5 ms·

A lively city of tourists? Because there certainly aren't locals living in that city because they're all being driven out. Also lively cities existed well befor

A lively city of tourists? Because there certainly aren't locals living in that city because they're all being driven out. Also lively cities existed well before AirBnB, and AirBnB isn't essential to having a 'lively city'. In fact, I'd argue it's detrimental as all the actual residents that give the city its color get pushed out.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Writing from Prague, where the # of tourists has gone significantly down (to the levels of late 90s or so), life is so much better. In my opinion, there is such a thing as overtourism and we have entered that territory right before covid. Narrow medieval streets stuffed chock-full of people (sometimes I wondered how no one gets trampled to death). So, so many tourist traps selling weird shit. Flocks of Segway riders dispersing pedestrians. Locals living there for decades were pushed out by short term rentals. Plus, the unhappy fact that especially young British guys arrived with only one objective, to get monumentally sloshed on (relatively) cheap booze. Then fight the police or random civilians, puke everywhere etc. Oh the joy, straight out of William Hogarth's morality pictures, only with modern clothing. Tourism makes money, yes. But it can be overdone. And I wonder what the effects are for further development of the country. If you have a choice between studying something hard (engineering) and getting your money from neverending flocks of tourists that come your way, the end result may be societal laziness.
- baby 5y ago
  It’s funny because praha and Czechia wouldn’t be what they are today (one of the richest countries in eastern europe) without the tourism. People talk a lot about NIMBYism, this is it.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Nonsense. Tourism was 3 % of our GDP in 2019 and half of that number is internal tourism (Czechs traveling around their own country). Nice to have, but far from crucial. This is an old industrial country, a former industrial hotspot of the Austrian empire. A few very old cities (Telč, Český Krumlov) really live off tourism and would collapse without it, but Prague is a modern metropolis and mostly lives off normal economic activity, just like any other major city in Europe.
baby 5y ago
Yet would you say that hotels were/are essential to tourism?
- dorchadas 5y ago
  There's a difference between tourists staying in hotels and tourists staying in houses that the residents need to live in. If you can't see that, then there's no sense in replying because we'll never agree on the matter.
  - baby 5y ago
    Yeah sorry I'm not seeing this, what is the difference between a hotel and a building made out of airbnbs?
    - dorchadas 5y ago
      The regulations surrounding them, and often what part of town they're in. Hotels are zoned to not be in residential districts, so they're separate from where the locals would live. AirBnBs are not, and every apartment that gets converted to an AirBnB is one that isn't available for the people of the area to live. Not to mention all the differences between hotels and apartments to begin with in terms of amenities and such.
      - dorchadas 5y ago
        Not to mention hotels are often included in city planning as places for tourists to stay whereas normal residential apartments are not, so it entirely screws up the city planning as well when these areas get taken over by tourists, further harming the locals. Same with tourist shops/bars come in and start driving out the local ones of a neighborhood or when drunk tourists show up all hours of the night loud and messy while you're trying to sleep for work.

inglor_cz 5y ago

Writing from Prague, where the # of tourists has gone significantly down (to the levels of late 90s or so), life is so much better. In my opinion, there is such a thing as overtourism and we have entered that territory right before covid. Narrow medieval streets stuffed chock-full of people (sometimes I wondered how no one gets trampled to death). So, so many tourist traps selling weird shit. Flocks of Segway riders dispersing pedestrians. Locals living there for decades were pushed out by short term rentals. Plus, the unhappy fact that especially young British guys arrived with only one objective, to get monumentally sloshed on (relatively) cheap booze. Then fight the police or random civilians, puke everywhere etc. Oh the joy, straight out of William Hogarth's morality pictures, only with modern clothing. Tourism makes money, yes. But it can be overdone. And I wonder what the effects are for further development of the country. If you have a choice between studying something hard (engineering) and getting your money from neverending flocks of tourists that come your way, the end result may be societal laziness.

baby 5y ago
It’s funny because praha and Czechia wouldn’t be what they are today (one of the richest countries in eastern europe) without the tourism. People talk a lot about NIMBYism, this is it.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Nonsense. Tourism was 3 % of our GDP in 2019 and half of that number is internal tourism (Czechs traveling around their own country). Nice to have, but far from crucial. This is an old industrial country, a former industrial hotspot of the Austrian empire. A few very old cities (Telč, Český Krumlov) really live off tourism and would collapse without it, but Prague is a modern metropolis and mostly lives off normal economic activity, just like any other major city in Europe.

baby 5y ago

Yet would you say that hotels were/are essential to tourism?

dorchadas 5y ago
There's a difference between tourists staying in hotels and tourists staying in houses that the residents need to live in. If you can't see that, then there's no sense in replying because we'll never agree on the matter.
- baby 5y ago
  Yeah sorry I'm not seeing this, what is the difference between a hotel and a building made out of airbnbs?
  - dorchadas 5y ago
    The regulations surrounding them, and often what part of town they're in. Hotels are zoned to not be in residential districts, so they're separate from where the locals would live. AirBnBs are not, and every apartment that gets converted to an AirBnB is one that isn't available for the people of the area to live. Not to mention all the differences between hotels and apartments to begin with in terms of amenities and such.
    - dorchadas 5y ago
      Not to mention hotels are often included in city planning as places for tourists to stay whereas normal residential apartments are not, so it entirely screws up the city planning as well when these areas get taken over by tourists, further harming the locals. Same with tourist shops/bars come in and start driving out the local ones of a neighborhood or when drunk tourists show up all hours of the night loud and messy while you're trying to sleep for work.