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Strange. Scrolling through all these comments and no one pointed out colonial tourist countries. Like how do you even defend tourism in general when shit like that exists?
Hot take but tourism economy is the best economy and best quality of life.
Tourism encourages the best values:
- Environment is much safer and local government is held more accountable
- Great career diversity - even low tier jobs are service jobs instead of factory work and high tier jobs are real product business owners not finance or some other bullshit money shuffling.
- Cultural industries like art, bars, history, museums - all thrive under tourism economies
It’s up to communities to learn to manage it but well managed tourist spot is legit one of the best place to be a human in. I lived in tourist towns almost all of my life and it’s the best, especially in seasonal places where you have a low season vibe with communities just chilling and enjoying the rewards of high season.
The real issue stems from corruption where instead of managing this golden goose someone manages to squeeze all of the eggs to their own pocket and leave the rest unmaintained.
Hard hard disagree. I grew up in a tourist town, and every kid I talked to for over 20 years had one goal on their mind: getting out of there as soon as they could. Job opportunities outside of tourist focused seasonal industries were practically non-existent. Your choices were wait-staff, landscaping, or deli/grocery store clerk. Any other industries had at most 1 business in the single industrial park in the area. Tourists destroying local beaches was and continues to be a major issue. Everything closed after the tourist season so there’s nothing to do other than drink or do heroin, and during the summer there’s too many tourists to be able to go out and do something. Tourist areas consistently have the highest rates of substance abuse and homelessness. Low wages from low skill industries focused entirely on serving the out of town seasonal tourist economy combined with high CoL as prices are determined by what tourists can pay, not locals, and little long-term housing as rentals are focused towards short-term leases for the tourist season and competition for housing is fierce with wealthy out of towners buying summer homes.
I have the exact opposite experience and I also grew up in a tourist town.
Just like any other town you leave to get education and come back with your money and get a house to enjoy your home town :)
What you’re describing is mostly skill issue and conjecture.
Skill issue? Maybe. But conjecture? Hardly. The data says that across New England summer tourist towns consistently have the highest rates of drug usage, alcohol addiction, homelessness, and highest CoL for their region. And this is in large part attributed to the lack of job opportunities outside of the seasonal tourism sector, expensive prices caused by the focus on wealthy tourists, and the competition for housing caused by both landlords seeking seasonal rentals and the wealthy buying or building summer homes that will sit empty for 9 months out of the year. This is also backed up by the findings of the committee in my hometown that was created to solve the issue of young people moving away and the looming crisis that will happen as the town becomes more and more one massive retirement home with too many retirees and not enough staff.
Of all the people that I knew who grew up in my hometown (which is at least 2 generations of teens that I trained at work plus my generation), I found 2 types of people: those who left and never went back, and those who never left and never will.
Care to share this data because from googling around for regions I’m familiar with the story is exact opposite. I’m not familiar with New England but the data is quite the opposite for places I am familiar with.
https://invisiblepeople.tv/how-tourism-negatively-impacts-homelessness/
https://assets.moravian.edu/static/soar/proposals/2017/Keshodkar_LaBare_Proposal.pdf
https://www.flasprings.com/blog/drug-and-alcohol-addiction-in-tourism-hotspots/
https://wewantrelief.com/the-nexus-between-cape-cod-tourism-and-substance-abuse/
https://www.gdrc.org/uem/eco-tour/envi/one.html
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9389488/
https://www.uni.lu/en/news/the-dark-side-of-tourism/
https://mize.tech/blog/the-true-impact-of-the-tourism-industry-on-the-environment/
Just some examples I pulled up in some quick searches. One specific to Cape Cod that I know of that’s not mentioned here is the damage to fragile beach environments due to trampling delicate beach grasses by tourists who either don’t know any better or don’t care. The beach grass there is easily killed by walking on it, which not only destroys the environment that many creatures depend on, but also leads to rapid destabilisation and erosion and full on loss of the beaches within a handful of years (5 to 10 at most). It’s such an issue that there are constant beach patrols of environmental officers across more than a hundred miles of beaches every summer.
Tourism economy is the best economy, for the tourists and their white western touristy values, not the working exploited local class who gets priced out of their life by rich owners.
Rich owners get disproportionally richer by tourist money (by definition much more than the locals, because that’s what makes tourism possible), and then the local economy bends around them.
“It’s up to locals to learn to manage it well and not get corrupted” - my brother in Christ this is basic individualism and victim blaming in a trenchcoat. “Corruption” isn’t a magical thing, it happens because of the proportionally obscene extra money in the pockets of the few.
It’s basically this: tourism doesn’t happen between equals, and the money of the richer tourists goes down the road all money does in capitalism. Concentrated further unless redistributed via politics, and politics bends to money over time.
If you live in tourist towns, as in going around exploring instead of having your future stolen and become nearly unable to both live and leave, you’re part of the people rich enough to enjoy the benefits, whether you know it or not.
I’m a digital nomad in south east asia and I lived in villages, industrial towns etc and I can 100% say that locals have a much better life in tourist towns.
There’s a reason tourist towns have so much immigration because people actually want to be there despite vocal minority raging on the internet - the stats don’t lie.
Sure. Only, what you’re saying reinforces what I said. Rich immigrants like you, from higher economic class, as well as rich locals and those capable of serving them, enjoy tourist towns. Duh.
No need to take into account those locals unable to work in those industries.
People in Ireland tell me the focus is on keeping the tourists safe, not the locals. So criminals just learn who it’s okay to target
And one pandemic and your entire economy is dead
Historically mass plague has been far more uncommon than shipping/supply chain catastrophe. To an absurd degree.
Making tourism economies one of the most stable over the longest period of time. They also bounce back faster and more efficiently.
While also being less prone to permanent damage or shifts from a mass upset.
One boat stuck in a canal has had the same effect on other industries.
Its funny how the blame is on tourists who have to pay exorbitant amounts but not the owners of the property. Its almost like the exploitation of people whether tourists or locals is just the divine nature of our world so it must be the fault of tourists (or immigrants in other places) and never the owning class
In places like south Spain and Greece the “tourist” have outbid the locals and are the owning class.
It’s not like they’re hating on backpackers living in local hostels. It’s hating on the people pricing them out of their own cities. And then renting it out as an Airbnb in the “off season” for 10x the local rent.
There’s even a television show dedicated to this new colonialism https://www.aplaceinthesun.com/
That’s because tourism heavy economies have a tendency to screw over low income locals to favor high income tourists.
I visited Astoria, OR and the bartender at the brew pub was out right offended that I mentioned The Goonies.
there’s better things to visit Astoria for, like the forests and the sea lions(season dependent)
I used to live in a Northern Wisconsin town almost entirely comprised of tourism and snow birds for an economy from May to September. Most were people from Chicago and Milwaukee that moved “a little too fast” for someone who lived in the area, so they were easy to spot.
Once school started up, the place was an absolute ghost town. All of downtown completely shut down except one bar. The hotels either shuttered during the winter or operated a single floor of rooms. The population would drop by ~80%.
I loved living in The Great Northwoods of WI, as it’s absolutely gorgeous up there half the year, but I don’t miss standing at the bus stop when it’s -40F wind chills or shovelling out my car to drive somewhere.
Stargazing was incredible in the winter, though.
Tenerife
Ouf, I guess I was in the good part in 2015, I felt extremely welcome.
fake news!
source - The Visit Estonia deepstate.
The tourists love the town for how it was before they got there. We did too…
Europe is like that nowadays. Rents have skyrocketed only from Airbnb and the tourists. Why rent it to a local when a tourist will pay more? Not to mention it ruins the economy. If another covid happens, market will crash, like the one in the USA.
Whoever made this meme doesn’t live in a city where new houses are bought up to be turned into shitty airbnbs
Hey I got news for you, that’s not just tourist towns.
The cruise tourists benefit my life in no way. They come off the ship and buy a stupid shirt that says Canada on it from one of the Chinese owned gift shops then they go back onto the boat and dump sewage into my ocean.
Can’t even go to tofino anymore as a local who literally subsidizes all that infrastructure with my tax dollars. Have to compete with the rest of the planet for campsites and can’t even enjoy my own backyard anymore
Don’t even get me started on the amount of literal human shit littered across the island at the end of summer
Nah fuck the tourists, nasty animals
Tourists may benefit some local business owners (or chains) while having a negative impact on many others.
Take a small fishing or farming village for example, now it becomes popular with tourists. House prices shoot up to what Londoners can afford and as they only use it as a holiday home it becomes a ghost town in winter.
yeah, it’s awesome to live and work in a town and have to rent a temporary place for 3 months in summer cuz your’re priced out of your normal home, and it was rented in advance by tourist paying 4 times normal rent value
I dont understand. Is the landlord kicking you out for three months? How is that legal? What happens with all your stuff?
Pretty much, yes. In tourist towns leases are often short-term leases that only last up to a few months. Landlords want those places available for the tourist season so they can charge a premium to tourists looking to rent a place for a week, and so they only lease up to the start of the tourist season and locals have to find somewhere else to live.
because it doesn’t happen. OP is full of shit.
that’s just lovely! this past summer was the first I didn’t have to change homes, after doing it for three years in a row
to explain better: I had to agree with the situation before hand, so I was not kicked out per se. the fucked up part is that when you’re trying to find a home around here, most of them have this condition that you have to accept
but I guess you knew that too, or are you full of shit also?
Well that’s not what you said the is it? And I agree with you this really sucks and government should protect you here but no one’s kicking people out to let tourists in.
Complining about tourists is the new complaining about hostile architecture. Add 'generation something" to your title and collect your reddit gold.
