Nothing
to see here
Aug 13th 2016 | From
the print edition
OTHERWISE
law-abiding citizens confiscating drivers’ keys, kettles that reek
of crabmeat, and twenty-somethings unable to afford apartments; these
phenomena seem unconnected. Yet locals see a common culprit:
tourists. Troublesome tourists are nothing new. “Though there are
some disagreeable things in Venice, there is nothing so disagreeable
as the visitors,” quipped Henry James. But the volume of tourists
in popular destinations is new, as well as the fact that many places
are restricting or even banning them.
From October
visitors will be turned away from Koh Tachai island, a snorkelling
paradise in Thailand, to save the coral from death by a thousand
plastic fins. Sun umbrellas will go from three nearby islands, as
they curb tourism too. At the height of summer some 10,000
holidaymakers per day trundle off cruise ships into the alleyways of
Santorini, a Greek island. The authorities now have a cap of 8,000 a
day.
In the Seychelles,
the government has banned large hotel developments indefinitely. Both
Barcelona and Amsterdam have banned construction of new complexes in
the city centre to appease locals. That answers a common complaint of
residents, which is that the fruits of tourism mostly go to large
firms such as hotel groups, not to small entrepreneurs.
Blocking new Hiltons
does little to stop the growth of Airbnb, a room-sharing service,
another reason why some destinations have such an influx of visitors
just now. Airbnb is making city living unaffordable for residents as
well as crowded, many complain. Authorities in Berlin, Barcelona and
Iceland have responded with new limits on it. But that is unlikely to
satisfy all locals. “Tourist you are the terrorist” can be found
spray-painted across a stone wall in Palma de Mallorca. In New
Zealand people are confiscating car keys from tourists who
(allegedly) drive badly.
This summer in
Barcelona, around eight out of ten people on Las Ramblas, a famous
street, will be tourists. Many residents say their homes are being
“Disneyfied”. The operators of Disneyland might view that as
harsh: drunk and naked tourists, a boom in illegal flat rentals, and
too many knick-knack shops are bigger problems in Barcelona than in
the American firm’s theme parks. The city’s new mayor, Ada Colau,
was elected on a manifesto of clamping down on tourists.
The Chinese come in
for particular criticism. One in ten international tourists now comes
from China. Seychellois hoteliers are fed up with one of their
habits, which is to boil fresh crabs inside the hot water kettles in
their rooms. The head of New Zealand’s tourism body admitted last
year that the growth in the number of Chinese visitors is higher than
it would like.
Mark Tanzer, head of
the Association of British Travel Agents, has warned that without
controls, tourists could kill tourism. But local officials will need
to tread carefully when putting them in place. Tourism now accounts
for nearly a tenth of global GDP, and is a reliable source of growth
for many places that would otherwise struggle. In Barcelona it
provides 120,000 jobs, and in the Seychelles tourism was almost
two-thirds of GDP last year.
Many problems may in
fact be caused as much by inadequate planning by local governments as
by a surfeit of day-trippers. They can be slow to build
infrastructure that could ease the burden, for instance free public
toilets for those tourists who are on a tight budget. Not all are
good at crafting rules that protect local ambience without
discouraging tourists altogether. They’ll need to get better at it.
Vast crowds of visitors may be a new challenge, but it’s one that
is here to stay.
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