See also: Cornwall.

Hey. We have more than tourism!

Like oil, and slop, and a third thing!

Thats because the residents didnt choose to have their town be economically dependent on tourism. Tourist economies tend to really fuck over local residents. Be it insane housing prices due to airbnbs. Or lack of necessities like grocery stores, affordable restuarants, etc due to all the stores being knick-knack and commodity shops or gentrified tourist centered restaurants. Lack of decent jobs due to everything being targeted towards tourism (really shitty if its seasonal tourism, cause then you are out of the job for the off season). Not to mention having to deal with the roads being congested with tourists, be they pedestrians or drivers. Plus so so so much more. My take, a place should NEVER base its economy around tourism. I got no problem with tourism, but it should be a byproduct or consequence of having a place worth visiting. Not the whole point of the town existing. An economy around tourism is like an economy built around oil. Yeah its a great boost to income for the place, but it comes at the expensive of QoL for the residents, and eventually the well will dry up and youll have nothing to fall back on.

Don’t care. Will visit no matter how angrily you stare. Here is some pocket change. Bye.

I definitely have some contempt for the fudgies but it aint all that bad. There is more nuance here to how tourist towns go about managing their population booms.

I live in a state that is very tourism centered, and I've lived in and near towns and cities that are tourist economies or trying to be. Speaking from that experience, whatever good they bring is outweighed by the problems they cause. Tourism is nuanced, but tourism economies I don't feel are. I've never once heard a resident of a tourist town talk positively of tourism unless they are a business owner or otherwise have some stake in the game, like landlords or airbnd owners.

Some economies can naturally gravitate towards tourism without local intent. If your town is building kitsch then you are probably on the sour end of that spectrum. Here tourism is inevitable, its in the lay of the land. Our town doesnt suck at managing it though, no more than two air bnbs per city block downtown. We have plenty of Inns and Hotels built out to accommodate for short term housing so tourists aren’t competing against locals for space. I would also argue (all be it with some bias) that renting out short term rooms is distinct from being a landlord in a few key ways. A lot more time and effort and care is required from an innkeeper than a landlord, they provide real service to somebody rather than just cornering a resource to sell it back to the community.

I lived like 5 months in spain, about half an hour from barcelona by train, you kind of get it after a while. You wanna buy some stuff to eat and you have to go to the edge of the city to buy something thats not some overpriced touristy bs. At the same time its understandable that someone would want to go to barcelona or spain in general cause its really nice so yeah

Also, Customer Service when a customer needs service:

Fair. Here, they lean way into it. "Vacation land" being the state motto. Camden, Bar Harbor, and Ogunquit being the three worst towns that I am aware of in terms of tourism, but theres plenty more. Lots of homes here are owned by snowbirds (rich people who own summer homes up here and then live in their homes in Florida or whatever in the winter). The economy is already fucked because of the large elderly population, and then its further fucked by all these rich vacationers who each up the housing. All the recreational stuff around here is very tourist adjacent or targeted like skiing, hunting, hiking, etc. Which the lack of third spaces, non-outdoor recreational activities, and most industry being catered to sustaining the elderly or tourists leads to all the young people moving out of state for better opportunities. Which obviously just makes all these problems worse. The place I live, most of the housing is owned by like one or two huge landlord companies too.

That is to say though, I feel like an economy that drifts to tourism like you say, while yes is a tourism economy, I feel it also kinda leans into tourism as a byproduct rather than the goal. Unless you feel thats not the case, idk.

Yeah we have a disproportionately elderly population and many snowbirds too. Our economy used to be highly industrial, and we do still have a lot of operational factories outside of town which provide a lot of stability for the winter months. We also have a huge state park which soaks up a lot of the tourists as they go camp there instead of staying in town, as well as being a favorite spot for locals to go. If we didn't have these things then tourism would be a lot more damaging to the area.

Who is economy. Baby don't hurt me. No more.

Also:

Europeans: "Americans never travel anywhere. Get a fucking passport!"

five minutes later…

Europeans: "Americans?! Here?! Fucking hell!"

There are so many places that without tourism, there isn't a reason to be there. I drive the Western US pretty thoroughly and the difference between small towns where tourists go, and those that have nothing, is stark. They love to complain about it, and hate on tourists, but damn do they want that money. You go am hour down the road and get to the next town and it's dead, no grocery stores, no real business, most the main streets are boarded up from failed attempts at building something. People are fucking stupid, you have have some reason your town exists, or you end up with those towns in Wyoming I drive through that have 20 population, and won't last another generation.

I had a funny feeling you were talking about Maine. Hi from Boothbay, another tourist shit hole

I'm in Central Florida, so it may be the top tourist center in the world. NYC and Vegas give it a run, but that's about it. I've been here for 25 years, and it kind of made me lose any interest in touristy vacations. I'm surrounded by it, so I'm getting the commercial vacation vibe every day. I'm long over it.

These days, I don't really want to SEE things or places on vacation, I want to be in the woods, or an island, or somewhere away from people.

Me, an American while in Paris: oh shit, Americans. Don't make eye contact. Fucking god, ugh I'm in a bad mood now

Haha dw you guys aren't that bad

Oh, yeah I know... Objectively. It's a familiarity breeds contempt thing I guess lol

I'd really love you to try and live in one of those cities. Not just spend some days there, but actually live there.

Housing prices, thanks to fucking airbnb are the highest of your country so buying a house is impossible, but even renting is nearly impossible because nobody wants to rent to a local when they can earn 3x or more by scamming tourists.

Want to work here? You either work in services (bars, restaurants, or other kind of touristic slavery) or need to look for work out of the city. You might be lucky enough to work in something that's not tourism related, but it's pure luck to find one.

The city centre? Yeah... Don't go there, you're not gonna find other than a tourist theme park. Tons of shops created exclusively with the tourist in mind and don't you dare trying to look for something to eat. All you'll find are tourist traps.

I've seen this city become the shithole it is today thanks to tourism.

It’s different. Orlando’s tourism is concentrated at the theme parks and beaches. If you go someplace like Barcelona or Venice, the tourists could be at your doorstep. It would be like living in apartments above Disney’s Main Street. Having been all three places multiple times Orlando’s tourism is more “corralled” than major tourist cities. Sure, volume-wise Orlando has a shitload of tourists, but the dynamic is not the same.

Also, American real estate is stupid money thanks to corporate real estate squatters and air b&b, but at least there was room to grow in the ‘burbs. European cities have no such luxury when investors buy up flats for vacation rentals and squeeze the locals out.

I grew up in a town that the population tripled in the summer.

I hated it because I was a kid and had no choice where I was. Adults would stop their cars to ask me questions as I played in the front yard, I'd answer them fully and truthfully only to be told I must be lying for them to peel away.

There was still only one way on and off the island, you passed the thing you wanted to visit if you were here, and the thing you wanted was half a block away. They all found that out eventually, but no one ever apologized. Even the ones who had to double back (to get off the island usually)

Yeah, but blame capitalism not tourists.

What a strange take. The people that run businesses are almost never the entirety of the town. If they are, you're likely in a theme park or a carnival. And of course the businesses want your money.

Have you interacted with someone that doesn't run a business there?

I’m sorry you had to go through that, hopefully all of Epstein’s associates eventually have to face justice for the things that they did.

Yes, but you do realize that the people that live there work at those businesses. If tourism doesn't exist in those areas, those jobs that they rely on wouldn't exist. You don't have to own a business to profit from it. In many of those areas, there isn't any other real industry.

Dude, I LIVE here. Nothing is "corralled." We have three major theme parks literally IN the city, as well as the 2nd biggest convention center complex in the country. And they are each surrounded by massive commercial zones of restaurants, hotels, B attractions, time shares, malls, etc.

I regularly drive the East Coast between Miami and NYC, and Orlando is literally the worst traffic on the East Coast, with the possible exception of the DC/Baltimore corridor at rush hour. But Orlando is that busy literally every moment of the day, until about midnight. Rush hour, bumper to bumper traffic, is normal at 10 pm at night.

NOBODY drives around without being affected by it every single day. The tourists are EVERYWHERE!

It's always funny to see local waiters pamper American tourists because they know they'll get tipped well. But also, from what I've heard from US friends, for many it's cheaper to literally fly to Europe and vacation here than take a vacation domestically.

once again the common brain dead take

it never fails

this idiot right here is why locals hate tourists

only because tourism in these places crowds out all other industry, often on purpose

gotta keep local labor cheep for profits

this is the truth right here

What industry happens in those areas? Would you prefer a factory, maybe an oil rig. Or how about a mine. Great alternatives .....

So tell us your take o wise one.

you ever actually live in a ‘tourist’ town?

name it

Hawaii had a major IT project to be an international hub, thousands of jobs. This was early 2000s. State tourism lobby killed it.

The difference between a tourist city and an abandoned ruin is that people want to visit tourist cities even when the original economy of the city collapsed. Imagine living in poverty while your community and culture relies on a combination of accepting pity and serving entitlement from strangers to continue existing. It can make one bitter about the situation.

it’s already been made by others with obvious experience living there, you replied to it even

then you handwaved all local suffering away with the argument locals should be thankful because money

big douche energy there

If it wasn't for tourists I would have nobody to sell Quokka eggs to.

For starters, there are no cities "whose economy is entirely based on Tourism". The closest to 100% Tourism are large resorts made specifically for that.

Further, this opinion of many locals about Tourism is from cities which used to have little or no Tourism and now have very large numbers of tourists.The reason for it is that, before Tourism became a large fraction of the local economy, such places used to have a far more diversified and robust Economy that didn't just crash whenever some volcano in Iceland had a burp or something such, neither did they have the overcrowding, high prices and disneyfication of shops, restaurants and attractions that Tourism brings.

Unless you're some third world shithole, without limitations Tourism lowers quality of life, makes everything more expensive (pushing out the locals) and destroys the vibe of a city - you don't need to be that much ahead of 3rd World status for mass tourism to actually make the quality of life for the locals worse: Tourism brings gains to only a fraction of the population but the costs are borne by almost everybody, in a similar way to high polluting industries.

Further, Tourism is very much a Tragedy Of The Commons situation - the side effects of too much Tourism destroy the environment that attracted tourists in the first place, at the very least over time reducing the quality of the tourists that do come (i.e. as Tourism degrades the place you get fewer high spending tourists interested in the local culture and culinary tradition, and more cheap mass Tourism) - and thus invariably those places where governments and local authorities bet heavily on Tourism are either places that used to be dirt poor (and thus have nothing to lose from even excessive Tourism) or are badly managed and thus, driven by pure greed and "we have found a silver bullet" delusions, never impose the kind of restrictions on Tourism needed to avoid the Tragedy part.

As it so happens, I live in such a place - Portugal - and come from a city which has suffered exactly what I describe - Lisbon. The government of an European country with high average levels of Education betting on a low value added industry which mainly employs people with low levels of specialization is literally choosing to stay at "just above 3rd World" level even though the population's level of Education could yield far more than that, which is probably why Portugal has fallen back to being one of the countries with the lowest GDP per-capita of the EU as almost all countries of Eastern Europe have surpassed Portugal in the last 2 decades even though when they joined the EU their GDP per-capita was in average around 70% that of Portugal.

Tourism is great if you're a 3rd World shithole because there no matter how much it becomes it will only make things better than before, but the more ahead a place is in terms of Education and Quality Of Life the lower the level of Tourism beyond which for the majority of people living there things actually become worse than before.

Moving to Hawaii is far different then moving to say rural Arizona.

Not over person has mentioned any other alternatives. It's simply complaining.

and?

do we suddenly need alternatives to justify very real problems?

the original post and the problems the first reply is talking about is very pertinent to Hawaii

you asked for an example, this is a real directly illustrative one

the argument was something along the lines of development harming visual appeal (while having 10 story+ apartments in Waikiki)

but it was and always is about cheap local labor to exploit

tourism does not help locals any more than trickle down economics helps the average citizen

Locals who live in a city who's economy is based entirely on a private prison when they see a new thing being made illegal:

Everyone needs a job to survive in this world. Workout actually, yes. Because it's not a problem. It's people complaining about their way of life. Most would not be able to live in those areas without something like that.

false equivalency much?

and most still can’t live there anyway, they just have a job while not being able to afford living there

almost like you have zero actual experience living in a tourist town and ignored the point in the first post in favor of vomiting your opinion all over the place

anyway until you either admit you have no idea what you are talking about personally other than being a tourist or name an actual city you lived in with real direct experiences I’m done

Look you'd be pissed too if you had to deal with some of them

And this is before considering the side effects.

The high real-estate prices and high cost of living mean high business costs and high personnel costs, so Tourism will actually push out or kill other Industries, even the kind that employs highly qualified people.

Choosing Tourism as the backbone of a country or city is choosing a 2nd World status of having a low value added Economy that employs only people with little or no specialization or formal Education (about 4 of years of high-school is enough to qualify for even a customer facing job in a non-English language country) - in other words, eternal mediocrity. That might be a dream come true if you're a dirt poor place whose only product is natural beauty and were people were just fishermen or doing subsistence agriculture, but for a 1st World nation betting on Tourism as a pillar of one's Economy is choosing to become worse rather than better.

To add insult to injury, Tourism is a highly variably industry prone to massive and very fast crashes - all it takes is some volcano to start spewing dust in the the athmosphere and stop flights, a Terrorist attack or just an Economic downturn and suddenly the number of tourists coming in collapse to near zero.

Yes I have been a tourist in many many cities and I've seen the effect of industries. I've also traveled to many of the cities off the beaten path that have no tourism and have no other industries and I have witnessed how they've died. I was born and raised in a very small town in rural Nevada that is reliant solely upon the mining industry. I watched the ups and downs of that and I watched them trying over the last 20 years since I've left there try to become a tourist town and trying to encourage other industries because they realize that they have to do something and there's no other industries out there that want to be there want to move there want to stay there and people don't want to live there. Because there is nothing there to keep them.

Edit: also very few can afford to live in that town either the cost of living is skewed unless you are working at the mine, 12 hours a day, underground. Tourism isn't the only thing that destroys towns

Tourists are fine, it's the assholes we don't like. The ones that drive like fucking maniacs, and blast music in their Airbnb's.

The worst are the people who buy vacation houses and fuck the locals over with extortionate rent and houses too expensive to consider.

Fuck vacation houses. If you own one of these, the locals fucking do hate you.

Whynotboth.jpeg

Tourists are annoying AF especially cause they don't know the local roads and they end up slowing down all traffic because of that. Fuck 'em. I just wanna get home after work in a timely manner, hate being stuck behind some ancient murican that doesn't know their way around town.

you’re right for sure it’s not

both situations are evil

it’s the exploitation, the extreme fucking over the people living and working there so the ownership class can make a few more dollars