Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

https://www.outsideonline.com/2401446/norway-adventure-travel-overtourism

by gerbilly • 7 years ago

148 259 7 years ago

sgt• 7 years ago

Minor correction, the guy's name is Børge Ousland, not Borge.

tomcooks3• 7 years ago

It's not minor, the implications of such mistakes are enormous (especially in the days of easy copy-pasting, semi-universal support for utf8 on the web, and plenty of ways to do research) on a cultural level.

Poor journalism and disdain for what's foreign, the ASCII way. Vae victis.

627467• 7 years ago

I guess it should be 艾未未 rather than Ai Weiwei then...

brummm• 7 years ago

It's often the same with German names/words. Ü/U, etc are absolutely not the same and not equivalent. Leaving out the two dots on top of the U changes the whole word/meaning. Ü would be equivalently written as ue.

magashna4• 7 years ago

It can be easy to overlook. For instance I was curious about this TLD the other day

.xn--6frz82g or .移动

Not sure how apt I would be to remember the English version or know which characters those are to type it in the native dialect.

9nGQluzmnq3M3• 7 years ago

"Enormous"? No, not really, it's more of a nice to have. As a native speaker of an umlauty Nordic language, if you drop the umlauts, it's virtually always quite easy and in fact almost effortless to work out which words is being referred to from context.

mytailorisrich6• 7 years ago

There's no silver bullet. Tackling overtourism means limiting the number of tourists. One way to do that is to impose high enough prices.

buro9• 7 years ago

And then only the wealthy may have holidays.

lotsofpulp• 7 years ago

That's how it is now, from a global perspective.

tomcooks3• 7 years ago

This unfortunately pleases the state, the tourist service providers and the wealthy.

All three of them not being particularly known for their respect of culture, tradition and delicate (eco)systems.

Blah.

johnchristopher2• 7 years ago

Holidays doesn't mean "travelling to another country in a plane" or "let's take a credit to tour Italy".

nickik• 7 years ago

And poor people can go to Estonia or Sweden, or whatever other nordic nation. I think humanity might survive only rich people being able to go to Norway.

strig• 7 years ago

Norway is already very expensive to visit

mytailorisrich6• 7 years ago

You cannot limit the number of visitors and let everyone have this sort of holidays.

The most beneficial way to limit the number of visitors for local communities is to increase prices.

If they want to reserve a number of places for people to be able to visit at a low(er) cost (e.g. through a lottery) then good for them, but there is no entitlement to go on holidays to others' countries or to unique places.

imtringued• 7 years ago

in overcrowded locations that have reached their maximum capacity.

wellactually3• 7 years ago

Another way would be to charge a modest lottery entrance fee and limit the number of winners to a sensible quota.

asdkhadsj• 7 years ago

Scalpers in that market would be intense haha. Legal or not, people would find a way to make market prices

brainwad• 7 years ago

Rationing is not a very fair way to distribute goods or services to people. Some people may value it just enough to pay the entry fee, while others might value it a lot more, but now they have the same chances of receiving it. If you prohibit people from on-selling their tickets, then you also causes losses when people change their minds but are already locked in by the lottery.

nitwit005• 7 years ago

Aside from the fairly large costs involved in running multiple large international lotteries, you'd have to build checkpoints around massive areas, stop people from buying tickets off of the winners somehow, deal with the corruption issues, and other exciting unintended side effects.

All because a tax on a luxury (which tourism certainly is), wasn't fair enough.

m4rtink3• 7 years ago

Actually, lottery is how they do it for various exclusive/special destinations & tours in Japan and it seem to be working in their case.

This is used for rides on the Yamanashi maglev test tracks, tours to the Kurobe gorge railway upper track and other places with inherently limtted capacity.

_pmf_• 7 years ago

One way to do that is to impose high enough prices.

Norway is already too expensive for us (a German lower middleclass family).

magicalhippo2• 7 years ago

Alternatively we could try to make them not all go to the same few spots, ie make more spots tourist friendly.

mytailorisrich6• 7 years ago

With the current state of the environment I think that keeping areas that do not see many people that way is more important than indulging people's desire for holidays.

claytoneast2• 7 years ago

This problem has been solved a long time ago by the Departments of Fish and Wildlife for hunting and fishing. A lottery that is tied to an identity, no transfer allowed. Psuedo-RNG, so that each time you enter the lottery and are not selected, your chance to be selected increases next time. The money from the lotteries are used to help conserve the resource that they draw on. Example: https://idfg.idaho.gov/press/bighorn-sheep-lottery-tag-raise...

This is not a new or unique problem, and hunters and fishers figured out the solution a long time ago. This could easily be applied to local, state, and national parks. Well, easily is perhaps not the correct word, but there is a known solution to the problem that _can_ be implemented.

EDIT: Hunters and fishers figured this out because they fucked up big time and nearly eradicated large populations of animals (see Bison). They (or the D of F & W's) realized they had to do things differently if they wanted to sustainably continue to hunt && fish.

mytailorisrich6• 7 years ago

Why would the people of Norway, Barcelona, Venice, or anywhere else make efforts to ensure foreigners can visit cheaply?

It may make sense for your own citizens to visit irrespective of money, but I would want foreigners to have as much as is needed to keep the number of visitors under control.

I think we'll get there at very famous, very limited places like Venice.

buyingarmor• 7 years ago

Overtourist is a paradox

Once they will solve this problem, they will try to chaise it again

frgtpsswrdlame2• 7 years ago

No it's not. Tourism changes not just prices but character. Consider the recent controversy over the line at Mount Everest. Queueing in line of 100 people so that you can have a minute or two at the summit to take your picture is not the same experience as what you would've gotten climbing Mount Everest 40 years ago. It's this, the destruction of character/experience, what the thing actually is, that is the primary symptom of overtourism.

ryanwaggoner• 7 years ago

So? It’s a different experience, maybe even a worse one (though that’s pretty subjective), but a lot more people get to have it.

bduerst• 7 years ago

Who was chasing more tourism for Everest?

This seems more like it's a side effect of the rock climbing fad than a countries' tourism board balancing their national tourism.

happyman5000• 7 years ago

Problem is tourists will then move to cheaper destinations and with that usually comes even worse environmental consequences.

ptah2• 7 years ago

the problem is that social media is focusing tourism on a tiny fraction that norway has to offer

francisofascii• 7 years ago

Not necessarily. Cheaper might mean, closer to home.

jacknews• 7 years ago

This seems to be more about carbon footprint and sustainability than "overtourism"?

Does all the oil Norway extract count towards their carbon balance, or is that the consuming country's problem? Norway just collect the profit, to pay for all this green cleansing at home?

ptah2• 7 years ago

they are looking at cutting down on oil https://www.worldoil.com/news/2019/9/10/voters-deliver-warni...

bogomipz• 7 years ago

Well, the article states:

"In March, the Norwegian government announced it will gradually divest its shares in companies engaged in the exploration and extraction of oil and gas. (But it will still invest in companies that refine and sell oil.)"

I'm not really sure how you reconcile these two things - a policy of carbon footprint reduction while actively investing in companies whose business is predicated on oil consumption.

e12e4• 7 years ago

Yes (it counts). We're (also) hard into the green certificates shell game;we should stop extracting fossil fuels . We're one of the few nations that could realistically stop.

dorian-graph3• 7 years ago

Hopefully Norway thinks about other countries as highly as they think of Norway.

— sincerely, an Aussie who lived in Norway for 2 years, and protested against Statoil ('Equinor') trying to get oil off the southern coast of Australia.

iflywithbook• 7 years ago

It's interesting to see countries work so hard to developing the tourism and than reaching a point where they can't stop it

I lived in Amsterdam for a year and you can't walk in the city center without drunk/high people around you

I was completely fine with it, but I know that many people who live in the heart of amsterdam that their life changed once they tourist raised

What people should realize is that when the tourist is high in a city/country it doesn't mean that all the people of the country benefit from it.

Only the owners of shops and services around the tourist industry and in many cases it's a pretty centralised industry

balfirevic3• 7 years ago

I live in a city that has had an explosion of tourism in the last 10 years. I don't benefit from it financially (if anything, the rents have shoot up considerably because of it), but it looks to me like it has been the main reason why the city doesn't feel empty and dead after 21h. I'm not sure I would be living here were it not for the side-effects of tourism.

ido• 7 years ago

dont you think you benefit from the fact your city's government has more money to spend due to all the taxes collected from tourists' consumption/visits?

Scoundreller8• 7 years ago

Maybe if the source countries of the tourists could realize that if they liberalized their own country, their citizens wouldn’t dream of leaving so much just to walk around high.

But I have my doubts.

vageli2• 7 years ago

Maybe if the source countries of the tourists could realize that if they liberalized their own country, their citizens wouldn’t dream of leaving so much just to walk around high.

Are you implying that no tourists visit Amsterdam from such liberal places, or that the only reason people go to Amsterdam is for drug tourism? Or something else?

maxerickson• 7 years ago

It's not just a matter of "oops we touristed our city", global wealth has skyrocketed in the last few decades, with a skewed distribution that vastly increased the number of people that can afford to travel.

(when I say skyrocketed, I mean it. Per household wealth has more than doubled even as the population has increased)

elisharobinson2• 7 years ago

buffet makes money in the sodas , and countries make money from tourists with overpriced souvenirs, overpriced hotels and over hyped landmarks. Ever wondered how all these world heritage org people get their funding. If all of a sudden people just want to roam around the country side and instagram everything than how the hell will the country make money , not to mention you might become a strain on the well fare system (low water electricity bill) just by virtue of staying there for more than the required time.

el_cujo3• 7 years ago

I'm glad they're approaching it in a way beyond just "make everything more expensive". It's interesting how when it comes to climate change, a lot of the same people who are otherwise committed to egalitarian ideals immediately jump to "just charge more" as a solution for everything. I'm not saying those kind of policies can't be a piece of the solution, but I really don't see it being effective to tell all but the rich to bike to work and take on vegan diets and give up out of town vacations and stop using a/c, etc. Sure that would probably be effective, but expecting that level of asceticism out of people is just going to push them into the arms of the political parties who tell them "climate change is fake, so take that vacation and don't worry".

1023bytes• 7 years ago

Well, Norway is already one of the most expensive countries in the world, second only to Switzerland.

sideshowb• 7 years ago

Speaking as a tourist, Norway makes Switzerland look cheap. Even the Swiss complain about the beer price in Norway!

mlinksva• 7 years ago

"Just make it more expensive" is the right answer to overtourism!

Dumblydorr• 7 years ago

People will still go even if it's expensive, even if it causes emissions. People are irrational, economists have struggled with this fact of psychology for years.

ohduran6• 7 years ago

Currently living in Barcelona, where 'overtourism' is a much bigger problem than in Norway IMHO, it feels weird. You start passing bills on restricting tourism, then the natural next step is being hard on immigration, then Brexit.

The ability to control who goes in and who goes out usually falls on the hand of those that shouldn't have that kind of power.

Edit: Removed "At the risk of being downvoted" as some comments suggested

bjornsing• 7 years ago

Yea it’s a funny word “overtourism”. I guess it’s what you call it when other people go on vacation (whereas when I go on vacation it’s just “tourism”). :P

ohduran6• 7 years ago

If it's you, then it's a 'traveler' or a 'wonderlust'. The rest of the world are simply 'tourists'.

It all comes down to the question "who do you think you are to block my path?" It's not a straightforward answer, though. We've been struggling to answer this as human beings since forever.

Scoundreller8• 7 years ago

I think of it as “Only rich people used to be able to come here, but now people of more moderate means can, oh noes”.

tonyedgecombe2• 7 years ago

Some of us aren’t convinced whether it’s us travelling or someone else.

PeterStuer7• 7 years ago

Dosage matters. Many things that are completely destructive or toxic are not a problem and even beneficial and enriching in small dosage. Tourism is most definitely one of those things. Typically it benefits a very few in the host location while externalizing the destruction of the culture, the environment and the quality of life for the many that have these places as their home. So it is not about 'you' vs 'the others'. It is about the quantity of people exceeding what is a healthy balance.

seiko988• 7 years ago

Same as: 'You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic'

kjaftaedi2• 7 years ago

Living Iceland, the increased amount of tourists means that everything can no longer be written in the local language so that the tourists can understand, and that when you go to a restaurant, you often can't even order food using icelandic as the staff won't understand you, walking down the street, everyone is speaking English to each other, things that used to be free and offered to the public, now have to come at a charge due to the amount of people trying to take advantage of a place or a service, and the fact that we have several times the amount of tourists as we do locals, it's eroding the culture.. quickly.

At least for me, I feel a difference between tourism, and over-tourism.

pbhjpbhj4• 7 years ago

So, just ignore the problem?

That doesn't help.

ohduran6• 7 years ago

No. My point is that it's a difficult problem, one that isn't solved by building a wall, be it literally or bureaucratically.

My criticism is that this problem is hard. Should we do nothing instead? No. Just think harder.

tonyedgecombe2• 7 years ago

There have been a lot of reasons put forward to justify Brexit, this is the first time I’ve heard tourism used as an excuse.

ohduran6• 7 years ago

Not at all. What I meant was that Brexit mentality comes from the idea that you are entitled to decide who comes into "your country" and who doesn't. I lean towards a freer movement, but I understand that others lean towards the opposite, and it's fine. My main argument is that countries are just political constructions, and tourists may leave a destructive footprint wherever they go because they don't feel that land is "theirs".

It's a weird issue.

skohan9• 7 years ago

I have mixed feelings about this. I used to live in El Raval, and during August I dreaded even leaving the apartment because I knew I would have to fight crowds even to go to the corner and buy milk.

I agree with your general premise, that restricting freedom of movement has not historically been a good thing, but I do also think it's a tragic when a beautiful and interesting place gets absolutely overrun by tourists and as a result gets less beautiful and less interesting, and far less livable for the people who stay there year round and don't leave after a couple days.

I think tourism can be seen as a problem of negative externalities, much the same way as pollution can: for a few businesses in the community, it's a huge net positive. Hotels and restaurants, for example, make big profits off of tourists in popular destinations, but everyone else has to deal with more litter, crowded streets and higher prices, but doesn't see any of the benefit. Just like we regulate pollution, I think it's possible to find ways to regulate tourism to maximize the collective good.

I also think there are ways to regulate tourism without beckoning the "slippery slope" you worry about. For instance, I have been on an island in Thailand which can only be accessed between 8AM and 8PM, does not allow outside plastics of any kind, and charges a modest fee to enter. Measures like that, or increased taxes on accommodation for example, can make it just a little bit harder to visit a popular destination and will probably result in less visitors on average without imposing a quota.

ohduran6• 7 years ago

Maybe that's a good idea. Is charging more the solution? Effectively you're making tourism more robust in the area, because it becomes the main source of value for what you can do there (as in, the more expensive it is, the weaker other non-touristic options become, because they attract less profit).

eisa01• 7 years ago

There’s at least one benefit of tourists: you get more and a better selection of restaurants

I live in a part of Oslo with a vibrant restaurant scene, and one of the reasons is the extra business tourists drum up

magicalhippo2• 7 years ago

[...] in Barcelona, where 'overtourism' is a much bigger problem than in Norway IMHO [...]

We do have quite a lovely but challenging nature here. We have lots of tourists who come here unprepared and some would likely been severely hurt or even died had it not been for volunteers from red cross etc helping them.

As the number of tourists increase, we're likely to see more of these unprepared tourists. So it's not just about the numbers, but what they do when they're here.

A recent news article (in Norwegian, Google Translate does a decent enough job): https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/gar-hardt-ut-mot-uvitende-t...

lake99• 7 years ago

Education of tourists is something that should be required in lots of other places too. Speaking from an Indian perspective, foreigners coming here should be told about what kind of food is safe to eat, what kinds of people to not trust, etc. I have come across a case where a previously healthy German visitor went back with Hepatitis C, which he got from a dodgy tattoo parlor.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 7 years ago

I did Trolltunga last year and I was amazed to see the amount of miserable people who thought it would be ok to walk up the thing in tennis shoes and shorts. This was in May when there was still knee deep snow in a lot of places. People were taking their dogs too which is an absolutely brutish thing to do to the dog. For those who don’t know, it’s a 10 hour hike, half of which is basically straight up a mountain. Saw at least two people get airlifted off the mountain during my hike.

Norway does a decent job of informing people at least on the hike. When you start walking there are signs that say something like “if you are at this point and it’s after 2 pm, turn back around”

It’s definitely one of those “Instagram destinations” that attract this sort of behavior. At the actual rock there were a few people flying drones around to get pictures, blatantly disregarding “No drones” signs.

Scoundreller8• 7 years ago

I’m sure the Barcelona based ULCC Vueling really helped those get in.

PeterStuer7• 7 years ago

In Barecona's case it was the RyanAir booze flights from the UK that destroyed the city.

el_cujo3• 7 years ago

This, it feels very weird to me seeing people advocate for basically only allowing the super rich to travel. To a lot of people, travelling abroad isn't just about getting drunk at foreign clubs and leaving trash everywhere, but about experiencing other cultures and having your world-view widened beyond what you see every day. I think most people would argue these things are good, not just for the individual but for society?

skohan9• 7 years ago

Solving the problem of over-tourism is different than raising the price of travel overall. When talking about over-tourism, we're only really talking about a few thousand places which attract so many tourists that they cannot function in a healthy place. If you increased the price of tourism in those select places, then yes, you might have the unfortunate outcome that only upper-middle-class people could visit Paris in May, but all those other people could go to smaller cities in central France which are still full of culture to experience, and might stand to benefit a lot from increased tourist revenue.

But maybe I am a bit biased because I like to visit obscure places anyway.

rangibaby• 7 years ago

but about experiencing other cultures and having your world-view widened beyond what you see every day.

I think if you want to experience what a country is really like you need to learn the local language, or find a guide who understands that you want a "real" experience and that you are OK with going out of your comfort zone. Otherwise you are going to end up in one of the tourist containment zones around the world where every local speaks sales-oriented English, is hawking some trinket with the country's name on it, and the available food is pizza, fries, McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks and if you're lucky, an inoffensive variation of a local dish.

tgv• 7 years ago

So be it. Traveling everywhere every time you want isn't a human right. It's a luxury.

neves3• 7 years ago

There are different degrees of overtourism. I'm from a very touristy city, Rio de Janeiro, but when I went to Barcelona, it was really in another league. Almost everybody at the subway were foreigner, as almost everybody in the restaurants.

frereubu5• 7 years ago

On a side note, I wish people would stop prefacing their comments with "At the risk of being downvoted..." or "Unpopular opinion here, but..." Just state your point as clearly as you can and allow your arguments to stand or fall on their own. One of the things which drew me to HN was the lack of this kind of language, and I feel like I've seen more and more of it recently.

nmussy• 7 years ago

I completely agree, and this is already mentioned in the guidelines:

  Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

thedaemon• 7 years ago

I wish people wouldn't comment about other people's comments like this. Just up or down vote, this makes for even more boring reading than the comment you mentioned. Here I am breaking my own rule because I cannot down vote your comment.

dang2• 7 years ago

I wonder if we should add a guideline about that, a la:

Please don't comment about your own comment ('unpopular opinion here', etc). It's noise and it's boring.

ivanhoe• 7 years ago

Not necessarily, as you don't restrict people from entering the country, you restrict the availability of accommodations and access to certain protected area. In protected nature parks this has been done for years, you need to buy a ticket to get in, and government controls how many people can enter or even if anyone. In many protected parks some areas are completely off-limits to tourists, so that animals are not disturbed or nature destroyed. Or another example, where I live beaches get closed for tourists when turtles come ashore, and it's been done for years, no one is really upset about it. So why is this different? It's just cities instead of parks and law is protecting the local population instead of animals.

PeterStuer7• 7 years ago

Trying to curb mass tourism leads to Brexit?

Are you one of those people that claims eating a candybar leads to intravenous heroin use?

baud147258• 7 years ago

You start passing bills on restricting tourism, then the natural next step is being hard on immigration, then Brexit

It feels like a slippery slope argument.

prepend• 7 years ago

A slippery slope argument is not necessarily wrong or poor rhetoric. It would help me understand if you would say why this is a poor use of slippery slope.

Many relationships naturally follow along a curve so pointing out this relationship should be remarkable for being wrong if you pass along some other info like maybe you think this rarely occurs, or is not logical.

mistermann6• 7 years ago

You start passing bills on restricting tourism, then the natural next step is being hard on immigration, then Brexit.

This is kind of an interesting comment if you overthink it, as I enjoy doing.

By my reading, "then the natural next step is being hard on immigration" is a rather boldly axiomatic statement, as if being hard on immigration is _Wrong_, full stop. If others hold the opinion that ~open borders are a Good Thing, that's fine with me because it's an opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own. But when reading forums and the news I constantly get a strong sense that in the last 5 years this subject has rapidly progressed from "matter of opinion" status and deeply into "matter of fact".

The ability to control who goes in and who goes out usually falls on the hand of those that shouldn't have that kind of power.

Like democratically elected politicians? Or is there someone else who should decide who gets to hold what power?

ohduran6• 7 years ago

It boils down to the fact that borders are artificially constructed. Yeah, even democracy isn't something that came down from the sky. Again, "who are you to block my path?", a very difficult question.

scarejunba4• 7 years ago

I think it’s just that people believe in the Veil of Ignorance. Why must I be given access and others excluded merely because of an accident of birth? Perhaps all citizenship should be tested into. You put everyone in an immigration queue, including people born in the country. Then you select the best according to a pre-existing rubric.

homonculus12• 7 years ago

It's interesting that someone could recognize the harm caused by droves of temporary visitors to a desirable area, yet not make the simple extrapolation of those effects to unlimited permanent resettlement.

I think that weird feeling OP is talking about is the cognitive dissonance from recognizing in person the need to keep from being overrun by outsiders, yet having a blind spot over the solution because its negation has already been accepted as a given due to social conformity.

not_a_cop752• 7 years ago

All they have to do is allow the immigration of violent sects. Overtourism problem solved.

e12e4• 7 years ago

There's overtourism and then there's overtourism. Up here in Tromsø - one issue is simply fragile nature - without stone paths, people walking around here really harms the environment. Cobblestone pavements fare better.

That said, some steps are taken to provide for more visitors - but the work takes time.

not_a_cop752• 7 years ago

Heaven forbid that people vote against alliances done and controlled by nonelected figures. What is the world coming to? It's like they suddenly hate authoritarian figures or something.

paulsutter• 7 years ago

I can't find much in the article about limiting tourism, except the two non-impactful items below. Am I missing something?

For 2019, the Norwegian Environmental Agency has a budget of $1.2 million to award grants to local areas to fortify existing trails or build new ones to accommodate increased visitor numbers.
Svalbard has taken a number of measures to manage its tourism, including banning cruise ships carrying heavy oil from national-park perimeters, avoiding worldwide marketing, developing wilderness experiences closer to Longyearbyen to reduce carbon-emitting snowmobile tours, and working on ways to extend the average visitor stay to increase per-capita spending and decrease transportation carbon emissions to the islands.

sarcasmOrTears• 7 years ago

The State seizes money from productive people and puts them into things that sounds good, like "tourism". This way they create a problem that then they also force themselves in chsrge of solving, seizing even more money and invading the lives of citizens and business

frereubu5• 7 years ago

Whenever I hear about "sustainable tourism" developments like Ousland's, I can't help but think about the huge amount of emissions caused by people getting there in the first place. I bet the vast majority of visitors fly into Tromsø. It feels a bit like painting the walls while the house is falling down around you.

timidiceball2• 7 years ago

I’ve lived in Oslo for six years now and repeatedly talked myself out visiting Tromsø for a long weekend because of this.

At some point I need to accept that it’s really the primary way to get around the north.

cletus• 7 years ago

Welcome to the world of, by some measures, "too many" people having too much disposable wealth. There are obviously worse problems to have. But overtourism is a problem that's only going to get worse.

This even affects Mount Everest where people are literally dying just to say they stood at the top of the world. And Everest simply can't support the number of climbers now.

You see this in US national parks where the obvious ones (eg Yosemite) are arguably oversubscribed while others you could probably go days without seeing anyone.

There's a certain lack of imagination here. Some of it is convenience. Take Everest. People climb it because it's the tallest and people know what it is. There are ~14 other peaks over 8000 meters. Are any of these qualitatively worse experiences? Probably not. But... bragging rights.

Solutions to this fall into a number of buckets:

1. Making it more expensive: some will complain only the rich can go and this is unfair.

2. Quotas: you have to book far, far in advance and no doubt this is unfair to some people.

3. Lottery system: this is really a variation of quotas but probably fairer.

So I've been to Paris like 4 times. I like it but my God the touristy places are a nightmare such that I basically never went to any. Honestly the best part for me was the bread. The sandwiches you'd buy on the street were unbelievably good.

Anyway, I honestly don't understand this need people have to jam in with 100,000 other people just to see some famous building. Maybe that's just me.

skohan9• 7 years ago

this need people have to jam in with 100,000 other people just to see some famous building. Maybe that's just me.

I was fortunate enough to spend a gap year traveling around the world, and one of the lessons I learned quickly was that I have little interest in "iconic" destinations. I can distinctly remember when I made this realization: I was in Oia Santorini at sunset, which I had decided to go to because I had seen amazing photos of this secluded town on a cliffside overlooking the sun go down over the Aegean. But while the view was beautiful, the reality of that moment was a thousand other tourists elbowing their way to a good vantage point to take the same picture which had been taken a million times before. There was even a newly married couple who was standing there dejected: they had apparently gone to that point to take wedding photos, but discovered it would obviously be impossible.

I still like to travel, but please keep me miles away from anything famous.

dorian-graph3• 7 years ago

When I was at Oia, for sunset as well, there was someone who almost fell off one of the main spots people go as he was taking a selfie with a selfie stick, a girl who peed off the edge (with her friends laughing her on), etc.

Even on Santorini, which is tiny, I was able to find nice places that weren't completely crowded.

xiphias2• 7 years ago

In what part of the year did you go?

I went in late October when weather in other parts of Europe was bad anyways, and there were many tourists, but still an OK amount, not what you’re describing.

It was amazing so actually I want to go back some time to show it to my parents.

PeterStuer7• 7 years ago

"Welcome to the world of, by some measures, "too many" people having too much disposable wealth."

Or as in this case, a cabal of people for the travel industry managing to capture public funds to direct massive subsidies towards their goals, either directly or indirectly though avoid pricing in massive externalities and even get massive tax benefits.

magashna4• 7 years ago

I much perfer to see the oddities a place has to offer, it would be a shame to not be able to visit because others need to stand in a crowd looking at the Mona Lisa.

auiya• 7 years ago

All three of those methods are used by the Augusta National golf course to control visitor crowds during the Master's golf tournament each year. It seems to work reasonably well in creating a predictable number of guests at any given point during the tournament. But they also are able to control their borders effectively. I don't know how you'd scale this approach up to country-size levels.

hinkley2• 7 years ago

It the Everest case the lottery could be used to pay for all of the externalities.

Everyone who wants to climb Everest pays in 100 bucks to register. Winner has to pony up another 900 for the permit, and fines for leaving material on the mountain. Spend the net profit on cleaning up after the people who already left shit on the mountain.

But here's another alternative that also fixes it:

To get a permit to climb Everest, you have to have spent some hundreds of hours volunteering for the crew doing cleanup. You'd see the lower 70% of the route multiple times before it was ever your turn. You'll get a hint of how you respond to altitude + cold. You'll understand what a flying pain in the ass it is to clean up after asshole climbers. You will also go farther up Everest than most people ever will, and you'll be reducing the human footprint in the process.

claytoneast2• 7 years ago

Everest permits already cost USD $11,000. The problem is the government doesn't necessarily use that money to clean up the site. The government also doesn't cap the number of climbers, as far as I know. Hence the chaos up there.

http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2018/12/17/how-much-does-it-...

e12e4• 7 years ago

Indeed. People go to the edge of the world and wear it down.

All the while transport to the edge of the world is a real problem in terms of emissions - both for flight and by boat.

scarejunba4• 7 years ago

Why not just auction? That way you don’t have the misallocation of quotas without auctions, the uncertainty of lotteries, or the deadweight loss of incorrect price choosing. Pick a number the trail can handle, auction tickets.

m4rtink3• 7 years ago

Sure - if you don't mind cutting off all less wealthy travelers, then go ahead.

notafrog2• 7 years ago

I was in Rome with my wife for less than two days for other reasons, and we decided we'd pass by Trevi Fountain. Let me tell you, that place was packed.

Maybe 400-500 people packed just to say they were there, or maybe wait in hopes of getting a clear shot. All of this just to brag in social media.

I think the problem would be better if people didn't brag on social media about every single place they go to.

vkou3• 7 years ago

So, the problem would be better if our monkey brains were not wired to pursue, and to envy social monkey-status-seeking?

The USSR tried to build the New Soviet Man for only what, 70 years...

PhilWright• 7 years ago

And you were one of the 400-500 packing the place. All the others were thinking you are part of the problem and they are the legitimate visitor.

legulere• 7 years ago

There is also some effect of social media. For my next holiday I was checking out where to go and found articles with titles like "The most instagramable locations in *".

Banning photos might be an unconventional but effective way to have people actually experience more of the place they visit and for places to be less overrun.

munificent2• 7 years ago

"too many" people having too much disposable wealth.

I don't think this is the problem at all. The world is huge. There are millions of tourist destinations and plenty of room for people in all of them.

The problem is with distribution. Social media creates power law distributions of attention. There are a few pieces of writing I wish every human on Earth had read and this is one of them:

http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

Instagram has caused these power law distributions to escape media onto the real world. While there are millions of delightful vacation destinations, most people never hear about most of them. Instead, a tiny minority of the most photogenic one (like Trolltunga, mentioned in the article), consume almost all of the attention and then net a huge, unmanageable number of visitors. For every Everest, there are a hundred mountains that are 90% as beautiful but only get 10% of the visitors.

I believe this is one of the fundamental, structural problems of the modern age. Most of the information we consume — literally the knowledge we base our worldview on — is now brought to our attention based on social media sharing and aggregation. The nature of those systems takes a linear range of "relevance" and distorts it into power law that no longer matches reality. But because this is our window into reality, we then take the result of that distortion at face value.

I would love to see more systems engineered to try to balance that. Perhaps a Twitter-like system that capped the number of followers you had. A recommendation engine that subtracted out the effect of popularity when ranking. But so far I don't see many. I'm not sure if it's because it's not what people want, not what advertisers want, or what.

(The great thing about knowing that this effect happens is that you can often easily acquire a better-than-average experience by deliberately stepping a little farther towards the long tail. The third best restaurant in a city is usually almost as good as #1 but noticeably cheaper. The second-most popular hike will give you 80% of the view with 20% of the crowds.)

schoen2• 7 years ago

This is a great point! I've noticed a similar thing with Muir Woods in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are other amazing ancient redwood forests in several other places nearby (e.g. Samuel P. Taylor State Park, Redwood Regional Park, Joaquin Miller Park, the north side of Mount Tamalpais facing Fairfax, and several places along both sides of Skyline Drive along the peninsula -- probably among others that I don't know).

OK, the redwood trees in them might be only 80% as old and tall, the United Nations might not have been founded inside them, and some of them might have only 6 km of trails through the forest rather than 10 km. But many of these places are often nearly deserted, have no entrance fee, are a quicker and less twisty drive from San Francisco, and are incredibly majestic, peaceful, and spectacular.

Meanwhile, Muir Woods had to introduce a rationing and permit system to visit by private car or public bus (https://gomuirwoods.com/), and along the main trail on the valley floor you are basically never out of sight of other visitors during a weekend or holiday.

I've reserved a picnic area inside an ancient redwood grove for an upcoming birthday picnic.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/lake-lagunitas-fairfax

OK, it's definitely no Muir Woods, but it's just 6 km north of Muir Woods and you can reserve the area for a small fee on a weekend during the summertime.

I think the power-law effects you describe have been true of tourism forever. Muir Woods has attracted dramatically more tourists than the MMWD or EBMUD redwood groves for decades. But I also think you're right that the Internet is accelerating them, because you can hear about where to go via discovery mechanisms that so drastically and rapidly reward pre-existing popularity.

(If you live in or visit the Bay Area, check out https://www.marinwater.org/175/Directions-Maps-to-Watershed-... and https://www.ebmud.com/recreation/east-bay/east-bay-trails/ for information about hiking in -- often -- redwood forests owned by municipal water districts in reservoir watersheds, or https://www.marinwater.org/DocumentCenter/View/156/Map_Marin... for a map of all public lands in Marin County.)

reificator• 7 years ago

The problem is with distribution. Social media creates power law distributions of attention. There are a few pieces of writing I wish every human on Earth had read and this is one of them:
http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

I really hope this post was self aware.

z3t4• 7 years ago

In statistics if 100 people think a destination is good what is the chance that the experience is not good?

DennisP2• 7 years ago

Maybe people should stop making fun of hipsters, who consciously try to avoid the peaks of power law distributions.

DennisP2• 7 years ago

A recommendation engine that subtracted out the effect of popularity when ranking.

That's a pretty interesting idea. Get the stuff that's really particular to your interests, undiluted by what's just generally popular.

gniv• 7 years ago

That's a good point. But it's still the case that there are superstar locations that everybody wants to go to. Pulpit Rock, Sagrada Familia, just to name a couple of newly-popular ones. I think for these the solution is to encourage off-season travel. Basically to spread the currently summer-heavy distribution over the entire year.

richk449• 7 years ago

I would love to see more systems engineered to try to balance that. Perhaps a Twitter-like system that capped the number of followers you had.

Is that really better? I think I like the current system. Sure, Everest is ruined, but there are a dozen places nearly as amazing that can be enjoyed with much less crowds. If you want bragging rights, then go to Everest. If you want serenity and beauty, go to the other mountains.

Given the number of people on earth, trying to distribute the people will just lead to everything being destroyed, albeit a little bit slower.

jcranberry• 7 years ago

I don't think distribution is the only problem. Japan is currently trying to distribute tourists through shuttles/advertising/etc but there can be adverse effects on those communities in addition to the normal tourist spots.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Cover-Story/Japan-gets-mor...

There's just too many tourists.

jen729w• 7 years ago

2. Quotas: you have to book far, far in advance and no doubt this is unfair to some people.

Reminds me of that scene from Into The Wild where our protagonist tries to kayak down the Colorado River and is told by a ranger that the next permit is available in 12 years.

Of course it feels absurd, but what do we do?

Edit: the clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4mWt2D_d6s

hos234• 7 years ago

This is an Ad. For tourism.

jaclaz• 7 years ago

Maybe it is not the case at hand in Norway, but what I see around (Italy, Florence) is not as much as "overtourism" but rather "impolite tourism", i.e. tourism by masses of people that for whatever reasons lack the bare minimum of common sense and polite behaviour.

The large numbers are of course part of the problem, but it would be minimized if tourists were behaving more properly.

geomark2• 7 years ago

Same problem in Thailand. When mainland Chinese first started coming to Thailand in large numbers there was an outcry about their terrible behavior. After a while the tour operators arranged for them to mostly go places where they don't mingle with the locals. Except the really famous places like Maya Bay got totally overrun - they just couldn't say no to the profits, despite the trashing of what made it so attractive. Eventually the place was shutdown to tourism for some period. https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/advanced/1029745/phi-ph...

spodek• 7 years ago

I agree with Donella Meadows that top leverage points of changing systems are its beliefs and goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points.

Once the idea of humans flying was beyond fantasy, now we consider it beyond a right but a necessity. We believe nature is elsewhere, not where we live, and contribute to local degradation, dreaming that we'll experience it elsewhere, but flying or taking a cruise ship there.

Without tackling the beliefs and goals driving the system -- the unbridled sense of entitlement, irresponsibility for how one's actions hurt others, the disdain for reducing growth and maintaining wilderness where we live -- we're rearranging the deck chairs of a sinking ship. Humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years before flight and they weren't all miserable.

I propose promoting staycations, camping, biking, sailing, gardening, and other ways of experiencing diversity with less pollution and more empathy and compassion. But most of all promoting beliefs and goals other than you must fly to be happy. That a great life comes from appreciating where you are. That flying and cruises are dirty. Etc.

The world is too big and beautiful to see everything. When I got that, I realized my best strategy was to enjoy here, now, us wherever I am. Then I didn't need to travel so much despite getting more out of life.

elisharobinson2• 7 years ago

i should thing norway doesnt have a problem with tourism it has a problem with "nature toursim" it has a problem with tourists not paying any money to stay or explore. And im sure they might make some bull argument about sustianability. truth is people in tents will probably cause less damage than a climate controled carbon neutral lodge.

mogadsheu2• 7 years ago

I think the answer is clear, if not a bit brutal: raise prices for tourists.

Tourism is a luxury, not a right, and if there is a perceived negative externality to Norway from overtourism, it should be mitigated in the market. There will be fewer people who are willing to go to Trolltunga if they are not a Norwegian resident and the price of entry is $200.

Sidenote: I lived in Norway for a few years, gorgeous place but it does need to be preserved to keep its integrity.

dredmorbius6• 7 years ago

Why should travel be the exclusive domain of the wealthy?

purple_ducks• 7 years ago

Low cost travel & tourism are _not_ rights. They're privileges. Seems fair to include negative externalities in the cost. If that excludes some people, so be it. They can travel closer to home.

9nGQluzmnq3M3• 7 years ago

Travel involves real costs: flights, hotels, transport. How would you arrange a system where travel is allocated to everyone regardless of wealth?

thatfrenchguy2• 7 years ago

But an American travelling from the other side of the world emits a ton more CO2 than someone coming from Sweden, so just raising local prices don’t take into account the externalities.

quacked2• 7 years ago

Everywhere there's people complaining about things like this and yet no one says "overpopulation". If there were fewer people on the planet...

old-gregg• 7 years ago

It's a taboo word for many reasons that are easy to explain, but mainly because there's nothing that can be done about it. You can try and "build more housing", you can "make it more expensive", you can "implement a lottery system" but you can't get rid of people, so it's not a constructive discussion.

The book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond covers this pretty well.

dougmwne• 7 years ago

There's absolutely things that can be done that don't involve authoritarian dystopia. Access to contraception and family planning resources. Education. Better childhood healthcare. Improved rights and economic independence for women. Decreased tax incentives for having more children. Improved economic systems that don't rely on endless population growth.

Population growth in most of the developed world is already below replacement once you exclude immigration. So we've already arrived at a successful formula that solves overpopulation without limiting personal freedom.

quacked2• 7 years ago

It's tough because it would require literally every single person caring more about a nebulous concept of "humanity" and "longevity" than they would themselves, their families, and the next 40 years of world issues. A seriously smart human race would self-limit birthrates to replacement rates and focus efforts on long-term survival mechanisms (asteroid monitoring and redirection, wildlife and environmental management, wide-ranging health care, etc.) but it's so hard to get people to get on board.

Nasrudith2• 7 years ago

Really the "problem" of overtourism feels like a stack of pretenses but it does bring to mind an issue of concentration and trying to make a system to help coordinate information on crowding, prices, etc. and lead tourist distribution to become more even which would be a bit more optimal for all involved both for enjoyment of tourists and infastructure return on investment and reliability of industries. It almost sounds like a job for travel agencies except for the obsolescence of their model.

qwerty456127• 7 years ago

Why is "overtourism" even considered a problem? Just start advertising new destinations somewhere else in the country, raise the prices at the original overwhelmed destination and take profit.

dantheman• 7 years ago

There are many places that: 1. Can only accommodate a certain number of people with the available infrastructure 2. Certain places lose their magic when too crowded, they become unenjoyable

Many of these places are where you can't charge an admission or limit attendance easily.

starpilot• 7 years ago

They could go the way of Bhutan and charge each tourist $250 per day. Would clear things up nicely.

cromwellian2• 7 years ago

Travel tends to decrease xenophobia and increase empathy and cultural understanding among those who do it. I worry that some of the use of environmental impact is a "concern troll" cover to call for restrictions is the result of more deeply seated xenophobic feelings.

Tourism is increasing because billions of people have been lifted out of poverty, especially Chinese, and now they want to experience what those in the West have experienced for decades with their disposable income. Now that the formerly poor have the money to travel, I expect more people complaining about the tourists, e.g. a big bus of Chinese pulls up in a small town, some kid vandalizes something or some people leave trash, and a stereotype that "these people" trash the town emerges.

(I'd also say Americans don't travel enough, less than 1/3rd have traveled abroad, and some of this ignorance bolsters American exceptionalism, because until you see how bad shape your infrastructure is in, or how good healthcare, health, and public safety is in other countries, you have no context to be skeptical of some of the crazy political assertions thrown around)

SolaceQuantum• 7 years ago

I always find it really strange because chances are that by the time you get to the most touristy places you’ve utterly failed at expanding your mind to any real extent. Furthermore, it isn’t even necessary to travel-

If you’re a city person, vacation on a farm where you pay to try and help out with the farm chores. If you’re a rural dweller live in a city like Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago. If you live in the north, travel to the south, vice versa. Swing by Buffalo or Rochester. Entertain Ithaca. Explore philly.

It might not even need to require travel. Volunteer for refugee crisis centers. Volunteer for elder care. Volunteer for child care. Volunteer for wildlife care. Raise a baby bird. Go to a reptile exhibit. Go fishing. Go to an anime convention. Go to a furry convention.

cromwellian2• 7 years ago

It really depends on how you travel. Tour bus excursions are one thing, but when you're young, backpacking and biking through another country, or doing foreign exchange or student travel programs gives you much more exposure. Consider the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Programme in Europe for example.

However, even traveling to touristy places can expand your mind. I recently spent 3 weeks in Ecuador, it completely changed my mind about the country and burst all of my pre-conceived nations, and I say this as someone who has already been to Columbia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, et al.

For an American who thinks other countries are "shitholes" and that other people "live in huts", even a touristy tourbus experience can burst your bubble.

partiallypro• 7 years ago

This is somewhat ironic because I am served ads to visit Norway constantly

a3n• 7 years ago

If they want to reduce over tourism in Norway, they could publish a list of "secret gems" in Finland. Sort of how Japanese banks would park money in competing banks because it cost money to hold it.

chantelles• 7 years ago

This is an excellent idea. I have family in rural Finland and prefer it to Norway. Also: Helsinki is overtouristed too by cruise ships and could benefit from some spreading out of interest. The tourist infrastructure is already there ( I just returned from driving around the Kuopio/Oulu/Aaland/Turku regions).

Thlom• 7 years ago

The problem is mass tourism, not tourists. I’ve lived I two of the biggest cruise destinations in Norway, and that kind of tourism is terrible. Hundreds of mostly middle aged and old people overflow the city for a few hours and spending next to nothing as their cruise is all inclusive. Maybe they will hop on a bus for a guided tour to see all the sights in two hours. All the while the cruise ship is alongside port spewing exhaust all over the city. This is not sustainable. I take 500 German motorhomes driving 20 km/h below the speed limit instead of a cruise ship.

thatfrenchguy2• 7 years ago

Cruises need to die, they’re horrible for the environment and local economies.

outside12342• 7 years ago

I mean this is great, but how about stopping the pumping of oil if you are really serious about carbon?

All of this is a snowflake on top of an iceberg compared to the massive amount of carbon they are exporting every year.

newnewpdro• 7 years ago

If you consider the fact that the Sherpas do all the work for the vast majority of people "climbing" everest, they may as well just install a climate-controlled elevator to the top, charge money to vastly more visitors, and give the Sherpas a break.

geomark2• 7 years ago

Standing room only at Maya Bay in Thailand. https://static.bangkokpost.com/media/content/20160707/c1_102...

Same effect. Made famous by a Hollywood movie. Now everybody has to say they have been there. It is (was) nice. But there are hundreds of other equally nice beaches and bays in the country.

Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

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