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Do people go to see Venice, or to see Venetians? The easy, facile answer is to move all the residents out, turn the old city into Historic Venice Amusements Di
by logfromblammo 8y ago
Do people go to see Venice, or to see Venetians?
The easy, facile answer is to move all the residents out, turn the old city into Historic Venice Amusements District, build a commuter transit line out to New Venice (with no tourist attractions), and all of its civic services are then paid for by income from the tourist trap. Everyone has ready access to service jobs in the tourism and public safety sectors. If tourists want to see real Venetians, they pay to bring some in on the train, to be photographed in a nearly-authentic setting.
"Nobody goes there anymore--it's too crowded."
You shouldn't curse your own success. Plenty of cities would dearly love to have throngs of visitors that seek only to look around, have fun, eat, drink, and otherwise spend their vacation money. I know of one in Florida that was specifically built, from the swamp up, for that single purpose.
If you don't want all tourist attractions to become Disneyworld, you have to visit places that aren't yet well on their way to that endpoint. There are many places on this planet that are fun and interesting for visitors. I can very easily choose to no visit locales that have been overrun and ruined by overtourism. It's not difficult. If an underemployed local is trying to sell you discounted show tickets or pass out ad-laden maps of local attractions, you're in one. If your hotel has posted a warning about pickpockets, you're in one. If you can't discern the boundary line between the gift shop at the exit to the last attraction and the gift shop at the entrance to the next one, you're in one.
- ant6n 8y agoI don't get it. You're describing Venice as it is today.
- logfromblammo 8y agoDo people not know what they're getting when they go to visit Venice? I don't need to go there to know that I wouldn't want to go there. The Venice people actually might want to visit hasn't existed for hundreds of years. You can't go to that one. You can only go to the ersatz tourism version of it that happens to be co-located geographically. If demand were high enough, someone could build a replica out in the deserts of southern Nevada or northern China. I'm not very keen on tourism in general, if you couldn't detect my tone. When it's not part of a parting-cash-from-visitors industry, tourism can actually be quite inexpensive and enjoyable, but all the incentives are for locals to establish such an industry once the numbers rise high enough. The only way around it is to not visit the same places (away from home) too often, and to not go anywhere with too many visitors. Once businesses start to differentiate between those serving locals and those serving visitors, the slope starts slipping.
- calebh 8y agoI recently visited Carcassonne, France, and this is how it basically works. The old city is dedicated solely to tourism, and the new city is where all the actual residents live. The old city was abandoned before it was restored, so this situation ended up occurring naturally. My girlfriend and I stayed at a bead & breakfast in the new city. Most of the tourists are locals from France, but enough people speak English that communication is not a problem.