8 ms·

Paradise Lost: How Tourists Are Destroying the Places They Love

112 points by bribroder 8y ago

dougmwne 8y ago
Everything must be matained forever or it will disappear. Areas of economic unproditivity will be capitalized on. If there were no crowds of tourists filling ancient cities, there'd be less incentive to maintain them or not replace them with new construction. If no one used our national parks they'd be sold off to developers or resource extractors. You can't have it both ways. Either tourism and outdoor recreation are popular and the market will respond by preserving unique places worth seeing. Or there will be no interest in preserving these places and our very large and resource hungry population will put these places to more productive use.
notacoward 8y ago
The problem is that limiting access to those with the greatest means (factoring in leisure time as well as money) is horribly elitist. This is similar to a conversation about teleportation that I've had several times with my wife and more recently my daughter. "Sure, it would be great if we could teleport to some unspoiled natural place without having to deal with the hassle of regular travel and hiking for hours/days to get there. Maybe we could even maintain a place there, so we could visit whenever we want. But wait, if everybody else did that then it wouldn't be unspoiled any more. So maybe if teleportation cost a lot ... but not so much that we ourselves were excluded, naturally. But we're not elitist scum, are we? Oh well, let's keep walking." I totally understand the urge, I feel it myself, but my aversion to being or becoming part of a new aristocracy is even stronger. The only fair way to keep places unspoiled would be to issue licenses via a lottery. Non-transferable licenses, or else you might as well just sell directly to the rich. Other than that, this is just an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of giving people freedom (and the means) to travel where they will.
seanalltogether 8y ago
Isn't this in a sense the goal of globalization? Each region adapts more and more to the niche that they serve best.
infinity0 8y ago
Funny that they blame Ryanair and Easyjet, who only serve Europe, in the first sentence, then plaster a big photograph of a field full of Chinese tourists that most likely did not use Ryanair or Easyjet to get there.
- mavdi 8y ago
  Lots of tourist from outside Europe use "hub" airports and then travel to their final destinations, often using low cost airlines. This why German and Dutch airspaces are so busy.
  - infinity0 8y ago
    It would usually be the same airline that did the long flight or one of their partners - but Ryanair and Easyjet don't do those partnerships with Chinese airlines. I've also gotten a lot of their flights and hardly ever see Chinese tourists, mostly local (or other European) tourists in fact.
    - mavdi 8y ago
      Well that's why airlines like Ryanair exist. If say Lufthansa is booked up by Chinese tourists and prices are rocketing, that leaves a gap in the market that these airlines fill. Also people aren't stupid. They shop around and find good deals. I've seen many South Americans using London or Amsterdam as hub airports before jumping on cheap flights to Spain/Portugal etc.
      - infinity0 8y ago
        You're speculating wildly here. When have you ever seen a Ryanair or Easyjet plane full of Chinese tourists??
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 8y ago
  That’s just a way to avoid seeming racist. Nobody will raise an eyebrow at comments about random punters from the UK getting blitzed.
sytelus 8y ago
I grew up with stories of people like Maco Polo and love of travel but my recent trips to Europe has almost repulsed and disillusioned me. Tiny European countries are being swamped by huge swath of tourists, everyone with Rick Steve’s guidebook, they all go look at exact same thing, take exact same pictures and even eat at exact same recommended restaurants. There is a lot to see and little to reflect when you are among herds of camera clicking tourists. I wonder if there are any other guidebooks people use (especially for Europe) that puts them more on path of becoming traveller and less on tourist.
- torpfactory 8y ago
  I often wait until I have a personal connection to a place, such as a friend or related hobby, before traveling. The experience becomes very removed from that of a tourist, and so much more rewarding. Am I selfish if I put extra effort into maintaining friendships with foreign friends so I might end up visiting them?
  - nodnyl 8y ago
    I can relate to this. I have had some more rewarding travel experiences in Europe on short work trips, than I have in similar places as a tourist. I think its a combination of better connections with locals and a reason to be there beyond just looking at things.
  - avh02 8y ago
    This is one of my favourite ways to travel (when feasible), but if there's somewhere you want to go, just go. I was lucky to work in a city full of expats - so I now have friends all over the world to lean on. In return, they lean on me when they want to visit my home country and I happily oblige.
- toyg 8y ago
  > everyone with Rick Steve’s guidebook, they all go look at exact same thing [...] I wonder if there are any other guidebooks Is this sarcasm? The existence of guidebooks, in itself, ensures that multiple people will do what the guide says. A "better" guidebook will just ruin those "better" experiences too. In there you have the contradiction of tourism, which really extends to a lot of our modern lifestyle: everybody wants to be first and original, but also to be led safely. The two concepts are fundamentally exclusive; trying to chase them is a fool's errand. Just be yourself and experience what you want to experience, damn the guides. As a famous comedian says closing his show, "drive fast and take chances".
ahelwer 8y ago
Always worth posting Wallace's quote on the subject: "To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing." A similar phenomenon is happening in the outdoor industry. Instagram is (depending on your perspective) ruining everything or democratizing access to natural beauty. Most people I know practice some variant of a digital leave-no-trace rule: don't post photos in publicly-trafficked areas of the internet, or if you do then don't say where they were taken. It's not so much gatekeeping as ensuring people who want to experience that beauty have to put in the work - read terribly-designed websites, meet actual people and gain their trust, or even take a backcountry travel class which hopefully instills a healthy respect for the environment you're enjoying. Another strategy is to delve further into mountaineering, where the obvious danger of the terrain repels everybody with a working survival instinct and ensures some degree of solitude :)
- trentmb 8y ago
  > It's not so much gatekeeping as ensuring people who want to experience that beauty have to put in the work - read terribly-designed websites, meet actual people and gain their trust, or even take a backcountry travel class which hopefully instills a healthy respect for the environment you're enjoying. Or we could build more walls.
  - trentmb 8y ago
    Not sure why I got downvoted- why shouldn't these people be denied access to a certain geographical area and all its splendors before undergoing some, say, "naturalization" process?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
Invictus0 8y ago
In my mind, this could be solved fairly simply with government regulation. The government can sell tourism passes to enter the country, therefore socializing some of the profits of tourism, or even just hand them out in a lottery. It seems obvious that this will need to be done at some point; there are fundamental limits on how many people a country's infrastructure can support. Without the government stepping in, it will only get worse.
- wwweston 8y ago
  This is actually done with certain destinations in the US. For example, after "The Wave" in Southern Utah became tremendously famous (driven, IIRC, by a very nice desktop photo distributed with Windows), access became permit-only determined by BLM lottery. I've been trying the lottery w/o success most months of the last year. It's frustrating not to win, but it's a fair way of meeting the demands of both access and preservation.
baxtr 8y ago
As a side note: I have the feeling spiegel.de is getting worse and worse by the day. Ever increasing click-bait titles, aricles with little depth, more and more content paywalled. And don’t get me started on the page filling ads... or is it just me?
blondie9x 8y ago
Traveling is overrated. Often times in modern life it feels as thought traveling is a competition rather than for leisure and pleasure. People are often competing to take pictures and say they have been to as many places as possible. Props to travel companies for propagating the travel craze and selling people on the allure of taking pictures and eating food in another spot on Earth. Count the number of people's profiles on social media that do not say they like traveling. Okay let's be honest for a second what does most traveling boil down to? You basically use a form of transportation to ping pong from one point of Earth to another to say you visited a piece of land named X or Y, a country let's call it, named by some person or group who is no longer alive and maybe started a war with other humans to solidify the country name and its artificial border lines. We are moving people from A to B back to A every day and in the process destroying our planets climate because people are bored with the lives in the place they inhabit. We need to find out what is causing the boredom. Understand it and work to solve it so that people can enjoy the places they live. To embrace our shared humanity and environment in front of us everyday if we do not overlook it during the hassle of everyday life.
- eaenki 8y ago
  I'll play Sherlock. I think that's just a controversial view you created and therefore particularly like. It's likely also one you created to explain some preferences of yours (e.g local attachment). Likely instilled from parents. I think my view on your comment is: true as long as you're a cyborg. Personally, I travel where(and when) no one goes. Unique, remote places. It's scientifically proven that when you experience something completely new your brain it's over clocking . That's what usually drives a good % of people. The rest simply follows. Not really clever marketing.
  - blondie9x 8y ago
    I work remote and can travel anywhere anytime so I see it as it is rather than as a fantasy to escape boredom locally.
    - A2017U1 8y ago
sparkling 8y ago
Recently, in the german edition of the Spiegel, there was a similar column[1] saying there was "something really going wrong" when a flight from Berlin to Cologne costs 15€ while the train ticket for the same destinations costs 120€. The same article said that the flights were "absurdly cheap" and that the budget airlines are "displaying the type of capitalism that is disconnected from reality". Im not joking. The question they asked themselves was not why the Deutsche Bahn [2], receiving billions ins subsidies every year, is unable to compete agains budget airlines, but why the government doesn't forbid such low costs flights. The elitism of the authors really scares me. It almost seems as if they want a minimal ticket fee, making flying a luxury once again. Ryanair and Easyjet are well run companies that are enabling millions of poor people to see the world, visit family members they haven't seen for decades, leave their countries for better opportunities abroad. [1] http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/billig-fluege-der-airport-kapitalismus-a-1223690.html http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/billig-fluege-der-... [2] The major german railway company, privatized in 1994, but still fully owned by the government
- rjsw 8y ago
  Aircraft fuel isn't taxed. It ought to be taxed at the same rate as that used for ground transportation.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Cheap airlines are unsustainable and subsidized. I just flew Norwegian from New York to Europe for less than $75. Parking my car at the airport cost more than the flight. That entire airline is some sort of financing scheme and won’t exist in a couple of years.
  - sparkling 8y ago
    Out of curiosity: what was the origin and destination airports?
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Stewart Airport (Newburgh, NY) to Shannon, Ireland. They fly out of several US cities. They run specials frequently and you can get flights to London, Bergen, Barcelona, etc. A friend and his wife were able to fly to London to see Hamilton last year for less than it would have taken to see it in NYC!
jacquesm 8y ago
When - not if - cheap oil finally runs out tourism will be a fraction of what it is today.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  No hope for electric planes then? Or high-speed train travel?
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    It's cheap flights that make this work, electric planes are for now a pipe dream for international and intercontinental flights and high speed trains are not that high speed compared to aircraft.
the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
I went with my wife to Hallstatt this year. It's a tiny picturesque town in Austria. I was there not that long ago, maybe something like 10 years and it was nice and memorable but for a local no big deal. This time we went on a wimp and jesus christ there were so many tourists. It was insane how utterly impossible life must be there for people. There are signs in Chinese and Japanese everywhere about local laws, not to fly drones, not to take pictures of little children etc. I'm not sure what the solution is but that town is effectively ruined for normal people. //EDIT: also the worst part is that instagram and whatever else people are using now is so ridiculously prevalent that you can literally sit down somewhere and hit the refresh stream to see the selfies of people right in front of you appear on the geo tagged location page. It's literally going there just to make a stupid picture.
- ryanianian 8y ago
  There is an interesting (but perhaps not very insighful) connection to gentrification in this. It sounds like that city is still having growing pains with tourism influx, but it also sounds like the local economy is probably doing pretty well, so I don't know if "ruined" is the right term (in absolute terms). Put another way: the locals will have a much more annoying but (hopefully) much richer existence as a result of that influx. Those that dislike this can either move or work with local governments to transform policies to stop the tourism (and fight those who prefer the income).
  - the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
    > It sounds like that city is still having growing pains with tourism influx, but it also sounds like the local economy is probably doing pretty well, so I don't know if "ruined" is the right term (in absolute terms). The actual local economy is suffering but is getting replaced with a new one: tourism.
ggm 8y ago
"hell is other people" I think most anti tourism pieces are elitist. I also find crowds and queues a drag but either it's a lottery or it's priced out to most people. Which is better?
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  I new this band before they were cool man. Now I can't afford tickets because of all the Johnny come latelies who can't truly appreciate their music like I can.
  - ggm 8y ago
    I'm also reminded of US and British tourism in hyperinflation Weimar Germany:. "oooh look you can live like a king for a dollar a month"
- notacoward 8y ago
  > either it's a lottery or it's priced out to most people Exactly. I guess there's a third option, which is that it's simply closed, but that would only be OK if the residents unanimously want it that way and I doubt that's ever the case. The sentiment behind all articles like this is that the authors think access to $whatever should be more exclusive. I wonder how many would advocate for that if they knew they would be among the excluded. Darn few, I suspect.
Karrot_Kream 8y ago
While I think this is being exacerbated by the social media culture of travel ("I love to travel, crazy wanderlust" reads a profile, next to pictures at every guidebook location), this is just the consequence of a global world, where transportation between places has become cheaper and easier than before, and incomes have made much of the world accessible. I for one welcome the human progress. My grandparents had stories of saving up, leaving from their job, and going on long trips on barges for travel. Hopefully we can contain the tourists in a small touristy part of town, friendly to travelers.
siruncledrew 8y ago
At a fundamental level, I think the mysticism and admiration of many of these tourist destinations in Europe has greatly eroded in our internet and social media age. It's not like how tourism was 50 years ago when people mostly relied on anecdotal and literary knowledge of places to get a glimpse of what they are like. It's much more of an experience to have to go see something for yourself to really get a substantial view of it, in a sense. Now, I could go see what Barcelona or Prague or Rome is like today on Google Maps, look through Instagram stories of people who live there, and sort through countless "10 Things to do in __" guides on the internet. Of course, there's pros and cons to each way, but in modern times tourism really is more about "I just want to do predetermined cool stuff in a place for my 1 week vacation" rather than "I want to experience a place and immerse myself in the culture for 1 week".
- fullshark 8y ago
  > modern times tourism really is more about "I just want to do predetermined cool stuff in a place for my 1 week vacation" rather than "I want to experience a place and immerse myself in the culture for 1 week". They were always fundamentally the same, the former is just being more honest about what you are doing.
- sydd 8y ago
  It really depends on how you do it. I went several times on a holiday where I didn't knew the destination a day before. you just need free time, a car and a smartphone. Oh and avoid tourist trap places, it's just a huge crowd and overpriced stuff anyway.
fipple 8y ago
Interesting to see Den Spiegel sympathize with the people who “no longer feel comfortable in their neighborhood because they have become a minority in the cafés and restaurants they traditionally frequented.” That’s one of the main complaints of the opponents of Germany/Europe’s liberal immigration and refugee policies. They admit this in the article but dismiss it instantly.
based2 8y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/30/chinese-village-secret-long-life-bama-guangxi https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/30/chinese-villag...
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
An excellent YouTube channel called Rare Earth did a video on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8quMliXCIV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8quMliXCIV4
mattbierner 8y ago
I've been playing tourist in Switzerland and northern Italy recently and had a few thoughts related to this article. - Knowing the tourist stereotype and not wanting to be that makes me self-conscious. I've intentionally avoided some popular attractions because I didn't want to be part of the tourist scene. Worse, I've felt pressure to modify my normal behavior so as not to appear touristy. For example, at home I go into the city with my camera fairly often to photograph the streets and trash cans and shit like that, but I hesitated to do that in Zurich because I didn't want to be that tourist walking around with their camera. That's really stupid. - The most fun I've had has been taking the wrong bus or a random train and then just going wherever looks the most interesting. The same with restaurants or bars or events: just head out without a destination and pop in wherever looks cool. If you do use Trip Advisor or other popular guides, wander around the destinations and discover what else is nearby. (Atlas Obscura and Google Earth have also taken me some fun places.) - With your phone, you never really have to leave home or truly get to know a place. I can always reach my friends and family if I am just board; I can always use Translate; I can always look up transit directions. One effect of this is that meeting people—including other tourists—can be very hard because not only are you in your own little phone bubble world, they are also in their own little bubbles (not that this is any difference from home actually). I can't imagine what it would be like to travel while uploading images or commentary for the world. - Tourists are only doing what systems have optimized for. We tourists go to Florence because the tools and infrastructure make it easy, and because the guides tell us that it is somewhere that we must visit. Then we take selfies to prove we were there because our culture values and rewards experience consumption. I'd like to think that we can build tools and culture that has a broader view of what travel can be and what you get from it. Because not only is travel an essential way to learn about and see the world, it also helps you better understand yourself and the place you come from.
scraft 8y ago
Why bother traveling? Well I live in the UK and want to experience: -Swimming with sea turtles in the wild -Seeing whales breach right in front of me -The feel of the finest sand I have ever experienced at Whitehaven between my toes -Swimming in the warm sea -Learning to surf with the perfect waves -Sleeping in a ger with a family in Mongolia and getting an insight into how they live, what is important to them, understanding the things which can make people happy (which is very different to what lots of people think makes you happy at first glance) -Hearing the emotion in a guides voice as he talks about the personal loss his family had due to communism, feeling connected to someone and caring instead of reading a fact in a book and it meaning very little -Looking up at buildings I have seen countless times in photos and yet speechless, as the photo had zero impact on me yet seeing it in real life is amazing. For example the Taj Mahal blew me away, looking at it from different angles, seeing the detail close up, getting a true feel of the scale and spectacle of it. -Dancing on the sand in bare feet through the night at a full moon party surrounded by people who are there to have fun and be happy. Sharing moments with other people. Moments that you can recall in a heartbeat throughout your life and mean something to you. -Going to iconic places from films, tv, books from your childhood and feeling that sense of excitement which seems to erode away as we get older, but as an adult you still get that buzz when it is seeing something that meant something to you as a kid. -Tasting home cooked food from an Indian family which tastes nothing like any Indian food I have ever tasted in the UK. -Being surrounded by wild deer and feeding them special deer cookies. Laughing as they shake their heads around and then having to run away as too many of them surround us. -Experiencing the lack of things, the lack of drinkable water from a tap, the lack of hygienic washing facilities, the lack of western toilets and getting so much more appreciation for what we have. -Hearing what local Tibetans thinks about Tibet and China and contrasting it to what is put across publicly -Seeing a sky full of stars reaching out to us from the opposite direction and being in the middle of the ocean or on an island without any lights on and get amazing views devoid of light pollution. -Seeing how unfair the world is and questioning so much about life and how we are currently living it. Perhaps making life-changing choices, moving to a different country, changing vocations, etc. -Filling up your senses with things which aren't available in the UK I mean I could go on and on and on. I am 34 and have taken a year off to travel the world, seeing 20 countries, getting some classic Instagram snaps, drinking with a bunch of British people in remote places, doing things which are cliché and doing something which I don't even like for no good reason. Finding the most British food I can and being happy to taste coke. But that is all just one small part of the experience. When you have been in Asia for 5 months and have basically had a stomach which has never quite been completely right, the most western classic food can be very much welcomed. I personally find it tiresome to hear people for ever complaining about what you should and shouldn't do. If you want a Starbucks in Vietnam then have one, you don't have to drink their (very different) coffee (I have given up coffee so not something for me personally). If you like McDonald's in Malaysia then go have it (McDonald's is great in terms of something safe, reliable, cheap, easy, although not much good for me as a vegetarian). Taking a year off to travel is one of the best decisions I have made. I am confident it will change my life (it already has) and also confident it will create memories which will stay with me and something I will always look back on positively.
Existenceblinks 8y ago
Tons of people would never got chance to enter most of the world. See this third world passport thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778108
SergeAx 8y ago
Author fell into a common fallacy - mistook lust for love.

112 points by bribroder 8y ago

Everything must be matained forever or it will disappear. Areas of economic unproditivity will be capitalized on. If there were no crowds of tourists filling ancient cities, there'd be less incentive to maintain them or not replace them with new construction. If no one used our national parks they'd be sold off to developers or resource extractors. You can't have it both ways. Either tourism and outdoor recreation are popular and the market will respond by preserving unique places worth seeing. Or there will be no interest in preserving these places and our very large and resource hungry population will put these places to more productive use.

notacoward 8y ago

The problem is that limiting access to those with the greatest means (factoring in leisure time as well as money) is horribly elitist. This is similar to a conversation about teleportation that I've had several times with my wife and more recently my daughter. "Sure, it would be great if we could teleport to some unspoiled natural place without having to deal with the hassle of regular travel and hiking for hours/days to get there. Maybe we could even maintain a place there, so we could visit whenever we want. But wait, if everybody else did that then it wouldn't be unspoiled any more. So maybe if teleportation cost a lot ... but not so much that we ourselves were excluded, naturally. But we're not elitist scum, are we? Oh well, let's keep walking." I totally understand the urge, I feel it myself, but my aversion to being or becoming part of a new aristocracy is even stronger. The only fair way to keep places unspoiled would be to issue licenses via a lottery. Non-transferable licenses, or else you might as well just sell directly to the rich. Other than that, this is just an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of giving people freedom (and the means) to travel where they will.

seanalltogether 8y ago

Isn't this in a sense the goal of globalization? Each region adapts more and more to the niche that they serve best.

infinity0 8y ago

Funny that they blame Ryanair and Easyjet, who only serve Europe, in the first sentence, then plaster a big photograph of a field full of Chinese tourists that most likely did not use Ryanair or Easyjet to get there.

mavdi 8y ago
Lots of tourist from outside Europe use "hub" airports and then travel to their final destinations, often using low cost airlines. This why German and Dutch airspaces are so busy.
- infinity0 8y ago
  It would usually be the same airline that did the long flight or one of their partners - but Ryanair and Easyjet don't do those partnerships with Chinese airlines. I've also gotten a lot of their flights and hardly ever see Chinese tourists, mostly local (or other European) tourists in fact.
  - mavdi 8y ago
    Well that's why airlines like Ryanair exist. If say Lufthansa is booked up by Chinese tourists and prices are rocketing, that leaves a gap in the market that these airlines fill. Also people aren't stupid. They shop around and find good deals. I've seen many South Americans using London or Amsterdam as hub airports before jumping on cheap flights to Spain/Portugal etc.
    - infinity0 8y ago
      You're speculating wildly here. When have you ever seen a Ryanair or Easyjet plane full of Chinese tourists??
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 8y ago
That’s just a way to avoid seeming racist. Nobody will raise an eyebrow at comments about random punters from the UK getting blitzed.

sytelus 8y ago

I grew up with stories of people like Maco Polo and love of travel but my recent trips to Europe has almost repulsed and disillusioned me. Tiny European countries are being swamped by huge swath of tourists, everyone with Rick Steve’s guidebook, they all go look at exact same thing, take exact same pictures and even eat at exact same recommended restaurants. There is a lot to see and little to reflect when you are among herds of camera clicking tourists. I wonder if there are any other guidebooks people use (especially for Europe) that puts them more on path of becoming traveller and less on tourist.

torpfactory 8y ago
I often wait until I have a personal connection to a place, such as a friend or related hobby, before traveling. The experience becomes very removed from that of a tourist, and so much more rewarding. Am I selfish if I put extra effort into maintaining friendships with foreign friends so I might end up visiting them?
- nodnyl 8y ago
  I can relate to this. I have had some more rewarding travel experiences in Europe on short work trips, than I have in similar places as a tourist. I think its a combination of better connections with locals and a reason to be there beyond just looking at things.
- avh02 8y ago
  This is one of my favourite ways to travel (when feasible), but if there's somewhere you want to go, just go. I was lucky to work in a city full of expats - so I now have friends all over the world to lean on. In return, they lean on me when they want to visit my home country and I happily oblige.
toyg 8y ago
> everyone with Rick Steve’s guidebook, they all go look at exact same thing [...] I wonder if there are any other guidebooks Is this sarcasm? The existence of guidebooks, in itself, ensures that multiple people will do what the guide says. A "better" guidebook will just ruin those "better" experiences too. In there you have the contradiction of tourism, which really extends to a lot of our modern lifestyle: everybody wants to be first and original, but also to be led safely. The two concepts are fundamentally exclusive; trying to chase them is a fool's errand. Just be yourself and experience what you want to experience, damn the guides. As a famous comedian says closing his show, "drive fast and take chances".

ahelwer 8y ago

Always worth posting Wallace's quote on the subject: "To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing." A similar phenomenon is happening in the outdoor industry. Instagram is (depending on your perspective) ruining everything or democratizing access to natural beauty. Most people I know practice some variant of a digital leave-no-trace rule: don't post photos in publicly-trafficked areas of the internet, or if you do then don't say where they were taken. It's not so much gatekeeping as ensuring people who want to experience that beauty have to put in the work - read terribly-designed websites, meet actual people and gain their trust, or even take a backcountry travel class which hopefully instills a healthy respect for the environment you're enjoying. Another strategy is to delve further into mountaineering, where the obvious danger of the terrain repels everybody with a working survival instinct and ensures some degree of solitude :)

trentmb 8y ago
> It's not so much gatekeeping as ensuring people who want to experience that beauty have to put in the work - read terribly-designed websites, meet actual people and gain their trust, or even take a backcountry travel class which hopefully instills a healthy respect for the environment you're enjoying. Or we could build more walls.
- trentmb 8y ago
  Not sure why I got downvoted- why shouldn't these people be denied access to a certain geographical area and all its splendors before undergoing some, say, "naturalization" process?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

Invictus0 8y ago

In my mind, this could be solved fairly simply with government regulation. The government can sell tourism passes to enter the country, therefore socializing some of the profits of tourism, or even just hand them out in a lottery. It seems obvious that this will need to be done at some point; there are fundamental limits on how many people a country's infrastructure can support. Without the government stepping in, it will only get worse.

wwweston 8y ago
This is actually done with certain destinations in the US. For example, after "The Wave" in Southern Utah became tremendously famous (driven, IIRC, by a very nice desktop photo distributed with Windows), access became permit-only determined by BLM lottery. I've been trying the lottery w/o success most months of the last year. It's frustrating not to win, but it's a fair way of meeting the demands of both access and preservation.

baxtr 8y ago

As a side note: I have the feeling spiegel.de is getting worse and worse by the day. Ever increasing click-bait titles, aricles with little depth, more and more content paywalled. And don’t get me started on the page filling ads... or is it just me?

blondie9x 8y ago

Traveling is overrated. Often times in modern life it feels as thought traveling is a competition rather than for leisure and pleasure. People are often competing to take pictures and say they have been to as many places as possible. Props to travel companies for propagating the travel craze and selling people on the allure of taking pictures and eating food in another spot on Earth. Count the number of people's profiles on social media that do not say they like traveling. Okay let's be honest for a second what does most traveling boil down to? You basically use a form of transportation to ping pong from one point of Earth to another to say you visited a piece of land named X or Y, a country let's call it, named by some person or group who is no longer alive and maybe started a war with other humans to solidify the country name and its artificial border lines. We are moving people from A to B back to A every day and in the process destroying our planets climate because people are bored with the lives in the place they inhabit. We need to find out what is causing the boredom. Understand it and work to solve it so that people can enjoy the places they live. To embrace our shared humanity and environment in front of us everyday if we do not overlook it during the hassle of everyday life.

eaenki 8y ago
I'll play Sherlock. I think that's just a controversial view you created and therefore particularly like. It's likely also one you created to explain some preferences of yours (e.g local attachment). Likely instilled from parents. I think my view on your comment is: true as long as you're a cyborg. Personally, I travel where(and when) no one goes. Unique, remote places. It's scientifically proven that when you experience something completely new your brain it's over clocking . That's what usually drives a good % of people. The rest simply follows. Not really clever marketing.
- blondie9x 8y ago
  I work remote and can travel anywhere anytime so I see it as it is rather than as a fantasy to escape boredom locally.
  - A2017U1 8y ago

sparkling 8y ago

Recently, in the german edition of the Spiegel, there was a similar column[1] saying there was "something really going wrong" when a flight from Berlin to Cologne costs 15€ while the train ticket for the same destinations costs 120€. The same article said that the flights were "absurdly cheap" and that the budget airlines are "displaying the type of capitalism that is disconnected from reality". Im not joking. The question they asked themselves was not why the Deutsche Bahn [2], receiving billions ins subsidies every year, is unable to compete agains budget airlines, but why the government doesn't forbid such low costs flights. The elitism of the authors really scares me. It almost seems as if they want a minimal ticket fee, making flying a luxury once again. Ryanair and Easyjet are well run companies that are enabling millions of poor people to see the world, visit family members they haven't seen for decades, leave their countries for better opportunities abroad. [1] http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/billig-fluege-der-airport-kapitalismus-a-1223690.html http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/billig-fluege-der-... [2] The major german railway company, privatized in 1994, but still fully owned by the government

rjsw 8y ago
Aircraft fuel isn't taxed. It ought to be taxed at the same rate as that used for ground transportation.
Spooky23 8y ago
Cheap airlines are unsustainable and subsidized. I just flew Norwegian from New York to Europe for less than $75. Parking my car at the airport cost more than the flight. That entire airline is some sort of financing scheme and won’t exist in a couple of years.
- sparkling 8y ago
  Out of curiosity: what was the origin and destination airports?
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Stewart Airport (Newburgh, NY) to Shannon, Ireland. They fly out of several US cities. They run specials frequently and you can get flights to London, Bergen, Barcelona, etc. A friend and his wife were able to fly to London to see Hamilton last year for less than it would have taken to see it in NYC!

jacquesm 8y ago

When - not if - cheap oil finally runs out tourism will be a fraction of what it is today.

jogjayr 8y ago
No hope for electric planes then? Or high-speed train travel?
- jacquesm 8y ago
  It's cheap flights that make this work, electric planes are for now a pipe dream for international and intercontinental flights and high speed trains are not that high speed compared to aircraft.

the_mitsuhiko 8y ago

I went with my wife to Hallstatt this year. It's a tiny picturesque town in Austria. I was there not that long ago, maybe something like 10 years and it was nice and memorable but for a local no big deal. This time we went on a wimp and jesus christ there were so many tourists. It was insane how utterly impossible life must be there for people. There are signs in Chinese and Japanese everywhere about local laws, not to fly drones, not to take pictures of little children etc. I'm not sure what the solution is but that town is effectively ruined for normal people. //EDIT: also the worst part is that instagram and whatever else people are using now is so ridiculously prevalent that you can literally sit down somewhere and hit the refresh stream to see the selfies of people right in front of you appear on the geo tagged location page. It's literally going there just to make a stupid picture.

ryanianian 8y ago
There is an interesting (but perhaps not very insighful) connection to gentrification in this. It sounds like that city is still having growing pains with tourism influx, but it also sounds like the local economy is probably doing pretty well, so I don't know if "ruined" is the right term (in absolute terms). Put another way: the locals will have a much more annoying but (hopefully) much richer existence as a result of that influx. Those that dislike this can either move or work with local governments to transform policies to stop the tourism (and fight those who prefer the income).
- the_mitsuhiko 8y ago
  > It sounds like that city is still having growing pains with tourism influx, but it also sounds like the local economy is probably doing pretty well, so I don't know if "ruined" is the right term (in absolute terms). The actual local economy is suffering but is getting replaced with a new one: tourism.

ggm 8y ago

"hell is other people" I think most anti tourism pieces are elitist. I also find crowds and queues a drag but either it's a lottery or it's priced out to most people. Which is better?

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
I new this band before they were cool man. Now I can't afford tickets because of all the Johnny come latelies who can't truly appreciate their music like I can.
- ggm 8y ago
  I'm also reminded of US and British tourism in hyperinflation Weimar Germany:. "oooh look you can live like a king for a dollar a month"
notacoward 8y ago
> either it's a lottery or it's priced out to most people Exactly. I guess there's a third option, which is that it's simply closed, but that would only be OK if the residents unanimously want it that way and I doubt that's ever the case. The sentiment behind all articles like this is that the authors think access to $whatever should be more exclusive. I wonder how many would advocate for that if they knew they would be among the excluded. Darn few, I suspect.

Karrot_Kream 8y ago

While I think this is being exacerbated by the social media culture of travel ("I love to travel, crazy wanderlust" reads a profile, next to pictures at every guidebook location), this is just the consequence of a global world, where transportation between places has become cheaper and easier than before, and incomes have made much of the world accessible. I for one welcome the human progress. My grandparents had stories of saving up, leaving from their job, and going on long trips on barges for travel. Hopefully we can contain the tourists in a small touristy part of town, friendly to travelers.

siruncledrew 8y ago

At a fundamental level, I think the mysticism and admiration of many of these tourist destinations in Europe has greatly eroded in our internet and social media age. It's not like how tourism was 50 years ago when people mostly relied on anecdotal and literary knowledge of places to get a glimpse of what they are like. It's much more of an experience to have to go see something for yourself to really get a substantial view of it, in a sense. Now, I could go see what Barcelona or Prague or Rome is like today on Google Maps, look through Instagram stories of people who live there, and sort through countless "10 Things to do in __" guides on the internet. Of course, there's pros and cons to each way, but in modern times tourism really is more about "I just want to do predetermined cool stuff in a place for my 1 week vacation" rather than "I want to experience a place and immerse myself in the culture for 1 week".

fullshark 8y ago
> modern times tourism really is more about "I just want to do predetermined cool stuff in a place for my 1 week vacation" rather than "I want to experience a place and immerse myself in the culture for 1 week". They were always fundamentally the same, the former is just being more honest about what you are doing.
sydd 8y ago
It really depends on how you do it. I went several times on a holiday where I didn't knew the destination a day before. you just need free time, a car and a smartphone. Oh and avoid tourist trap places, it's just a huge crowd and overpriced stuff anyway.

fipple 8y ago

Interesting to see Den Spiegel sympathize with the people who “no longer feel comfortable in their neighborhood because they have become a minority in the cafés and restaurants they traditionally frequented.” That’s one of the main complaints of the opponents of Germany/Europe’s liberal immigration and refugee policies. They admit this in the article but dismiss it instantly.

based2 8y ago

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/30/chinese-village-secret-long-life-bama-guangxi https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/30/chinese-villag...

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

An excellent YouTube channel called Rare Earth did a video on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8quMliXCIV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8quMliXCIV4

mattbierner 8y ago

I've been playing tourist in Switzerland and northern Italy recently and had a few thoughts related to this article. - Knowing the tourist stereotype and not wanting to be that makes me self-conscious. I've intentionally avoided some popular attractions because I didn't want to be part of the tourist scene. Worse, I've felt pressure to modify my normal behavior so as not to appear touristy. For example, at home I go into the city with my camera fairly often to photograph the streets and trash cans and shit like that, but I hesitated to do that in Zurich because I didn't want to be that tourist walking around with their camera. That's really stupid. - The most fun I've had has been taking the wrong bus or a random train and then just going wherever looks the most interesting. The same with restaurants or bars or events: just head out without a destination and pop in wherever looks cool. If you do use Trip Advisor or other popular guides, wander around the destinations and discover what else is nearby. (Atlas Obscura and Google Earth have also taken me some fun places.) - With your phone, you never really have to leave home or truly get to know a place. I can always reach my friends and family if I am just board; I can always use Translate; I can always look up transit directions. One effect of this is that meeting people—including other tourists—can be very hard because not only are you in your own little phone bubble world, they are also in their own little bubbles (not that this is any difference from home actually). I can't imagine what it would be like to travel while uploading images or commentary for the world. - Tourists are only doing what systems have optimized for. We tourists go to Florence because the tools and infrastructure make it easy, and because the guides tell us that it is somewhere that we must visit. Then we take selfies to prove we were there because our culture values and rewards experience consumption. I'd like to think that we can build tools and culture that has a broader view of what travel can be and what you get from it. Because not only is travel an essential way to learn about and see the world, it also helps you better understand yourself and the place you come from.

scraft 8y ago

Why bother traveling? Well I live in the UK and want to experience: -Swimming with sea turtles in the wild -Seeing whales breach right in front of me -The feel of the finest sand I have ever experienced at Whitehaven between my toes -Swimming in the warm sea -Learning to surf with the perfect waves -Sleeping in a ger with a family in Mongolia and getting an insight into how they live, what is important to them, understanding the things which can make people happy (which is very different to what lots of people think makes you happy at first glance) -Hearing the emotion in a guides voice as he talks about the personal loss his family had due to communism, feeling connected to someone and caring instead of reading a fact in a book and it meaning very little -Looking up at buildings I have seen countless times in photos and yet speechless, as the photo had zero impact on me yet seeing it in real life is amazing. For example the Taj Mahal blew me away, looking at it from different angles, seeing the detail close up, getting a true feel of the scale and spectacle of it. -Dancing on the sand in bare feet through the night at a full moon party surrounded by people who are there to have fun and be happy. Sharing moments with other people. Moments that you can recall in a heartbeat throughout your life and mean something to you. -Going to iconic places from films, tv, books from your childhood and feeling that sense of excitement which seems to erode away as we get older, but as an adult you still get that buzz when it is seeing something that meant something to you as a kid. -Tasting home cooked food from an Indian family which tastes nothing like any Indian food I have ever tasted in the UK. -Being surrounded by wild deer and feeding them special deer cookies. Laughing as they shake their heads around and then having to run away as too many of them surround us. -Experiencing the lack of things, the lack of drinkable water from a tap, the lack of hygienic washing facilities, the lack of western toilets and getting so much more appreciation for what we have. -Hearing what local Tibetans thinks about Tibet and China and contrasting it to what is put across publicly -Seeing a sky full of stars reaching out to us from the opposite direction and being in the middle of the ocean or on an island without any lights on and get amazing views devoid of light pollution. -Seeing how unfair the world is and questioning so much about life and how we are currently living it. Perhaps making life-changing choices, moving to a different country, changing vocations, etc. -Filling up your senses with things which aren't available in the UK I mean I could go on and on and on. I am 34 and have taken a year off to travel the world, seeing 20 countries, getting some classic Instagram snaps, drinking with a bunch of British people in remote places, doing things which are cliché and doing something which I don't even like for no good reason. Finding the most British food I can and being happy to taste coke. But that is all just one small part of the experience. When you have been in Asia for 5 months and have basically had a stomach which has never quite been completely right, the most western classic food can be very much welcomed. I personally find it tiresome to hear people for ever complaining about what you should and shouldn't do. If you want a Starbucks in Vietnam then have one, you don't have to drink their (very different) coffee (I have given up coffee so not something for me personally). If you like McDonald's in Malaysia then go have it (McDonald's is great in terms of something safe, reliable, cheap, easy, although not much good for me as a vegetarian). Taking a year off to travel is one of the best decisions I have made. I am confident it will change my life (it already has) and also confident it will create memories which will stay with me and something I will always look back on positively.

Existenceblinks 8y ago

Tons of people would never got chance to enter most of the world. See this third world passport thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17778108

SergeAx 8y ago

Author fell into a common fallacy - mistook lust for love.