4 ms·

Exactly. In terms of CO2 emissions, you're better off flying to a tropical destination and booking a hotel. The cruise ship will burn much more fuel than the je

Exactly. In terms of CO2 emissions, you're better off flying to a tropical destination and booking a hotel. The cruise ship will burn much more fuel than the jet per passenger in just a couple of days. If you stay on the thing for a month, it's going to be an order of magnitude more. There's nothing green or clean about these things. They also have a huge ecological impact on the destinations they go to; some of which may have fragile coral reefs or other marine life that doesn't respond to well to the presence of waste dumping cruise ships. The Venetian lagoon is now off limits for cruise ships. But that's because it has sustained a lot of damage over the years. A lot of other destinations are still being actively destroyed by cruise ship tourism.

mschuster91 2y ago
> The Venetian lagoon is now off limits for cruise ships. But that's because it has sustained a lot of damage over the years. The problem with Venice is more that the cruise ships bring in large amounts of "day tourists" - they come in in the morning, eat some overpriced pizza and pasta, buy overpriced Chinese-made "authentic" souvenirs, and leave in the evening, not contributing much to the local economy.
- omnimus 2y ago
  How is that not contributing much to the local economy?
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    Because the income is spread to a very few people - those lucky enough to own a pizza or coffee store along popular tourist routes. Everyone else doesn't profit at all from the tourists or makes only pittances. That is not enough to sustain a healthy city, which led to most of Venice being left for grabs for AirBnBs - good luck finding regular Venetians actually living in their city.
    - etrautmann 2y ago
      Hasn’t the entire city of Venice been anlmost exclusively funded by and setup for tourism for hundreds of years?
      - Cheer2171 2y ago
        Day tourism is far less beneficial to locals than overnight tourism.
      - omnimus 2y ago
        Not hundreds but it is for sure right now. It has been for decades.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Responsible tourists not only buy food and souvenirs and tours, they also hire carpenters and assistant key account managers, as well as purchase sheet metal, plastic pylons and diesel engines to support local jobs.
    - Thorrez 2y ago
      I don't see how "day tourists" are different from other types of tourists.
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        Other types of tourists spend much more time in the city, they sleep in hotels, they also visit more than just the Piazza San Marco (and thus, distribute traffic flow much more evenly).
    - omnimus 2y ago
      Saying that only very few people profit from the tourists is like saying only very few people profit from the factory behind the city. You are totally right that only few people profit but this is the case with everything unfortunately.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Everything you mentioned is a contribution to the local economy, though? Tourism is €215 billion of Italy's income, about 1/10th of its GDP. Rich tourists coming off cruise ships doing impulse buys at huge profit margins sounds like a good thing to me, from a purely capitalist perspective.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Problem is that it doesn't actually work that way. The boat tourist don't spend too much, or comparatively spend lot less than those that visit cities in other ways. The infra to support the ships cost money, and then usually any activities are run by ship owners. Plus full board is standard so many prefer to eat there and also sleep. It is much more efficient to focus on tourists that live in hotels, buy every meal from local restaurants or at least shops. Have actual time to spend in more than main attractions as such diffuse over larger area. And well have more time for shopping or do it at local airport.
    - newaccount74 2y ago
      Wait until they hear about people travelling in camper vans that cook their own meals and just park by the roadside for sleeping! Or even worse, bicycle tourists who bivouac by the river, they don't even buy gas!
      - nkrisc 2y ago
        How many camper cans and bike tourists descend on Venice every day? Sure, camper and bike tourists probably don’t contribute much to local economies, but they also have negligible negative impacts, so what’s your point?
      - leoedin 2y ago
        Camper vans are already a big problem for some rural areas. And they don’t tend to contribute much to the local economy. You phrased it like that was a gotcha, but it’s not really. Camper-vans and cruises are both high-impact low benefit forms of tourism. I wouldn’t put bike tourists in that group - because they are incredibly low impact in comparison, and in my experience most bike tourists are spending money as they go - either on accommodation or food.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  Which is why they started charging money to enter the city.
gonzobonzo 2y ago
The estimates I'm seeing is that cruise ships are about 2x-3x the emissions per kilometer than flying to a destination and staying there (obviously, it varies with a lot of factors). So if you were flying to a nearby island, you would have fewer CO2 emissions. But something like a trip to Thailand could end up having more CO2 emissions than a cruise. It is kind of strange, though, that I always hear about the carbon foot print when cruises get brought up, but I almost never hear about it when vacationing in general is brought up. It seems like if people were really concerned, they'd be telling people to go to local beaches and not beaches on the other side of the planet, but I've never seen people say "Don't go to Malaysia! If you go to Cancun you'll be creating much lower CO2 emissions." I get the feeling that cruise ships in particular are targeted because, unlike trips to Southeast Asia, going on a cruise ship is considered "uncool."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Plenty of folks say "try not to fly" in general (was it France that banned short haul flights for trains recently?) but "don't take that long haul to where you've dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to see the Caribbean spend more time there by taking a more eco-friendly flight rather riding on a cruise ship".
  - gonzobonzo 2y ago
    > but "don't take that long haul to where you've dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to see the Caribbean spend more time there by taking a more eco-friendly flight rather riding on a cruise ship". This framing is already putting a pretty strong bias into it. Your preferred vacation is something "you've dreamed of your whole life," while their preferred vacations is simply how they prefer to "ride" to a location. One could also say that "don't take that cruise you always dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to go to a beach, go to a beach closer to your house." Both of that statement and yours treat something that most people consider extremely important (being on a cruise, having the beach they go to be in South East Asia) as being merely incidental to the vacation itself.
amelius 2y ago
Also, cruise ships must be extremely boring to be on. You're basically held captive inside a floating shopping mall for weeks. I wonder how many people book a second trip.
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  Depends on the trip but it's more like a hotel that shows up in a different city every day, so there's something new all the time if you get off the boat.
  - Cerium 2y ago
    My perspective as well. When I was high school and college I went on a few cruises with my elderly grandparents. We had a blast. Every morning you wake up in a new city without the bother of packing bags or spending any time actually going there. Unlike airports, piers are frequently in the oldest most interesting part of the city and you can directly walk to see quite a bit.
- hildolfr 2y ago
  So someone pitches you a floating city complete with amusement park, hotel, entertainment venues and restaurants that trots around the world dropping you off at nearly everything interesting on the way, and you think it sounds boring? I don't like cruise ships for reasons, but they never struck me as 'boring '.
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    Also a spa, and a casino, usually. They are a floating mini-Vegas hotel. A lot of the same reasons people find Las Vegas fun are the same for a cruise ship, if maybe just in "miniature" (though the scale factor is now questionable on some of the huge ships), just that when you get the chance to leave the hotel you aren't stepping into Nevada desert, you've got an island beach or a cool port town to explore, and a variety of them at that.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Isn't that going a little far in applying your subjective preferences to universal fact? Lots of people love cruise ships - they seem to be a pretty good business, in fact.

mschuster91 2y ago

> The Venetian lagoon is now off limits for cruise ships. But that's because it has sustained a lot of damage over the years. The problem with Venice is more that the cruise ships bring in large amounts of "day tourists" - they come in in the morning, eat some overpriced pizza and pasta, buy overpriced Chinese-made "authentic" souvenirs, and leave in the evening, not contributing much to the local economy.

omnimus 2y ago
How is that not contributing much to the local economy?
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Because the income is spread to a very few people - those lucky enough to own a pizza or coffee store along popular tourist routes. Everyone else doesn't profit at all from the tourists or makes only pittances. That is not enough to sustain a healthy city, which led to most of Venice being left for grabs for AirBnBs - good luck finding regular Venetians actually living in their city.
  - etrautmann 2y ago
    Hasn’t the entire city of Venice been anlmost exclusively funded by and setup for tourism for hundreds of years?
    - Cheer2171 2y ago
      Day tourism is far less beneficial to locals than overnight tourism.
    - omnimus 2y ago
      Not hundreds but it is for sure right now. It has been for decades.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Responsible tourists not only buy food and souvenirs and tours, they also hire carpenters and assistant key account managers, as well as purchase sheet metal, plastic pylons and diesel engines to support local jobs.
  - Thorrez 2y ago
    I don't see how "day tourists" are different from other types of tourists.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      Other types of tourists spend much more time in the city, they sleep in hotels, they also visit more than just the Piazza San Marco (and thus, distribute traffic flow much more evenly).
  - omnimus 2y ago
    Saying that only very few people profit from the tourists is like saying only very few people profit from the factory behind the city. You are totally right that only few people profit but this is the case with everything unfortunately.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Everything you mentioned is a contribution to the local economy, though? Tourism is €215 billion of Italy's income, about 1/10th of its GDP. Rich tourists coming off cruise ships doing impulse buys at huge profit margins sounds like a good thing to me, from a purely capitalist perspective.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Problem is that it doesn't actually work that way. The boat tourist don't spend too much, or comparatively spend lot less than those that visit cities in other ways. The infra to support the ships cost money, and then usually any activities are run by ship owners. Plus full board is standard so many prefer to eat there and also sleep. It is much more efficient to focus on tourists that live in hotels, buy every meal from local restaurants or at least shops. Have actual time to spend in more than main attractions as such diffuse over larger area. And well have more time for shopping or do it at local airport.
  - newaccount74 2y ago
    Wait until they hear about people travelling in camper vans that cook their own meals and just park by the roadside for sleeping! Or even worse, bicycle tourists who bivouac by the river, they don't even buy gas!
    - nkrisc 2y ago
      How many camper cans and bike tourists descend on Venice every day? Sure, camper and bike tourists probably don’t contribute much to local economies, but they also have negligible negative impacts, so what’s your point?
    - leoedin 2y ago
      Camper vans are already a big problem for some rural areas. And they don’t tend to contribute much to the local economy. You phrased it like that was a gotcha, but it’s not really. Camper-vans and cruises are both high-impact low benefit forms of tourism. I wouldn’t put bike tourists in that group - because they are incredibly low impact in comparison, and in my experience most bike tourists are spending money as they go - either on accommodation or food.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Which is why they started charging money to enter the city.

gonzobonzo 2y ago

The estimates I'm seeing is that cruise ships are about 2x-3x the emissions per kilometer than flying to a destination and staying there (obviously, it varies with a lot of factors). So if you were flying to a nearby island, you would have fewer CO2 emissions. But something like a trip to Thailand could end up having more CO2 emissions than a cruise. It is kind of strange, though, that I always hear about the carbon foot print when cruises get brought up, but I almost never hear about it when vacationing in general is brought up. It seems like if people were really concerned, they'd be telling people to go to local beaches and not beaches on the other side of the planet, but I've never seen people say "Don't go to Malaysia! If you go to Cancun you'll be creating much lower CO2 emissions." I get the feeling that cruise ships in particular are targeted because, unlike trips to Southeast Asia, going on a cruise ship is considered "uncool."

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zamadatix 2y ago
Plenty of folks say "try not to fly" in general (was it France that banned short haul flights for trains recently?) but "don't take that long haul to where you've dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to see the Caribbean spend more time there by taking a more eco-friendly flight rather riding on a cruise ship".
- gonzobonzo 2y ago
  > but "don't take that long haul to where you've dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to see the Caribbean spend more time there by taking a more eco-friendly flight rather riding on a cruise ship". This framing is already putting a pretty strong bias into it. Your preferred vacation is something "you've dreamed of your whole life," while their preferred vacations is simply how they prefer to "ride" to a location. One could also say that "don't take that cruise you always dreamed of your whole life" is a significantly less practical pitch than "well if you want to go to a beach, go to a beach closer to your house." Both of that statement and yours treat something that most people consider extremely important (being on a cruise, having the beach they go to be in South East Asia) as being merely incidental to the vacation itself.

amelius 2y ago

Also, cruise ships must be extremely boring to be on. You're basically held captive inside a floating shopping mall for weeks. I wonder how many people book a second trip.

baggy_trough 2y ago
Depends on the trip but it's more like a hotel that shows up in a different city every day, so there's something new all the time if you get off the boat.
- Cerium 2y ago
  My perspective as well. When I was high school and college I went on a few cruises with my elderly grandparents. We had a blast. Every morning you wake up in a new city without the bother of packing bags or spending any time actually going there. Unlike airports, piers are frequently in the oldest most interesting part of the city and you can directly walk to see quite a bit.
hildolfr 2y ago
So someone pitches you a floating city complete with amusement park, hotel, entertainment venues and restaurants that trots around the world dropping you off at nearly everything interesting on the way, and you think it sounds boring? I don't like cruise ships for reasons, but they never struck me as 'boring '.
- WorldMaker 2y ago
  Also a spa, and a casino, usually. They are a floating mini-Vegas hotel. A lot of the same reasons people find Las Vegas fun are the same for a cruise ship, if maybe just in "miniature" (though the scale factor is now questionable on some of the huge ships), just that when you get the chance to leave the hotel you aren't stepping into Nevada desert, you've got an island beach or a cool port town to explore, and a variety of them at that.
mmooss 2y ago
Isn't that going a little far in applying your subjective preferences to universal fact? Lots of people love cruise ships - they seem to be a pretty good business, in fact.