8 Solutions for Overtourism

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council . Much of overtourism you know , as we've been talking about this leading up to this episode is marketing . Right , you know Venice , it's amazing , but it sort of got enshrined as amazing Things that you think you have to do when you visit a place .

I have to go to Times Square , and I always beg people when they come to New York City do not go to Times Square . Most New Yorkers universally recognize it as the least attractive place to visit . That doesn't stop a single person from wanting to go see Times Square when they come here . They have to go . Jeff , what do you think about us ?

What do you think about overtourism ?

Opening a large hotel in Barranquilla , colombia , would directly pull a thousand people , and indirectly many more , into a better existence right , a better life for those people . As global brands reach those destinations , a culture of racial and gender equality are often introduced .

Health benefits and education programs and things we take for granted in the West are introduced . So it's not just 27 million jobs . There are 27 very significant jobs for affecting lives .

I think that needs to be at the start of the conversation over tourism recognizing that the massive humanitarian benefits of tourism are really what's driving what we're now calling a problem .

If you're going to visit Venice , you pay an extra $20 at the city gates to come in and I think on paper that sounds like an easy way to generate revenue , but it does squeeze budget travelers even more and it makes expensive places even more expensive , and I feel like it's a band-aid . What do you think about tourism tax ?

It was a 20% tax when you added up all the New York City taxes and especially the Javits Center tax , I think , or something like that that they're calling it right . So directly pulling money from non-locals into the local coffers ? It's a classic way to do it . Listen , florida has no state income tax , mainly because they have a sales tax and tourism taxes .

Well , if you're a local in Florida , a resident of Florida , many people move there for the reason of not paying a state income tax . You can't have it both ways . So I think you just got to recognize the two together , right ? How are you going to fund all of this wonderful infrastructure that people come to visit ?

It's either out of the locals' pockets or out of the tourists' pockets , and it's a lot easier to tax the person that doesn't get to vote .

Right , they've raised money to deal with the infrastructure toll that tourism takes on its fragile little city , but it's not reducing tourism , it's not reducing foot traffic and so it's not improving their lifestyle . Other places are trying similar approaches .

Right , they're setting limits in Marseille , in France , introducing a reservation system , to the number of people who can visit national parks . They're aiming to protect a cove because it's sensitive and vulnerable and degraded right . But then in Europe you go the other direction .

You have what Amsterdam is doing , where , instead of a tax , they are simply reducing flight capacity at Schiphol Airport . Right , fewer people coming in . That's how you do it . They have put an outright ban on new hotel construction . Those things like Malaga . Spain is doing something similar , only they're banning short term rentals completely .

So those different measures are more likely , I think , to give the locals what they're looking for , whereas perhaps the tax just raises the funds , but it's not helping day-to-day Venetians .

If you arrive by plane into Schiphol , if you're still lucky enough to get on one of the reduced flights , you're going to pay that , and in fact , we actually pay this everywhere .

I think we did an episode with Matt Cornelius years ago and I think we talked on that episode about how all these fees and airport fees they're in the price of your airline ticket anyway . Right , it's already bundled up , so you don't have to pay an airport tax on arrival , but you're still paying one .

I like what Amsterdam is doing , but I think their measure directly attacks what they're trying to do . Right , and one of the reasons Amsterdam and locals are frustrated with too much tourism is also the type of tourists that they're getting .

It's not just the volume the volume is a problem but it's the type of tourists who are coming specifically for the red light district and they're looking to pull back on that .

And so one of the things they've done too even though there's a little bit outside of , you know , over tourism is they're only allowing residents now or at least this was proposed , I don't know if it actually happened they're proposing that only residents could buy cannabis to reduce the cannabis tourism .

They don't want that crowd coming from all around America and Europe to have that sort of fun , and similarly with prostitution . Again , I don't know how you regulate this , but they've put a couple of different ideas out there to make the city more livable for themselves .

Not only is there an ethical concern that I don't think we need to go down the path of you should probably not be throwing paint-filled balloons at anyone for any reason but it's directly not going to stop the foot traffic that gets off these large cruises . I think cruises are something we should get into because it's a different kind of tourism .

I think we'll talk about Juneau , maybe , where this is a town of 22,000 people in Alaska and on any given day the town's population can double when four big boats arrive . Right , that makes the infrastructure absolutely unlivable for those people , and so there's a couple different approaches that are going on around the world . Juneau's is quite interesting .

I think they know that the $30 million in passenger-affiliated revenue that they need in Juneau , they can't just turn that off . Their town goes bankrupt without it . Their lives change , the education system for their children changes . It lives on those tourism dollars , at the same time to enjoy living there . They've proposed what they call ship-free Saturdays .

I think this is a really good hybrid , right , you still expose the beauty of your town to people , you still gain the local tax dollars that you want for your people , but you give them at least one day of break where they can actually enjoy living there and diversion as solutions here .

They prohibited alcohol consumption and loud music on the beaches . That's pretty radical if you've ever been to Miami Beach .

They reinforced its ban on short-term rentals , imposed strict traffic regulations during peak travel days in March I was thinking a little bit about this in the context of demarketing , you know , and it doesn't necessarily have to mean negative marketing or not accepting tourists .

It simply means directing tourism demand to alternative destinations Around 80% of France's 37 million annual visitors , all those people that congregate in just 20% of the country .

So France is trying to kind of divert people away from Paris and spread the money around , which , frankly , is better for the country's economy as a whole when you don't have a million people each day trying to get into the .

Right , so there you go . Juneau commerce figured it out , and it took all of ours . Right they were ready for it . I don't know if you , let's say , matt , in your example , the demarketing , uh , if you can't fly as often into skip hole in Amsterdam , do people start flying more often to the Hague and then just training up ?

Right , I mean , where people want to go , they will . Where there's a dollar to be made , people will . Business people will figure it out . When we get to the idea of what to do about these things , in my mind it starts with an understanding of what are you trying to solve

here . Right Is the existence of a place threatened . Right and Machu Picchu , a place I've been twice . I would say no one should ever be allowed to go more than once . Right , it's a very fragile place . It has too many footsteps and it's literally ruining what was built . You won't be at this pace .

Someday soon I don't know if it's 20 years from now you will not be able to see Machu Picchu . It won't exist . Not be able to see Machu Picchu it won't exist . The Galapagos Islands belongs to Ecuador . The policy there is a very hard number of people who can visit the islands At any given time . There's a hard cap .

Being in the middle of the Pacific , you can do that . It's much easier to control , but to protect the fragile ecosystem of the Galapagos . That is an absolute must , it's non-negotiable . Right you start unleashing tourism on the Galapagos ? There will be no Galapagos , so you must do it .

So I think number one is how do you deal with preventing the destruction of a place because too many people are there ?

The second thing , though , is if you're trying to impact the reduction in quality of life for the inhabitants , human or animal , like in a place like Barcelona , the city is not being threatened Like the structure of the city , gaudi's wonderful architecture , right .

It's not being threatened by so many people being there , but the lives of locals is , and the infrastructure of the city is not meant for it .

So you have to deal with that in a very different way , and I think maybe the third section , or kind of category , is if it hurts the product or the authenticity of a place , how you go about making sure that each of those threats is addressed appropriately . The solution is probably very different .

These aspects of government aren't as glamorous and aren't as easy as putting up a new hotel , frankly , and the tourism industry often overlooks those things as priorities because they're big and expensive and , on the best of days , incredibly slow to get done . Plus , you have to find time to do them .

Let's say you're going to build a new road , you got to find time to build it and then not interrupt the flow of tourists that are keeping the money coming in .

A dozen big ones , maybe a couple dozen real small boutique B and Bs Right , but there are no more to be had . And that's not just an over tourism , that's not a reaction to recent over tourism passions . It's been that way for a very long time .

You share the occupancy that comes in your occupancy the whole thing's bad right . You want a concentration . Occupancy that comes in your occupancy the whole thing's bad right . You want a concentration In New York City . Let's go from maybe the tiniest example like Key West to New York City , maybe the largest , probably the largest hotel market in the US .

In the last 15 years it went through a 20% supply boom , right , and it's because people , city officials and other business people realized there was so much money to be made by putting more hotels in Manhattan . But what it did initially was not great . It was , in fact , terrible for the existing hotel owners , right .

Instead of being able to charge $700 a night for a shoebox room in Times Square , now there are well more hotels in Times Square and I can only get 500 or 400 for it right Now . Airbnb and the sharing economy is the total opposite of this .

Right , I think there is a very easy way to enact some of the over-tourism complaint or to address some of the complaints of over-tourism by locals , because the sharing economy can grow exponentially . Right , it takes years to build a hotel .

Right , you'll be in planning stage and financing and construction and like , from the minute somebody , a developer , has an idea that I'm going to buy that land to build a hotel , from the minute they think that to the minute the hotel doors open it's going to be five years .

Right , especially in a place like New York where you've got , you know , a hundred different licenses you have to acquire . Right , it takes a long , long time . It takes about 10 minutes to put your place up on Airbnb .

And so what you've seen in the supply side and New York City is again a great example of this this boom in non-hotel but overnight stay supply has exacerbated these problems .

One of the things that they are doing , besides throwing paint-filled balloons at people in Barcelona Barcelona is going to cut back on and maybe even a total , outright ban on short-term rentals , because their neighborhoods are feeling degraded and you can't get into local coffee shops . So I think there is probably a lot more immediate .

I'm certain there's a more immediate solution in addressing the short-term rental economies . It's probably a better long-term solution also , and I'm going to be accused of saying that as a hotel guy .

I understand the accusation , but hotels have to operate very differently and I think more likely we'll go along with a long-term solution that balances out valuable amounts of transit in and out of a place , valuable amounts of transit in and out of a place . To the economics of who says there's a problem with over tourism .

You do have very good examples out there . The greek prime minister recently said we do not have a problem with over tourism . That economy relies on it .

But what they're going to do is they're going to try to spread it out and , matt , you mentioned this in different ways spreading In your example you mentioned trying to disperse the number of places people go , where these hundreds of millions of tourists to France only concentrate in the same places . They want to spread them out across France .

Right , I think Greece is doing something kind of like that , only it's over the course of a year . Everyone wants to go to Mykonos and Santorini when they're in Greece , but the way the prime minister presented this was it isn't a problem with them taking too many places , people .

It's that they all come in March , april , may , and these are wonderful destinations in six of the other nine months of the year too . If you're taking the approach that we're going to spread this out over a greater period of time , it's a much harder thing to do than an outright ban or a cap .

Listen , the libertarian in me hates the idea that I'm going to make a parallel with carbon offsets . But what happens if you travel off-season ? Well , is your footprint in this case , I mean it literally less invasive ? How do we reward that in a way that's not just cash ?

If it's only a matter of cash and prices , then travel just goes back to being a luxury for the wealthy , and I don't think we want that .

People want to come back and tell the stories and say they did it . I don't think that's a good enough reason for people to allow , you know , to allow people to spoil the last pristine place on the planet .

It's kind of like Hawaii in that way , where you know , yes , there is culture you can go back 100 years , 200 years to find , but it's been so Disney-fied that you kind of question what's really real anyway ? What's ?

So it has amazing hotels , some of the most amazing resorts in the world , but it is , if you care about sustainability , awful , and not just because , as a Europeanan or an american , you're flying 24 hours to get there , but on your way there from europe or america you have probably flown over a thousand better places to be I have a hot take the caribbean .