Monday, September 16, 2019

the trouble with tourists

Open Archive Day


travel is fun when you're a small number of travelers and you get to blend in with the locals in some faraway scenery. When the travelers outnumber the locals, we tend to call them tourists, and their idea of fun can become a problem for the resident population and for the environment. Blame it on capitalism commercialising and over-selling everything.

A year ago, prompted by a special issue on migration, I wrote a feature on the environmental impact of tourism, which is now in the open archives:


Global tourism's growing footprint




This August, Der Spiegel featured the madness of cruise operations on its cover - probably the most dramatic example of tourism going off the rails.

Oh, stop press, I just discovered that the Guardian has published a photo essay about this issue today:

A rising tide: ‘overtourism’ and the curse of the cruise ships

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