this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
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[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 132 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (14 children)

Having experienced life in a city with a heavy tourism influence, it's not the tourists that's the problem, it's counterintuitively a select few locals ripping the arse out of it.

  • Housing shortages and sky high rents because homeowners and flat owners stick their places on AirBNB and other types of peer to peer services they provide access to;

  • Ludicrous policies imposed on residents by locally-contracted private enterprises like event managers extending their road closures and parking suspensions a quarter mile away from their actual event areas, fucking over residents who actually live there for the other eleven months of the year;

  • Zero hour contracts for those in gig economy or service workers, who get used and abused for a few weeks a year and fucked off when the good times dry up, while business owners have made bank;

  • Increased pressure on public services for a few weeks a year, caused by influxes of folk putting heavy demands on the staff but leaving local residents to foot the tax bill;

  • ...and the usual creep towards city centre locations trending towards tat merchants selling utter shite.

It's important to note that none of the above is anything wrong, it's just assholery for the most part...

...and then those small numbers of "locals" have the gall to blame Mr and Mrs Miggins from halfway across the globe for ruining the city. Fuck all of the way off

[–] MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 17 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Do you live in Edinburgh by any chance? Because that all sounds familiar....

[–] 200ok@lemmy.world 13 points 16 hours ago

I was going to say the same thing about it being Toronto 💀

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[–] verdi@feddit.org 10 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

This all assumes it's the locals and not wealthy migrants that bought a shit ton of real estate and are squeezing the investment for what it's worth till some politician grows a pair. AirBNB is also a foreing wealthy company, it's part of the problem because it used tech to evade regulations that protected against precisely what people are complaining about.

AirBNB's CEO should be brought behind the shed and sent to the far away farm.

Edit: Also, good luck regulating US big tech. The US started a proxy war to have the entire EU by the balls, smaller countries alone have exactly 0 chance.

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[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 55 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Most of those places were doing just fine before becoming tourist destinations. This "economy" you speak of is just the profit margins of hotel chains. It very seldom benefits the people living there.

No, no suelte' la bandera ni olvide' el lelolai, que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái

[–] PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 19 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

But now that they've let it into their economy, it has grown like a parasite the type of which cannot be removed without also killing the host.

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[–] fascicle@leminal.space 44 points 17 hours ago

I'd say most employees feel that way about customers, tourist or not. Dealing with the general populace just eats away at your soul

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 40 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (5 children)

The problem is usually wealth inequality. The residents have to compete with the tourists for resources, but most of what they could get in return gets gobbled up by late stage capitalism. Most people who have a direct relation to tourism to how it benefits them in their lives have no problem with it.

[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 11 points 9 hours ago

I remember talking to an ice-cream seller in Egypt and he asked me what I do for a living. When I told him I was an engineer he said 'so am I'. The predatory behaviour of Egyptian street sellers made more sense after that exchange but it never stopped grating. I think the best way deal with it is engage with the people in a friendly way and have a laugh. Most of the time people just need acknowledgement, that goes a long way.

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[–] SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 29 points 16 hours ago (5 children)

See also:

  • locals who live in a college town every time they see a student
  • locals who live near an international airport every time a plane flys over
  • locals who live near a military base every time something goes boom
  • locals who live near pretty much any industry town every time anything from that industry annoys them
[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Its weird with military bases. I used to work on one and got regular emails about scheduled EOD explosions, and somehow i never heard a single one.

[–] arrow74@lemmy.zip 5 points 11 hours ago

I did survey work on a military base for a year and didn't hear a single explosion. We were traveling all over the base.

Growing up my house was about 25 miles from a military base and I still remember the glass on my window shaking from the explosions.

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[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 25 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

People need to realize it's not the locals that decided to base their economy on tourism at some town hall meeting. Where I live the government moved all the industry to different parts of the country and allowed for huge real estate development that turned the area into tourism based economy. At the beginning it's just extra jobs and people are happy about it but at some point it starts displacing locals and people start complaining.

[–] Cheems@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

When the town gets too expensive for locals to live then it's a problem

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[–] OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works 24 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I live in a tourist heavy place. My biggest issue is that the influx of tourists is seasonal. During the summer, the number of tourists brings the infrastructure to knees and shops, restaurants and cafés are uncomfortably full. During the off season, maintenance of the roads serms to be of low priority and a lot of the shops, restaurants and cafés reduce their opening time or even close, and the town center becomes a ghost town.

So no hate towards tourists, but the inconsistency of this place is very annoying.

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[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 20 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

And? Reasonably so. Tourists are annoying af

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[–] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 19 points 19 hours ago

It's almost like the "economy" has fuck-all to do with quality of life and a couple business owners getting rich isn't worth commodifying your home!

[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 20 hours ago

Tourists when they enter a place: Clearly the whole economy is based on Tourism :)

[–] Default_Defect@anarchist.nexus 16 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

For my town it isn't so much tourists, its the rich yuppies from the city showing up to my rural town to roleplay blue collar living by clogging up the only decent restaurants in town to day drink. Can barely get across town to pick up my niece from school without almost getting smoked by a BMW.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Smoked by a BMW? Are you drag racing?

[–] Jumbie@lemmy.zip 15 points 16 hours ago

If you share the road with a BMW you’re in the race now, boyo.

[–] Saapas@piefed.zip 15 points 10 hours ago (2 children)
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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

It's getting tiresome to constantly explain this shit...

Tourism is almost always an extractive activity, kinda like mining only it sells a place's natural beauty and/or culture built by previous generations rather than whatever is dug out of the ground, and like mining it suffers from it's own version of the Resource Curse:

  • Most of the population isn't needed to extract that "resource" and there's no need for those who work in it to be highly educated or have much of a quality of life
  • Most of the gains from Tourism end up in a small number number of hands and don't really trickle down
  • Tourism has all manner of destructive side-effects, from actual natural environment destruction and overcrowding to massive realestate bubbles that push out the locals.
  • It's kind of a silver bullet for politicians, especially for the crooked ones, since they don't really need to invest in the broader population and their welfare to get themselves lots of money from Tourism, be it from thankfull Tourism Industry companies or from the value of their own realestate investments going up thanks to the realestate prices going up as the Demand for space (and, in the era of AirBnB, the actual residential units) from Tourism adds up to the normal demand from people living there, pushing prices up like crazy.

Tourism can be a good thing for most people in the kind of place like a little village in a developing nation with mainly primary sector industries at a subsistence level, because it brings better jobs than subsistence farming or fishing and which reward some level of education (enough to read and write in English), plus it brings money from people from much richer countries, but it's a totally different thing when we're talking about established cities in nations which are supposedly developed because there it brings jobs which require lower educational qualifications than most people there have, because of the side effects of Tourism (such as the above mentioned realestate prices and overcrowding) which make it hard for the existing Industries already present there to profitably operate and finally because it isn't even a path towards becoming a richer nation since the kind of customers it has to attract are those from already rich nations which aren't crazily ahead in the income scale, so it has to remain cheap enough to attract them hence it's wealth production abilities is in the main capped because of having to stay below that of those nations - you're not going to build a modern and advanced powerhouse nation with an industry that sells sunshine and old buildings to foreigned from modern and advanced powerhouse nations whilst employing people with mid-level or lower qualifications: you can bring a developing nation up with it but you can't use it to push a developed nation all that much up from poor developed nation with Tourism.

People inside the Tourism Industry love it because they personally make money from it and Politicians love it because their "generous friends" make money from it, they themselves indirectly make money from it and they can be completelly total crap at managing a country and Tourism still keeps on generating money because it mainly depends on natural beauty and/or ancient buildings and people with low and mid levels of Education that don't even need to be locals so the fatcats in nations underinvesting in their people still make lots of money from Tourism.

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 12 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 18 points 6 hours ago (8 children)

Tourist Town is what happens after your community has been bankrupted and stripped for parts

No shit people are resentful

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 8 points 5 hours ago

It's also what happens when there's no jobs for 6 months of the year. It's no surprise that a lot of the seaside towns in the UK are also on the list of the most deprived towns.

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[–] idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works 10 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (3 children)

A city has tourism-based economy, because tourists go there. If they wouldn't go there the economy would be based on different stuff.

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[–] baines@lemmy.cafe 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

the locals don’t want you there, the transplant white business owners and their pocketed politicians do

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[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 17 hours ago
[–] elbiter@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago (3 children)
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[–] Rooty@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I vacationed in Venice last year and I had to wade my way through rivers of people, so I can understand the sentiment.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago
[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 hours ago

Tourists may benefit some local business owners (or chains) while having a negative impact on many others.

Take a small fishing or farming village for example, now it becomes popular with tourists. House prices shoot up to what Londoners can afford and as they only use it as a holiday home it becomes a ghost town in winter.

[–] usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] Wren@lemmy.today 7 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

I'd be happy if they just stayed out of the bike lanes.

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[–] Zannsolo@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I grew up, and live in a tourist destination. My highschool was trash. Tourists are a nuisance. We have a few big events in town yearly that bring an insane amount of people here and most locals just hide in their house for a week at a time. I would leave but it has the only weather I like. I make really good money(well over 100k) in a non tourist job and can't afford to buy here.

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[–] GuyLivingHere@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 hours ago

flute intro

Welcome to Duloc Such a perfect town Here we have some rules Let us lay them down

Don't make waves Stay in line And we'll get along fine Duloc is a perfect place

Keep your feet off the grass Shine your shoes Wipe your - face Duloc is, Duloc is Duloc is a perfect plaaaace....

[–] mika_mika@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago

College town permanent residents when me and my university homies would roll into a local joint.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 6 points 20 hours ago

who's

\sigh

[–] ruplicant@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 hours ago

yeah, it's awesome to live and work in a town and have to rent a temporary place for 3 months in summer cuz your're priced out of your normal home, and it was rented in advance by tourist paying 4 times normal rent value

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Reminded me of when took my boys to Yellowstone. On the way we stop in a town that 100% would not exist without tourists. Yet every restaurant and diner were actively hostile towards us. Fucking locals could not stand that we were there and they refused to serve us. We left and had to get breakfast at a McDonald's few towns away.

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