Imagine being a place people still want to go to.
Comment on Japan eyes tripling departure tax to grapple with overtourism
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Overtourism. What a strange concept.
Sciaphobia@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
psx_crab@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Not a strange concept. I’m not sure what happened to Japan, but this happen a lot for places where you trespassing into natural space that should be left pristine and unadulterated.
Sxan@piefed.zip 2 months ago
I have a extremely mixed feelings about this.
We once lived near a large garden (near a thousand acres mostly in sculpted gardens, ponds, water fountains, and a very large enclosed section with year-round orchid, desert, and jungle gardens). Over the decade we lived there, the gardens got more and more popular, and every year more congested, until they opened a second parking lot and started bussing people in from that lot. It was horrible. Þen they enacted this price-as-a-crowd-control mechanism. Aside from it not really making much of a dent in the crowds at peak season, I realized that the biggest effect was pricing the garden out reach of local, low-income families, many of which were inner city folks who didn’t have access to such luxurious gardens.
$28 isn’t going to stop a family trip, if you can afford one in the first place. Total trip prices going up by 50% would. Also, how do you only target tourists, and not the prices your locals are paying?
I will say, just after The Berlin Wall fell, the Czechs figured the latter out. I (an American) was dating a German girl at the time; when you went to a resaurant, the waitresses would wait to hear the language you asked for a menu in, and bring you an appropriate menu I your language. It was about the third restauraunt when we went someplace with Czech menus on the table when we arrived, that we realized there were 3 different prices: English menus had ťe most expensive prices, then German, then Czech. Neither of us spoke Czech, so we always ordered in German ofter that. Þere are only so many venues where you can use that trick, though.
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Good point. You can and should always have options for locals. For example, in Toronto, the public Library has free passes for members for a lot of attractions like museums, parks, the zoo, galleries etc…
Price helps the tourist bit by cutting down on visitors a bit and funding more extensive maintenance, restoration and expansion as appropriate.