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As a regular traveller for leisure and living in a major tourist destination (Amsterdam), I've been thinking and experiencing a lot the issue of over-tourism. H
by drukenemo 8y ago
As a regular traveller for leisure and living in a major tourist destination (Amsterdam), I've been thinking and experiencing a lot the issue of over-tourism. However, I disagree with the article's idea that the only solution is to stop traveling voluntarily.
Personally, I think pre-approved tourist visas will be the most efficient way of controlling how many people can travel to a country and then regions of a country. So, the solution already exists in part. Understandably, a few cities and areas of a country receive most tourists. You could therefore regulate the amount of visitors in each area by issuing location-depdendent visas. For example: "On the chosen dates you can come to the United States, but cannot visit New York or Florida. You may visit California, Nevada, Georgia etc etc."
It's terrifying and limiting, but realistically it's the only pro-active solution I can think of to improve the sustainability of a place, especially for the locals. Flight prices are likely to continue to drop and more people will have means to travel internationally. You cannot count on people's consciousness to address this issue.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y agoThe issue with that, is that the US doesn’t have good ways of controlling internal movements. It can check your visa at the bodega, but once you are in, generally no one will check your visa again.
- drukenemo 8y agoNo country has that kind of control level, as far as I know. But you could enforce it for example by preventing hotels/Airbnbs from legally accepting tourists with no visas for their region.
- habitue 8y agoYou don't need 100% fool-proof internal movement tracking since it's just intended to reduce the volume of tourists in a particular area. I would think just limiting the number of tourist visas a particular destination airport can accept would be fine. Sure, you can drive from an airport in Tampa to go to Disney World, but it would massively reduce the number of people. (That being said, Disney is probably a bad example since it's not built on a world heritage site you need to limit foot traffic to, it replaced a bunch of orange groves in the middle of nowhere)
- graeme 8y agoA better solution might be robust local hotel/airbnb taxes. That may be the best proxy for whether someone is a tourist. That way, if a location is overwhelmed by tourists, it can raise a levy to discourage the flow. The trick would be designing a good system.
- derf_ 8y agoOr you could use market dynamics to allocate a scarce resource (i.e., raise the price): https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/359649/tourist-tax-up-to-35-to-be-charged https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/359649/tourist-tax-...
- gascan 8y agoI think people are in general becoming a little disillusioned with using market dynamics to allocate leisure. Nobody minds that only rich people can stay at fancy hotels. But if, hypothetically, only rich people can set foot in New Zealand? That offends people. Yes, scarce resources need allocating. Market dynamics are not the only way, see lottery permits in the NPS.
- hueving 8y agoRight, this serves two purposes. It limits the visitor counts and also provides funding to deal with the fallout of visitors.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoIn a small way this has happened in Colorado. Certain parks have become so popular that officials are considering a daily limit. Hanging Lake for instance: https://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/22/hanging-lake-permits-daily-visitor-limit/ https://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/22/hanging-lake-permits-d... Of course there are many other parks that don't have this problem in Colorado.