As the summer tourism season approaches, a perennial question arises, and technology is giving it a novel twist: Is a place primarily for those who live there, or for the entire world?
The latest salvo in this conflict comes from Barcelona. Bus No. 116 goes to Antoni Gaudi’s Park Guell, one of the top tourist destinations in the city. However, neighborhood and bus crowding induced the city council to remove the bus route from Google and Apple maps. So getting to Park Guell is now harder for tourists — which does not bother the locals one bit.
This is no isolated incident. New York City has placed severe restrictions on Airbnb in an effort to restore the supply of apartments for the city’s residents, rather than tourists. Amsterdam tells British “party tourists” not to visit the city, for fear they indulge in too much drink, drugs and sex. Japan is hiking the price of bullet trains for tourists by 70 percent. Venice is charging day-trippers five euros (US$5) a visit.
Illustration: Yusha
Then there is the unofficial discouragement: Natives of Medellin, Colombia, recently went around to heavily touristed bars and demonstrated against the patrons. In Spain, anti-tourist protesters are targeting beaches and restaurants.
Whether you side with the tourists or the natives would of course depend on the place, as well as your status as a visitor or local. I like to think I have always be on the side of the tourist — even in my home state of Virginia. Here are a few reasons why:
First, most of these decisions are made by city, local and national governments. They answer to their voters and domestic interest groups, not to foreigners. If anything, the interests of foreigners are underrepresented. That does not mean tourists should always get extra consideration, but there is a prima facie case on their behalf.
Second, as an economist, I am a big believer in the price mechanism. Prices balance supplies and demands without requiring much explicit political interference in private decisions. When a tourist experience costs more, tourists themselves can decide whether it is worth it.
By this reasoning, the Japanese decision to raise bullet train prices for tourists is exactly the right approach. In the meantime, the Japanese government, which faces high pension costs, has more money at its disposal. There is no need to resent or otherwise restrict the tourists at all, and indeed I have found the Japanese people to be extremely gracious and helpful to foreigners. Higher prices for tourist train tickets would make it easier for them to stay this way.
If there is any problem with Venice’s five-euros-a-day charge, it is that it is not nearly high enough, given crowding and accumulated wear and tear on the city. How about 50 euros? But with a smile.
The same goes for the bus in Barcelona: Why not raise the fare? Just for tourists. It is easy enough to (partially) enforce this differential treatment with spot checks on the bus line. An alternative or possible complement to this plan is to run more buses to the park, to alleviate congestion. Higher fees for tourists can help pay for them.
Of course, many tourists would choose to walk to Park Guell, as I did during my last visit. If the entire neighborhood is still too crowded, raise the entry fee (it is currently 10 euros), but please: Let the tourists have working GPS systems.
Amsterdam has a more difficult challenge. Barcelona and Venice have some unique attractions and sites that can be priced at higher levels, with exclusion applied to non-payers. In contrast, for many Amsterdam tourists the attractions are booze, pot and sex, all of which have prices set in basically competitive markets. I am all for more expensive tickets to the Rijksmuseum, but that might not make much of a difference to Amsterdam’s “party tourism” problem.
In that case, Dutch governments might consider higher taxes for those entire sectors, maybe with rebates for Dutch citizens. In Medellin, the mayor has banned prostitution for six months, in part a response to tourist demand, including for child victims of sex trafficking.
In New York City, one obvious way to address the shortage of affordable housing is to allow for the building of additional hotels, housing and apartments. Tourist dollars sustain so many of New York’s great cultural institutions.
As for myself, I am headed to Cape Town in a few months. Due to higher crime and erratic electricity supply, many tourists have been staying away from South Africa. It is the fate of countries to have either too many tourists or too few. All things considered, the former problem is the better one to have.
Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of economics at George Mason University and host of the Marginal Revolution blog. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS