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How cities can fix tourism hell
- twelvechairs 8y agoI work in urban planning and have to say theres a lot of empty puff that comes under 'smart cities'. Sensors and IoT can help with some things but are more about efficiency or informing of issues rather than solving the issues themselves. The title here is quite ridiculous for the articles content
- longerthoughts 8y ago>more about efficiency or informing of issues rather than solving the issues themselves Isn’t identifying issues a prerequisite for solving them?
- dredmorbius 8y agoHow many urban issues are poorly identified? Does increased surveillance do anything to improve the score? At what direct and/or indirect costs?
- twelvechairs 8y agoSure but many are reasonably well identified already. In a small town with a tourist event everyone knows which streets get full on which days already. And hotel managers will advise their customers what to do. Adding a network of sensors isnt going to change much in most of these scenarios.
- Animats 8y agoYes. The article somehow claims that an "Internet of Things" will somehow be useful for managing tourists. Probably not. Most of the "smart city" efforts seem to be devoted to collecting data that would be useful for marketing, but not city operations. There's not much interest, say, in sensors which measure ground conductivity between separated points and process that data to detect water main leaks. Yet water system leaks are a big issue for many cities. Sensors mounted on city vehicles to detect and report potholes and road damage would be useful. Put them on garbage trucks; they see most streets regularly. Those are things cities have to fix and need to track. No, the author wants to track tourists in detail. Guess who wants that data.
- elbasti 8y agoAt risk of being labeled a "neoliberal idealist," why isn't the answer here simply taxing tourists more? Pigovian taxes have been a thing for fifty years, yet they are still seldom used. It seems like such an obvious solution to me that the fact it's not used more often (ex: towns banning airbnb vs taxing it) suggests to me that I'm missing something obvious.
- wild_preference 8y agoMaybe you push out the profitable tourist and leave the sort of stinky dreadlocked backpacker who changes his baby's diaper on the airport gate kiosk and makes their destination a worse place than when they arrived.
- frio 8y agoYeah, this is roughly where my thoughts lie. When my partner and I were travelling around Europe, many of the popular cities charged a bed tax — usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx. Back home, there’s been debate about doing this too. I hope the pro-tax side wins. Our country is suffering under the annual tourist load, and we need more money in the pot to support it — at the basic end of the spectrum, there are lots of popular places that desperately need toilets and rubbish facilities for the tourists (and the locals) to use. Private industry cannot fill that gap (or, so far, has not) — and while the public are profiting from the visitors, more of that profit needs to be diverted to public coffers to enable the government to fix the problem. A bed tax is a great tool for helping that to happen.
- pj_mukh 8y ago"usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx." This is exactly the right strategy! And the "infrastructure to support more tourists" is exactly what this article lays out.
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- airstrike 8y agoLeave it to the techies to think "tech can solve it" is the answer to any question mankind can ask.
- Ftuuky 8y agoTax the tourists and companies like AirBnB.
- notatoad 8y agoback in the day, the number of hotel rooms in a city was capped to a reasonable number that was somewhat in line with the amount of available tourist services. Counting AirBnB listings towards the hotel cap would go a long ways to preventing "overtourism"
- alexashka 8y agoCan somebody explain what problems tourists are creating? I live in Toronto and was surprised to hear that the population doubles during the summer, because of a large number of tourists. Having spent most of my life here, and some of it right next to the biggest tourist attractions - I never thought any of it was a problem. It hasn't affected my quality of life in any way that I'm aware of.
- aarroyoc 8y agoThe tourist hell mostly affects European cities, which at the same time are usually denser and have a more problematic transport. In some European cities, native people can't pay the rent to live in reasonable places because tourists will pay more. This has been a problem in Spain (Barcelona & Madrid) and both municipalities are working on it, but it's difficult. At the same time, a lot of stores became tourist specific. In the end, you have two cities at the same time, the old and beautiful for tourists, and an outside city for native people, which native people who lived and worked in the old city, don't like.
- mrep 8y ago> The tourist hell mostly affects European cities, which at the same time are usually denser and have a more problematic transport. In some European cities, native people can't pay the rent to live in reasonable places because tourists will pay more. Interesting, as a born and raised American, I find it odd that I keep seeing people praise europe about how great their public transportation and living wages are and yet you claim both suddenly fail when you get some tourists who spend money in your town?
- tompccs 8y agoGadgets? No thanks. The fundamental problem with tourism isn't crowds (although they are unpleasant), it's inflation - tourists have more money to spend and businesses will naturally align themselves to suck up that money. Compare with situation of huge student populations in small towns in UK: their interests don't align with the incumbent community, therefore tension ensues. The effect is two-fold: increased prices for consumers and increased rent for businesses (with useful places like hardware shops, local pubs and locksmiths being pushed out by Steak and Lobster and Angus Steak House). Using IoT to spread tourists around the city (however that's supposed to work) just brings the problem to more and more communities. London turning into the next Venice isn't going to be stopped by some techies in SV (who, incidentally, ruined up San Francisco in a similar manner to the way tourists are doing so here).
- CryptoPunk 8y agoThat's like thinking that a city exporting its goods to a foreign market with high income consumers causes inflation in the city. The businesses that cater to this influx of tourist spending employ locals, which pushes up local wages and spending. The goods/services produced are also not scarce. They can be increased in supply. In fact higher volume retail shops result in more economies of scale, which can reduce local prices.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoThis is simply not true. Look at Santa Barbara for example: high tourism, high prices and locals are forced to distant outskirts. Local spending doesn’t increase because prices simply go up and locals shop at cheaper places outside of tourist hub. I doubt their wages are any higher either.
- CryptoPunk 8y agoWhy do you assume that local businesses generating more revenue doesn't contribute to local incomes? It does, almost by definition. In a housing supply restricted market, tourism can contribute to higher housing costs, but that can be fixed by removing constraints on housing supply, like zoning. And even when this effect is present, its effect on quality of life is counter-acted by the positive effect of tourism spending on local incomes.
- sandworm101 8y agoI say cram them in. Keep them in the cities. A tourist does less damage, and spends more money, in times square than in a forest. In my area, tourists are wrecking our parks, our wild places. Dog bans (to cut back on dog walkers. Dog feet do little damage in comparison) and the closing of trails are being applied to counter the tourist wave. Im for whatever it takes that keeps them on the pavement. Our city put up new signs in a wooded area that never had signs before. Tour companys now post material on these signs. Locals are chopping down the signs. Keep the woods dark imho. If one more of them asks me where the twilight house is . .. google that to see of where i speak.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoHmm, so it's the sheer volume of people? What makes you different? Why are you more deserving to walk in those woods than "tourists"? Because you were there first? :)
- jackvalentine 8y agoIs ‘deserving’ the right thing here? Or is it just because he happens to live there and has a longer term interest in the place than visitors for a day or a week?
- sandworm101 8y agoYes. Because i use the woods every day for my own enjoyment. The tour companies are there only for profit. I help maintain the trails and when some tourist (or old person) goes missing in those woods me, and my dog, help look for them. We look after the woods. Tourists dont. I dont say ban any people, but the city should try and keep the tour groups where they can do the least damage
- gilbetron 8y agoHow about a resident discount? A reverse tax - you can keep prices high, but locals with a resident ID get a discount - it could be subsidized by the local government.
- toofy 8y agoI’m a far cry from an economist, but I’m curious if the sharp rise in tourism over the last couple of decades is an indication that people have much more disposable income than we previously had access. As the article mentions, travel and lodging has definitely gotten cheaper, however I still feel like, due to stronger economy and more disposable income, world travel is no longer limited to the obscenely wealthy. If my read on history is correct, world travel just wasn’t available to so many people as it is now. Is this simply better economics or has our new(ish) interconnected and open world also made travel less scary? Like, since we interact online and trade with people from all over the world, do their different cultures no longer terrify us? I mean, I try to make it to at least one new country a year, and when I travel it terrifies my Midwestern grandparents. It seems that in their generation, foreign countries and foreign cultures are so distant and extremely scary—I don’t want to imply as if they’re bad people, just that the world was much much bigger and out of reach to their generation for whatever reasons. [edit] clarification.
- ip26 8y agoWell, while we are speculating, in a world with better communication, there can be more places of interest to travel to- including ones which are closer to you. Once people toured the seven wonders, but now most of my friends stay within the country visiting niche spots to recreate or eat a different variety of food. That's a lot harder to do if Joe Small-town can't get the word out about why you should visit.
- nikanj 8y agoThe narrative nowadays heavily encourages people to #yolo and live on credit. When everyone around you is getting into debt via epic trips, getting into debt no longer seems like a major problem.
- isostatic 8y agoIt’s not. It takes two to get in debt, the borrower and the lender. Lenders are lending money and don’t see a problem, and it’s their money at risk. As millennials get more power and reach a majority, entering their 40s with no monetary assets to speak of, many debts, but still have income, they’ll push for policies to increase inflation and keep interest rates low. This means the debt they owe reduces, their salaries increase, cost of living increases, but only those with cash investments lose out. This is a failure of the previous generations to ensure that the wealth is spread widely. When you’re dribbling in a nursing home the millions of dollars you’ve saved aren’t going to wipe your ass, it’s the downtrodden youth.
- angel_j 8y agoThe webpage crops out a striking part of the header image (unless yr zoom is set to 200%) https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/GettyImages-468660868.jpg?w=730&crop=1 https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/GettyImage...
- crawfordcomeaux 8y agoHow about educating people on the overlap between colonialism and tourism? What if tourism wasn't solely focused on one's own experiences, as though such things exist in a vacuum, and was a spiritual practice in connecting with and respecting other cultures? Maybe what we need to fix tourism hell is cultivating global cultures of interdependence, respect,community, and service? Educate tourists to make their effects less hellish; trying to control people is old school management-oriented nonsense. It's time to start respecting people's autonomy more than that.