> “You can’t talk about overtourism without mentioning Instagram and Facebook — I think they’re big drivers of this trend,” Mr. Francis said. “Seventy-five years ago, tourism was about experience-seeking. Now it’s about using photography and social media to build a personal brand. In a sense, for a lot of people, the photos you take on a trip become more important than the experience.”<p>The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy. No, people in the past were not looking for "more authentic experiences".<p>I bought in a flea market a photo album of a trip of some Swedish couple in the 60s. It is awesome. It could be posted picture by picture on Facebook and nobody will notice. Except by details like that the plane tickets, included in the album, were printed by a mechanical typewriter. Also includes tourism flyers, tickets for the theatre, and a menu from a restaurant. Sounds familiar? Because people are people in all places at all times.<p><a href="https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days" rel="nofollow">https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days</a>
I see complaints/worries about overtourism, housing prices in cities, overfocusing on restaurant reviews, and other problems not as arising from the use of Instagram as some people think, but more basically as an unavoidable side-effect of globalization. Basically it used to be harder to find the 'perfect' restaurant, vacation, or house because information was not transferring efficiently. With the internet, a process of arbitrage has commenced, where all people are able to put themselves where they feel they will be happiest based on their economic power. Obviously people living in sleepy picturesque villages in Europe would rather no one visited, but these places are just going to have to deal with it in the same way that San Fransisco, Seattle, Austin, etc. are. The truth is that some places are nicer to live or visit than others, and if you don't have the money to play the game then you aren't welcome.<p>Once my wife asked her father how people chose what restaurant to eat at when all you had was a phone book, and his answer was telling: "There just used to be fewer places to go."
If you want to avoid unpleasant tourist traps, go off the beaten path to smaller towns and villages. You'll find a much more beautiful, and genuine experiences talking with real locals, who aren't just trying to sell you overpriced crap. You'll get the real food, and the real place you're visiting. Famous landmarks really don't stick with you like the experiences you get meeting new people.
> Seventy-five years ago, tourism was about experience<p>75 years ago was 1943, there was no tourism in Europe unless you were flying a bomber or driving a tank.<p>The first jet airliner didn't fly until 1949 which enabled tourism for the common person.<p>I'm sure tourism was "better" in the old days when only the wealthy could afford to travel.
This article resonates with me after my recent vacation to the Amalfi coast. The narrow roadways are clogged with buses and the buses themselves are so full you often have to wait in line for an extra hour to get on one. I definitely wouldn't recommend it.<p>After Amalfi, we went to a small fishing village nearby and had an experience that was so, so much better. I even got to speak some Italian and buy some homemade grappa from the local shop, which would be difficult in a more 'disneyfied' place.<p>It would be nice if TripAdvisor or Google had some sort of 'tourist jam' avoidance algorithm, letting you pick places like or near the place you want to go, but slightly off the beaten path.<p>Or some kind of warning if you're planning to go somewhere during the peak season.
"He noted that in 1960, when the jet age began, around 25 million international trips were taken. Last year, the number was 1.3 billion."<p>I honestly did not expect the number to be that high.<p>So a double digit percentage of all humanity travels internationally, every year.
I don't know about Facebook and Instagram being the main "culprits", but rather the fact that it's so much easier to travel today, than it was before. And I'm talking about everything from price to accessibility. You just grab your phone, order a ticket, book a room somewhere, pay up and wait for the departure date to come. Sure, social media helps promoting places and creates an urge to show that you also travel to these ultra amazing locations. But if it was more difficult to travel, people wouldn't be touristing as much either. As I see it, it's a two way relationship where both ends fuel the other.
We have seen nothing yet. Chinese tourism is going to go through the roof for the rest of the century. Boeing produces about 40 737s a month, plus other models, and production is only going to go up. Every fifth Boeing is going to China.
A lot.<p>Travel now is part of conspicuous consumption as much as a flashy purse is. Displaying that you went to some small French village on your Instagram can generate a fair amount of prestige and envy. Also, unlike purses though, there is a permanent record of your purchase for all to see.
I find it fascinating that people want to fill their lives with "authentic" experiences and then they go out of their way to set themselves up for cookie cutter "zombie" experiences. Cram your vacation into a minimum amount of time. Spend all your time in generic airports, hotels, and tour buses. Take the exact same pictures everyone else does. Blaming all this stuff on millenials and instagram is lame, these same patterns have been common for not just decades but generations.<p>It doesn't take much to get away from the crowds. It also doesn't take much to have unique, different, more satisfying experiences. Walk more, explore more, don't be so concerned with ticking off the classic "must do" checkmarks, take the time for your vacation to be for you.
I live in a relatively small (population ~260,000) Western European city. It's really pleasant during most of the calmer months, but come summer (and the festival of nearly ten days), there's 2+ million people visiting during that time. Having been to the festival (which is spread throughout the small city), it simply becomes impossible to stay beyond a couple of hours, lest you get nauseated with the pressure of the crowds. Most locals simply leave the city during that entire festive season.
I traveled around South America while working remotely a few years back. There's almost none of this disneyfication. In Ecuador, Peru, and Chile it was extremely normal to have days with no interactions with anyone who could speak English.<p>I know that this article is mostly about those who live in the host city, but it does also mention the experience of the traveler. For any travelers looking to avoid these situations, there are plenty of wonderful places to go where there's not disneyfication. I almost just began to list countries out but really: It's almost everywhere other than a few major cities in Europe!
Well if certain cities don't want them, I'm sure there are many places that would love to have the boost from tourism. Maybe we'll start seeing more tourism advertisement and viral marketing campaigns through social media (pay a trend-setter to come to your city and vlog about it, etc.)
"Europe" isn't worried. Some Europeans are. Some others aren't. In Barcelona there is a three-party war between hotels, leftist council and landlords. Council hasn't allowed to build new hotels in years, for instance.
"for a lot of people, the photos you take on a trip become more important than the experience.”<p>Cheap photography is to blame for this more than anything else. I was transiting through Dubai a few years back and spent a bit of time at the Burj Khalifa. There is a fountain at the base that does a performance every so often. The majority of people were not seeing the fountain directly at all, they were watching it through their mobile phones. It was a weird sight. I personally didn't take a video since you can see much better ones on Youtube than the one I'd have been able to take with trying to keep other people's phones out of it.
Travel off-season, and if you want to be away from other tourists (I don't buy this traveller/tourist distinction) invest just a little bit of time to find somewhere that's not a hotspot.<p>As for overtourism - it's a nice problem to have.
I still think summer vacation is one of society's worst inventions. It creates so many problems in different fields, like the summer education loss. Overtourism is just one of them.
I've even noticed it in the California wine country. While in decades past the weekend flow was typically from the North Bay to San Francisco, now on weekends we regularly have traffic throughout the day in Santa Rosa. Healdsburg, a town of around 10,000 people has added around 300 hotel rooms this year. We are no where near tourists outnumbering locals, but it is definitely much different than when I was a kid
does anyone notice how if other people say something along the lines of: 'we need to stop outsiders from coming here' it gets explained away as something like 'altering the character of historic cities'<p>whereas if an american says it, it gets explained way as: 'they are a racist protectionist bigot'.
I am more than happy for the trend to build brand on social media with all the picture they take. It retires the fun practice of them showing everyone a slideshow of their trip. Like 8-track, I am overjoyed at watching slideshows becoming a historical curiosity.
They didn’t list google maps and google translate.
Once we have live translation speech to speech, the world will see a real reshuffle of populations, not just tourism.