekend to jam pack tourist destinations. I'm also not going to tourist destinations probably because I've already been there - in off-season no less - or have other things bringing me to an area.

Just disperse.

harimau7774• 7 years ago

I suspect that people are rushing to do a 5 day vacation or 3 day weekend because that is there only option.

rolltiide2• 7 years ago

I suspect that people are rushing to do a 5 day vacation or 3 day weekend because that is there only option.

I would suspect that too, it is still an inferior form of travel and approach to experiencing an area.

harimau7774• 7 years ago

Something that I worry about is that it seems like almost every enjoyable/empowering thing is being considered harmful to the environment/society or is becoming difficult to afford:

Driving a car, eating meat, travel, owning a home, living in a popular location (e.g New York), owning a gun, etc.

Combine that with an increasing number of people who feel socially isolated and it seems like a recipe for unrest.

aaomidi2• 7 years ago

How is owning a gun bad for the environment? It's somewhat expensive but not that much compared to other stuff.

madengr• 7 years ago

The parent probably means harmful to society, not that they or I would agree with that. Gun ownership is beneficial to freedom.

I suppose some could complain about lead, but it is not soluble in water, and lead shot is rare these days.

harimau7774• 7 years ago

Sorry I edited to say environment/society.

Not trying to comment on whether or not gun control is right, just that it seems like the people who say that they are bad for society don't seem to understand that it's one of the few empowering things in many people's lives.

hamoid• 7 years ago

Here a documentary about the case of Mallorca (subtitles in various languages, 65 minutes long):

http://totinclos.cat/documental/

CydeWeys• 7 years ago

Governments are also rolling out regulations, such as bans on tour buses in Rome and gating-and-ticketing in Barcelona.

The ban on tour buses might actually end up being counter-productive, if that one bus is replaced with many more smaller vehicles that in aggregate take up a lot more space on the roads.

A better solution would be a universal congestion fee that all vehicles entering the most congested zone pay (and yes, the fee for large vehicles like buses would be higher).

geddy2• 7 years ago

Cmd+F'd the comments and not one person has mentioned overpopulation. There are more people than ever before, and the issues of crowding are simply a symptom of overpopulation. The idea of raising the prices to make it cost-prohibitive... what's the point of doing anything, then? Soon, every single hobby will have too many people doing it. Are we to raise the price of everything to be so unaffordable that we go back to spending evenings sitting in front of the television?

We need to face the problem sooner or later, and that's that we have too many people on this planet. We're going to have a massively difficult time feeding everyone in 20+ years (the meat industry is already devastating enough on the climate), "tourist crowding" will be the least of our worries. Well, until the lack of food or the climate issue sorts that first bit out.

rubidium• 7 years ago

Eh, you're just repeating the same 'scare' tactics that Ehrlich did in the 1960's. He was mostly wrong then. And you're mostly wrong now.

We don't have too many people. But we are making poor choices about our farming techniques, industrial practices, and infrastructure.

10 billion people can live on this planet just fine. The solution isn't less people. The solution is better care of our planet and resources.

geddy2• 7 years ago

Right - _if_ we take better care of our planet and resources. Any idea how to enforce that in the most densely populated areas? China, perhaps? In what reality can we get 100%, heck, 10% of people on the planet to do everything a certain way?

kalado• 7 years ago

I thought the population is stagnating as people get more educated and have less children?

newswriter995• 7 years ago

God forbid we have more people entering the middle class, who want to explore the world.

I hate how preachy publications like Vox and The Atlantic can be. The writers come from these urbanized, upper middle class backgrounds and have no self-awareness. When I (with my small-town highschool dropout roots) read stories like this, I can't help but reword what they're saying in my head:

"Go back to being working-class scum who stays in the same place so us upper-class people can enjoy jet-setting and taking photos in exotic locations only you can dream of."

sametmax10• 7 years ago

That's not the problem. They have the right to. We encourage it. But there are too many humans.

This is just a hisper example, but pollution, food quality, democraty, education and the health system suffer from the same problem.

It's going to get worse and all we do is finding temporary solutions, not adressing the elephant in the room: promoting growth forever is not sustainable.

I really lile this conf:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=SP6A1FD147A45EF50D&playnext...

Because it addresses the problem mathematically, and answers the usual rebukes about innovation, moderation and other "sustainable growth".

newswriter995• 7 years ago

That's my point. From my perspective, the headline isn't: "There are too many humans" Instead it's: "It was better when only us privileged humans got to do this thing"

melling• 7 years ago

I’m sure we can handle more people on this planet if we don’t all eat meat daily, we don’t need to drive cars, and don’t get on airplanes to travel 200-500 miles.

How much wasted space do we have in cities because we build around cars?

https://www.fastcompany.com/90202222/heres-how-much-space-u-...

throwaway500033• 7 years ago

We are a reaaally far cry from exhausting all our resources. Overpopulation is a concern but all trends point at a curb of growth in the 2050's. The problem isn't that we collectively consume too much, it's that some consume waaaaay too much and others fight for crumbs and get told off when they dare yearn for more.

Guilt-tripping middle-class and poor people into accepting lower standards of living is dangerous imo, because silly contributions you may make are dwarfed by corporate contributions. Studies show that people who do token actions such as eating less meat are less likely to take part in actions that matter e.g. dismantling Exxon and putting its top execs behind bars).

freddie_mercury3• 7 years ago

Can you quote some passages that you felt were preachy? I read your comment and then read the article expecting to find the worst. But it seemed pretty even handed and didn't at all suggest people go back to being working class scum.

But maybe that's just my own biased reading. If you could point out the passages you find problematic it would help me improve my empathy.

coldtea3• 7 years ago

Can you quote some passages that you felt were preachy? I read your comment and then read the article expecting to find the worst. But it seemed pretty even handed and didn't at all suggest people go back to being working class scum.

If you are working class, such things are more felt and nuanced at, than explicitly said (at least not in polite upper class company). Not that dissimilar with racism.

(Except of course if you're very poor -- then everybody has the free pass to call you "white trash" and mock you, in a way that they wouldn't dare mock any other group).

i_am_proteus• 7 years ago

If tourism is a capitalist phenomenon, overtourism is its demented late-capitalist cousin: selfie-stick deaths, all-you-can-eat ships docking at historic ports, stag nights that end in property crimes, the live-streaming of the ruination of fragile natural habitats, et cetera. There are just too many people thronging popular destinations

Use of "demented late-capitalist" in the context of the paragraph and article reads, to me at least, as an indictment of the behavior of the newly-middle-class (i.e. people whom capitalism has recently enriched).

patrick54152• 7 years ago

The first few paragraphs paint a picture of why the author thinks tourism by the massses is a problem. But then proceeds to tell us how when only aristocrats traveled, there was no problem. Not being an aristocrat, the obvious implication is that I ought to leave the traveling to my betters.

georgehayduke• 7 years ago

Did you read the entire article? The final paragraphs seem to suggest that on balance, the author believes that the benefits of travel by the wider population outweigh the risks of over-tourism:

"These phenomena inevitably mean more complaints from locals, and more damage and lines and selfies and bad behavior. But they also mean more cross-cultural exposure, more investment, more global connection, more democratization of travel, and perhaps more awe and wonder. Even overtourism has its upsides."

magduf8• 7 years ago

Then maybe they shouldn't have picked such a click-baity title.

patrick54152• 7 years ago

Personally, I got about a third of the way through and clicked out because I felt the same disgust as the op. At least to the point in the article I got to, the author didn’t cite any real data, just cherry picked anecdotes to support their pearl clutching. I mean, why are boats with an all you can eat buffet a problem anyway? Right, because the author wants the buffet scarfing philistines to stay in flyover country where they belong.

linuxftw3• 7 years ago

"Go back to being working-class scum who stays in the same place so us upper-class people can enjoy jet-setting and taking photos in exotic locations only you can dream of."

Pretty much. It's weird how journalists have the presumption that we should care about literally anything they say. Opine me, dearly appointed ones.

Mr_Shiba• 7 years ago

Actually I think you are reading way to much into it, seems to me she is neither condemning nor praising, the article conclusion does mention there is an upside to this raise in travel: "they also mean more cross-cultural exposure, more investment, more global connection, more democratization of travel, and perhaps more awe and wonder. Even overtourism has its upsides."

Balgair2• 7 years ago

I hate how preachy publications like Vox and The Atlantic can be.

They have been this way for decades, it's kinda their thing. Just look at the monatage scene in the orginal 1984 Ghostbusters, they roast The Atlantic pretty well 35 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwKR_y93izs#t=1m55s

EDIT: The OP I am replying to has changed their posting quite a bit. Hence my comment does not make much sense anymore.

scelerat• 7 years ago

I had forgotten that little tidbit. It's a funny jab, but at the same time a completely believable Atlantic headline, and I'd totally be interested in reading an article on the civil rights of ghosts.

sodafountan• 7 years ago

Yeah no, not at all.

It's a real problem when Mt Everest is so overcrowded that people are dying. The problem the author points out is that as the population and middle class grows it inevitably leads to more travel, but many of the wonders of the world don't have the infrastructure to support the massive influx of people.

The truly wealthy have the means to avoid the crowds, they can fly private, stay in exclusive resorts, rent private yachts.

This is a very modern and new problem of overpopulation meeting an increasing amount of free time and wealth.

wavefunction• 7 years ago

I have to admit that I've wrestled with frustration at what I perceive to be people traveling to "tick off the boxes" whether that is going to Machu Pichu or some Instagram famous spot just to get a selfie of themself "experiencing" the place and then immediately leave without perhaps "experiencing" the place as I understand "experiencing" to truly consist of.

ninjamayo2• 7 years ago

Maybe something to do in order to tackle overcrowding in museums is to start returning some of the exhibits back to their origins. The Louvre and the British museum hold a lot of antiquities that were shipped from other countries during colonial times.

magduf8• 7 years ago

If you do that, those things will likely be destroyed. Do you really think that shipping artifacts back to Syria is going to result in those artifacts lasting for centuries more?

ninjamayo2• 7 years ago

There are plenty of artefacts that belong to countries who are not in the middle of war. Many stolen artefacts were in fact destroyed or damaged during their shipping to France or Britain. We don't need to go to extremes here, just do the right thing.

dade_• 7 years ago

'Too Many People are using travel destinations as items on the bucket checklist.' They are missing the point of travelling altogether. I just got back from the Taj Mahal, and I was stunned, it truly is spectacular. Unfortunately it was with a client, and everything was social media picture - check, bad souvenirs - check. Then look at me! I've been to the Taj. The place is truly amazing. I would go back before dawn and spend a whole day (when the weather isn't 45 degrees C) and enjoy the space. Every time I end up with so many questions to answer. Who maintains the place, how do they do it? Why this, why that? Local bookstores and shops. It makes the history books I read real, the novels set in a place tangible.

sasaf5• 7 years ago

The article misses another important cause for the surge in travel: demography. The baby boomers are retiring, many of them with spare money for traveling.

abeppu• 7 years ago

I think it's worth considering not only how online media has contributed to the very uneven distribution of interest over tourist destinations, but also how it might help fix it. The internet is used to creating power-law distributions, where a small minority of titles capture a large fraction of interest/traffic/views. Real world cities, parks and sites struggle to cope with global popularity. It's entirely possible for online media about travel to take a different set of considerations into account, and yield different top-level distributions in who wants to travel where.

Every listicle, travel-focused instagram, etc, pushes the same destinations to all of its audience. A small number of places become extremely coveted. What if we had tools and platforms that spread those eyeballs around more, where the number of impressions is related to the number of tourist arrivals per year? Stop showing so many people beautiful shots of Iceland; it's over burdened. Why should travel sites, influencers etc care to shift impressions in this way? Among influencers, platforms could place more value on uniqueness; if I've seen 5 shots of beaches in Bali in my feed this morning, maybe mix in something else. Influencers could feel a pressure to highlight comparatively under-exposed destinations. Places that produce travel content with funds from tourism departments ... well, I'd suppose that the marginal value of additional prospective visitors for Venice is small, but would be higher for a city that isn't so popular.

This year I walked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. While it was a positive experience, Machu Picchu itself was crowded, and visitors are very specifically limited in how they can walk around it. Only once I was in country did I hear about Choquequirao, another large Inca complex perched on a promontory, which is much less popular, and sometimes called "the other Machu Picchu". I can't help but feel that neither I, not Machu Picchu was well served by that ignorance.

calebm• 7 years ago

The problem isn't that too many people want to travel, but that too many people want to travel to the same places. I generally find the more off-the-beaten-path places more enjoyable.

Mikeb85• 7 years ago

Too many people want to travel, too many people want to eat meat, too many people want economic development, etc...

But how does someone who grew up being able to do/benefit from all these things tell the rising middle class from the developing world that they can't do these things because it's harmful?

advertising2• 7 years ago

My parents have lived in a gem of a town outside of the US for 20 years. About 15 years ago it started to pop up in top 10 lists and the last 10 years has exploded with tourism.

What used to be an extremely affordable, beautiful, and pleasant place to live and mix with the local culture is now gone.

It went from a beautiful town to Disney Land. A gigantic party city. Insane hour long lines of cars to get into the town on weekends. Real estate blew up and gigantic hotels are being built, all the homes in the center are owned by rich people from other countries as speculative investments. Tons of new bars and restaurants have opened but few of them by locals. Rich business owners from other places come in droves looking for more growth to extract money. Most people demand USD for rent or real estate deals and not local currency now, many businesses use foreign payment services for credit cards and the money never flows into the town.

Crime has greatly increased with all the money floating around. Home burglaries, car jackings and street muggings are common everyday of the week anytime of the day.

There have been some improvements from the tourism and a few hundred local families (out of the 100,000 locals that live there) have done well selling the homes their families have owned for generations. Now they can’t afford to live in the center and have to live in the outskirts.

Gone are the local restaurants, pushed out by high rents or because the owners sold the buildings, replaced by generic tourist traps pushing cheap alcohol and over priced food.

The local water supply has been drained, utilities cannot keep up with waste and demand, corruption for permits and zoning changes is rampant.

Literally thousands of homes in generic housing developments are being built in the surrounding countryside. Cheap build profit extracting developments solely to make money as the water table continues to drain lower and lower.

The only thing that has some what saved the city is lack of an airport being close by. Closest is 1.5 hours drive. But another rich entrepreneur is looking to bring a new runway in that is long enough for private jets.

That’s when it will officially be over.

An influx of money benefits everyone, but it’s also at the expense of the city. Is that worth it? I think what bothers me the most is seeing thousands of people crowd the central square and take the same photo of the church over and over and over and over. It’s within everyone’s right, rich or poor to be in that square. No one owns a city, except when the money starts coming in, and then money owns it.

magduf8• 7 years ago

I don't really see the problem here. The people of this town want it this way, or else they would be pushing their local government to make changes to limit tourism. This is a classic example of people getting the government they deserve.

advertising2• 7 years ago

This is exactly where you’re wrong. The government is full of corruption. They buy large pieces of land and change zoning laws to allow for a big Home Depot style place or an oversized hotel on their land and then they sell it. They shut down any competing construction projects or block use permits.

They obscure any data about public services. Contamination in the water table for example. People who ask too many questions are threatened.

People don’t vote these types in. They are in place through power and connections.

Your view is over simplified and not fully informed by reality of the reality politics.

purplezooey• 7 years ago

Part of the problem is that we don't build enough of anything. Roads, trains, housing, anything.

throwaway500033• 7 years ago

I think the actual problem is there are too many people who want to travel to specific places. Like, there are only a limited number of very touristic sites that everyone wants to go to, yet plenty of other lesser known sites exist and provide a better experience if you do your research and learn about them. Like, I live in Paris and have set foot exactly once (1) on the Eiffel tower. Likewise, there are hundreds of museums but people only ever go to the Louvre (and maybe Orsay). I get that they're iconic but come on, there's plenty of other stuff to do here.

forgottenpass• 7 years ago

If tourism is a capitalist phenomenon, overtourism is its demented late-capitalist cousin: selfie-stick deaths, all-you-can-eat ships docking at historic ports, stag nights that end in property crimes, the live-streaming of the ruination of fragile natural habitats, et cetera.

What is this even saying? How is this attributable to specifically capitalism and not humanity in general? After the hypothetical revolution how will people magically stop being annoying tourists? Will there be controls on number of travelers and their behavior? Will nobody have the means to travel? Not be allowed to travel? What?

Or does the The Alantic's editorial process allows the following format to grace their pages "If [obvious bullshit], then [invented nonsense from a faulty premise]."?

Too Many People Want to Travel

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