menachem

There should be more of those protests. Amsterdam is being overrun with tourists and it is really costing the city.

suec1, your Venice taxi driver is probably not a resident of Venice. And that's the entire point: tourists are pricing residents out of a city like Venice or Amsterdam and are making it uninhabitable.

thursdaysd

Not just pricing them out. Having hordes of tourists around destroys the life of the city and the peace of the citizens. I am thinking of moving back to the UK, but there are cities I would otherwise enjoy that I will not consider because they get too many tourists.

Tourism is not a right. If the inhabits of a city want to set limits on the number of visitors, more power to them. Especially day trippers from cruise ships.

raincitygirl

I can't blame people for feeling this way about hordes of tourists over running their cities.
I have a Croatian friend who lives in Dubrovnik, she says every morning in tourist season the local radio station gives a report on how many tourists are likely to be in the Old Town, how many cruise ships etc. She said most days people are warned to avoid Old Town if at all possible. Her brother lives in the old town and there are days he has to literally fight his way through crowds to go to work.
That would get old after a while. (pun not intended but oh well)

I thought Venetians had voted already to get rid of the cruise ships. Probably that was ignored by the powers that be. That is the problem, regular people can protest all they want but if you have corrupt politicians good luck to you.

Wouldn't bother me if some popular places started restricting the number of visitors, have a lottery system or similar. I think they have talked about doing that at the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland because of the damage to the reef.

marvelousmouse

I have a lack of sympathy for a place like Venice. I'm saddened by its state but they're doing to themselves is the problem. It's more of a case of suicide than murder. The root of the problem is probably that its main source of income is tourism. You can talk about the cost of housing all you like, but you know why most people leave their home town? There are no decent job prospects. Venice doesn't really have industry any more. No new built houses, which means even if you can buy a place, you may not want it because the upkeep of the historic building will do you in.

And then there's the issue of the city management. I didn't see any kind of controls- no one patrolling places like the bridges.Selfie stick and Rose hawkers on the bridges. Touts for the restaurants in your face. City crack down on just basic irritants would go a long way, but all they appear to do is put up signs. That's even betore you consider the fact that I really don't believe that when cruise ships initially began to visit that no one spoke up. There is no way that Venice thought that would not have adverse affects on its structures and ecology. But what I think is that people desperately wanted those cruise ship dollars and still do.

Bar the cruise ships, and they've eliminated the bulk of the problem. If Iceland put pressure on Iceland Air to stop the stop over, that would do the same thing there.

It's a necessary move because the rest of the problem is probably not fixable. I think someone mentioned above- it's not that tourists are visiting, it's that they are mostly visiting one small spot. Same problem with Yosemite. The minute you hike up past a certain point, the crowds drop off quite a bit. Venice could cut their daily visitors in half, and I'd be willing to bet that the crowd in the square and on a few of the bridges would look just as bad. That area was stressful to be in. Once I got a few alleys away, it was an entirely different city.

ribeirasacra

start this conversation back on 11 August.
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-in-crisis.cfm

There are some DE's for Trip Advisor who live in BCN who did not like posting about the protests. Even less on questions after the terrorism in the city. Is it safe to go outside your door?

IMDonehere

Airbnb has caused housing problems in a number of cities.
__________________

Barcelona and San Sebastian/Donostia are relatively small places, thus the amount of tourists become burdensome.

Even years ago the area around Il Duomo in Florence was one large lump of tourists.

NYC had 60 million visitors last year, 13 million were foreigners. But because of vertical living, many new traditional hotels, and the attractions are spread out, it is not burdensome.


We do have a solution for all those countries who do have a tourist problem. Elect someone like Trump, foreign tourism is down this year.

kerouac

I never thought that I would say anything in favor of Ryanair, but it is such a cheap ass airline that it flies to all sorts of places more or less in the middle of nowhere since the tiny airports are begging for flights and the big airports are charging more than Ryanair wants to pay. So I have also seen a lot of posts of people asking "is there anything to see in the area?" because they are choosing the cheap fares over the more tempting destinations.

Of course there are lots of things to see, but of course I wonder if people are able to convince them of the merit of local attractions...

marvelousmouse

Ribeirasacra- by not liking, do you mean they were flagging such posts? I don't like it when they take down constructive posts, but a lot of the terrorism or similar questions I've seen over on TA haven't been constructive- they've been pot stirrers.

Kerouac- Haven't seen those posts- anywhere in particular? What's Ryanair's main city/country? The airline has popped up a few times in researching my U.K. Trip but I haven't used them.


I feel like those same people would be difficult to convince to see more local stuff in the major cities though, like they'd only hit tripadvisor's top 10 list for somewhere like NYC or Paris. It's the mindset- the only way the minor places take off is a cocktail of coincidence, advertising, and social media exposure. Blue Lagoon comes to mind. It's popping up all over my social media feeds, and as I've been there, I can safely say it's overhyped. I mean, it's a fun experience, but I did it because there's nothing else to do that early in Reykjavik. Its "coolness" factor is manufactured by its PR team and perpetuated by the same photos plastered everywhere online.

Heimdall

Blue Lagoon is the outflow from a geothermal power plant, so more industrial than exotic. I went there after a walk around Reykjavik during a short layover between transatlantic flights, and was very glad I did. What a great way to relax before the last leg to London!

kerouac

<i>What's Ryanair's main city/country?</i>

Ryanair is based in Ireland and has become the biggest airline in Europe.

twk

I assume that the protesters are behaving in logical fashion, and aiming their protests at the government rather than at the tourists. If not, they are idiots.

Governments can do things to discourage tourism, particularly the cruise ship variety, but there is a limit to what you can do as a government without inflicting more harm than the benefit that you gain.

It's also rather far-fetched to think that a city could put a quota on the number of tourists--at least not if the city is an actual living, working, city as opposed to a theme park. A national park can limit visitors because the only people coming to the park are tourists. On the other hand, a living, working city depends on commerce for its survival, and commerce entails visitors--its really not practical to try to sort between the commercial visitor and the leisure visitor, even if it was desirable.

thursdaysd

Last I checked, cruise ship passengers are not commercial visitors.

Robert2016

>cruise ship passengers are not commercial visitors< nor do they spend a lot of money to support the local economy.

bvlenci

You would never see the protesters in Venice. They are very few, and they mostly write letters rather than march in the streets. And they only march once in a great while, when they're sure there will be reporters and photographers to immortalize the event.

Whenever there's been talk of limiting visitors to Venice, it gets shouted down by the people who make their living off visitors, who far outnumber the protesters.

The same is true of the Cinque Terre, which is probably more overwhelmed than Venice.

lancer11

So, ban tourists because they take over the cities. Yet without them, the same businesses that complain, would close due to lack of income they derive from the very tourists they despise. Makes sense

thursdaysd

You're assuming that tourism is a major source of income. That may well be true for Venice and Dubrovnik, but hardly for places like Oxford and Cambridge, or Paris and Barcelona.

lancer11

I would guess tourism is a major source of income for most cities including Paris and Barcelona. Take away tourist and hotels, restaurants, attractions and shops all lose money. How many locals stay in a hotel or visit the major sights? It's a double edged sword.

thursdaysd

Define major.

marvelousmouse

That's what I was thinking, lancer...locals don't generally stay at hotels or take tours. Or visit every landmark. Even cities like Paris worry when foreign tourists stay away due to economic troubles or perceived dangers. One of the chief complaints from locals in my hometown is that no one local can afford the indie boutiques and expensive restaurants on a regular basis. It isn't entirely true, but locals would certainly not be able (or even willing) to keep those businesses afloat.

Airbnb's most formidable enemy ISN'T people who are worried about housing imo. Those folks don't have money for lawsuits or influence to use as leverage against the city. Those people are probably actually using Airbnb themselves, just not in their own city. The hotels though- they don't like competition. It doesn't matter if you're talking about Motel 6 or Four Seasons- they pay taxes insurance and license fees that airbnb owners may get out of paying.

Tulips

Nobody is talking about stopping tourism completely, Lancer. But there is a limit to the number of tourists that a city can take. Amsterdam, for example, has plenty of other industries, lots of financial services, start-ups, tech companies. The employees of these businesses need somewhere to live. In summer the center of Amsterdam is overrun with tourists - it's not pleasant. We have kids who live in Amsterdam - finding student accommodation has become difficult, as people make more money letting their spare room to a tourist. So yes, some locals make money from Airbnb, but a majority recognise that this is bad for their city. People are fed-up with tourists dragging their wheely bags through the cobbled streets and up the narrow staircases of their buildings.

If the number of tourists continues to go up, eventually the businesses and locals will leave the city and it will turn into another Venice. So in 50 year's time you can say that Amsterdam is a 100% tourist town with very few locals left. Is that what you want?