Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
bbc.comI call this the 'Disney World' effect of nature tourism. Self-involved, entitled people who treat national parks and the wilderness like an amusement park that has been set aside for their entertainment. They expect the natural world to cater to their whims the same way a Disney world employee does, and they just do not understand that's not how the world works.
It's worse than this - their entire life needs to be Instagram worthy. Everything they do is in the name of getting the next perfect shot, so they can influence others in the name of social advertising to make a quick buck. They either become proficient photographers, videographers and writers or they team up with those who are, capitalizing on the latest trends in photography to consolidate their brand.
The problem is we as a culture are both enabling and encouraging this by following these influencers, in effect paying them to do this. And not just a couple of hundred bucks here and there, these social media influencers have gone from nobodies to multi-millionaires almost overnight.
So it's not all about self involved. This is one of the negative consequences of the age of social media.
My kids follow these social media influencers who may as well be today's answer to Gucci, Donna Karan, Versace, Armani. There's make up influencers for the big beauty conglomerates. There's clothing influencers for the the fashion industry. There's tourism influencers for the tourism industry, all making millions of dollars a year trying to win the hearts and minds, or rather money, of the social media generation.
Nice rant, but the problem described by the GP has been there since long before social media. (Since I was a kid in the 70’s at least.) At best, social media exacerbates the problem but I’d say growing population and wealth have had a bigger impact.
Just wait until social influencers receive Libra's based on the amount of likes their pictures get.
It would make sense for them to get it based on the amount of profits their work generates.
Libras based on the value of ads FB sold while people were liking the post then.
Yes, I did get that chain (pun intended), but I thought GP meant it literally.
Has nothing to do with making a quick buck. Has everything to do with getting social validation from their peers.
Having that behaviour reinforced by rewarding it with payment doesn't exactly discourage it though, does it?
The first time I experienced this in nature was last year in Yosemite. So many people were climbing over barriers and walking in places where they shouldn't, it was horrible.
I've experienced this a lot in Amsterdam too, however. Tourists are treating Amsterdam like it isn't a real city. Especially the British seem to have no respect and treat Amsterdam like it's Vegas, but with less American cops.
Yellowstone is truly the worst for this. It's an extremely fragile natural wonder populated by some of the most disrespectful tourists the world can offer.
I actually cannot conceive of how the park rangers there manage to keep their cool day after day.
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area has some of the same issues. Campsites inside an 'easy to get to' area are just stripped. Trees cut down, bark stripped off of trees, the fire pit seating hacked at, and food stuffs from washing on the shore.
The forest service ends up digging the toilets out of some really rough pickaxe type terrain, since most of it is a thin layer of soil over the glacier carved granite. God help the poor soul who dumps trash in the outhouse and gets caught.
IMO that situation is not exactly ideal, but it is campsites working as intended. They concentrated the human impact into a small, actively managed area.
Why do they allow it at all? Are there no rules or laws that they can invoke / enforce for this?
Yosemite has always had tourists doing the things you mention. Like you say, it's horrible. The focus on "influencers" in this article is contrived; the issue is that some people behave in baffling ways in nature parks.
Can confirm that's how it's happening in Iceland, too.
Took a tour up there a while back, and our tour guide stopped to yell at people putting themselves in life threatening situations to take pictures. Happened multiple times.
Our whole society is based on trying to make things easy and convenient. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people have the same attitude towards traveling and nature. Iceland could fix this easily by making places less accessible but then the tourist money would stop flowing. In the end they have to make a choice. Limit accessibility or number of tourists and lose some money or accept the negative consequences and keep the money flowing.
Slightly Off topic ( Not relating to nature and bad behaviour ). We have far too many tourist problem everywhere, and some locals aren't too happy with it. Its not that they don't like tourist, there are just far too many.
I have been wondering, if there are any bills, tax or something in similar effort to bring the cost up, like any market would do with high demand. In ways that government can collect and ( in theory ) redistribute back to local via benefits or subsidies?
Taxing on hotel, flight?
Tourism represented 42.0% of the export of goods and services in Iceland [1]. I suspect that if the number of tourists fell significantly, they would be greatly missed by the locals.
[1] https://www.ferdamalastofa.is/en/recearch-and-statistics/tou...
A lot of places have permissions you need to buy. If these are more expensive you get less people but I am not sure where the sweet spot is between less people and still making money.
If carbon emissions get taxed higher between now and 2050, expect the cost of airplane tickets to go up substantially.
what about stepping up enforcement and fines though? If the rangers of these parks are overstretched, it seems reasonable to re-invest some of that park money towards more staff and fines that effectively offset the damage being done.
They could do that. But that also costs money and it doesn’t solve overcrowding.
It could largely fix the negative consequences though.
Maybe they should just forbid or discourage tourists from countries that cause the most problems, such as Britain and the US. I'm sure Japanese tourists never litter there.
I don't think blanket bans are a good idea, there are good and bad people everywhere. Hefty fines enforced during peak season would be a nice start.
Don’t do that. People in high enough quantities are a problem no matter where they are coming from.
Problem being that tourism is one of Iceland's biggest sources of income. Selling out sucks, but starving is worse
What they really need to do is come up with a "preferred tourist visa", where people (regardless of national origin) are only able to get this after being interviewed to make sure they're properly respectful of the local culture and environment, and if they get caught doing something wrong (like littering, going into off-limits areas or past safety barriers, etc.), get their good-tourist visa revoked. Interested countries like Iceland can then only allow people with this visa to travel there.
You could build this on China's social credit system...
It would be similar. Any "vouching" system is kinda like this, and how useful the system is depends on how much you trust the entity that does the vouching.
If you don't like China's social credit system, what do you think of America's "TSA PreCheck" system? It doesn't bar people from traveling, but it does give special privileges to some.
I honestly don't see a problem if some countries decided to cooperate and implement their own "tourist blacklist" system to keep out tourists who have proven to cause problems: it's their right to refuse entry to any non-citizen they wish.
I think your described 'Disney World' effect of nature tourism is a symptom of the misguided notion that pieces of nature can be cordoned off and preserved.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/against-sustainab...
I feel it’s worse
> Some instagrammers are sponsored by companies and don't obey pretty easy rules just to get a more spectacular photo from a slightly different angle.
Their followers are of course to blame to encourage these behaviors, but this whole situation where there’s strong financial incentive to act dickishly is guaranted to never stop.
I was thinking, perhaps when punishment gets really severe, but then I imagine all these videos about how they got around the rules or defied authority.
I’ve seen many National Parks in Australia that gave me the Disneyland feeling, but on the other side they made a lot of work to keep the NP accessible.
In Spain some call it Decatlón tourism, from the low-cost chain selling outdoor accessories.
Until recently, I worked at a company that sends these people to Iceland, among other places.
Influencers end up in that career for a reason. They are, in general, everything you'd expect them to be: flaky and privileged almost as a rule. They're not bad people per se (no tantrums that I've seen), and are often well-meaning, but most are desperate to be famous. These are the same people who competed to be on The Bachelor or Dancing with the Stars as a means to improve their marketability. They have no real marketable skills other than marketing themselves.
Thus it should surprise no one that they are terrible tourists. If I could speculate, it's a combination of cluelessness, lack of interest in researching anything about their destination (other than good photo spots), and a low-key sense of privilege that "it's not that big of a deal" if they do something that might be harmful. In other words, they are a lot like average tourists but with bigger egos.
Not just bigger egos: instagrammers naturally compete for attention, it's basically their job to one-up their peers. Regular tourists may occasionally want to do so as well, but it's entirely optional for them.
It's like professional vs recreational sports: some hobbyists might be misguided enough to take PEDs, but for a struggling professional they will appear like a possible livelihood-saver.
>Thus it should surprise no one that they are terrible tourists.
is it even them?
1 instagrammer is ok, if they have 1 million followers though and a fraction of those people follow the same path then everything get's trampled.
After the volcano erupted in 2010, the government launched a PR campaign in winter 2011 to counter the projected tourism drop. It specifically targeted "inspired" and "enlightened" travelers to come see the "unique" landscape.
Also in 2011, WOWair debuted with it's $99 flights to Iceland.
Instagram launched in 2010.
Maybe it's less "people are garbage" and more "we should make it more expensive to come here."
It seems that social media is the scapegoat of the day for whatever social problem the media discusses.
It's very relevant for a discussion related to the impacts of travel and tourism.
A person's pictures showing how and where they travel is a very good indicator of their socioeconomic status since it's hard to fake, and so is a valuable part of signaling status, which many people may find useful for dating and otherwise going about their social lives.
When somebody calls you an asshole, there are two general reasons why that might be. Maybe there is something wrong with the person calling you an asshole; maybe they're having a bad day or have some sort of irrational grudge against you. The alternative reason is maybe you are an asshole.
When you're called an asshole once, it's easy to assume the other person is having a bad day. But if numerous people are calling you an asshole every day of the week, chances are you are an asshole.
Fair point. Society however is rewarding asshole behavior via social media
Quite right, and I think this is one of the reasons so many people are critical of social media.
Iceland is pretty damn expensive, probably one of the most expensive nature destination you can find, together with Norway (although Switzerland probably still wins the prize).
I went there in the winter (when things are generally a bit cheaper) a couple of years ago and it wasn't too bad. Food, however, was incredibly expensive everywhere. No where else have I spent nearly $20 USD for a meal at a fast food restaurant.
If you'd eaten the local cuisine it would have been cheaper. Importing goods to an island is expensive.
Even a bowl of Icelandic lamb soup can go up to $20 now. Wasn't like this a few years ago though.
Yeah, I had a cup of lamb soup for $17 2 years ago. It was no where special. I was so surprised.
I went to a number of local places and they were all about the same as this. I even went to a fish and chips place in Reykjavik expecting it to be cheaper since they certainly don't need to import fish, but it wasn't. Another tiny family-owned restaurant in Vik was the same as well. I honestly couldn't find cheaper food.
I do understand the difficulty in importing food to an isolated island with only 100k people. I'm just not sure that fully accounts for the increasingly high food prices across the board.
yeah, I've seen a lot of people saying food in Iceland is super expensive, but when I was there it was about as expensive as any American city. I think many tourists must still be going to like Subway. I was going to the local restaurants and even found an amazing noodle soup place for under $10 equivalent.
Every other person I know that goes to Iceland subsists off of hot dogs. For dining out at restaurants in Reykjavik, the cost has been comparable to tipping well at middle to mid-upper US metro establishments that aren’t chain restaurants ($20-$25 / entree as of 2014 when I went).
Food there has gotten really expensive the last few years. Getting there can be really cheap though. I've now spent two Thanksgivings there where we paid less than $1k/person for flights from US west coast and a very good hotel for 3 nights.
It was more related to this--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_fi...
They badly needed foreign currency.
It's not just Iceland. My wife and I typically travel for the outdoors and we are extremely impact conscious. I've noticed a significant growth in outdoor activity in the last ten years or so. Along with the that growth I've noticed more trash, more people going off established trails when they shouldn't (I'm not 100% anti off-trail travel), more disrespect for others who are trying to escape into nature, more people who are unprepared for somewhat serious activities (particularly rock climbing in remote locations, I've had to do a few rescues at this point), more trail braiding and erosion, and to get away from the people getting away, one must go deeper and farther into the backcountry. Iceland was beautiful, but the best places on the island (imho) were often places we explored that were relatively unknown. It's a tough issue that many people in the outdoor community are scratching heads over how to deal with. I want to think that it's a solvable problem, but the cynic in me says it's a societal issue manifesting itself in this form and can't be easily fixed.
The key is accessibility. If you have a good road then you get people who treat nature as bad as themselves.
The higher up without accessible road or further in towards tougher trails and you start to have people there who have the will and stamina to be there and take the necessary precautions.
I agree. The higher the non-money relate commitment of getting to a location the fewer people I see. The ones I do see are generally people who have greater respect for where they are. Unfortunately I think that many wonderful places have fallen victim to the "easy to get to" issue.
Preikestolen in Norway is a good example of that done right I think, a 5-hour round trip trail to take your picture is a good filter.
The logical conclusion of people visiting a place is a city. Most of the earth is beautiful if you take mans impact out of the equation.
It's not really a problem unless you think people are a problem and then it gets philosophical
This quote from the article baffles me:
> The good instagrammers try to show different ways of enjoying nature. We don't tag places that are off the beaten path that we want to protect as long as possible. Some places have become "insta-famous" without ever mentioning where they are but eventually they become known to everyone.
Wait, what? So you take a picture. Put it on instagram (because you are an 'instagrammer'), but you don't mention the place. But since you are an instagrammer, people want to figure it out and now flood the country in search for that place. Trampling all the nature on their way...
I get the idea of taking a photo once in a while. Mind you, I really enjoy photography. But I found that a photo never does justice to the moment. So I choose to savour the moment before anything else.
Let's hope the future learns people that most of these instagram shots are basically digital waste.
I'd stay on the topic at hand. Most people are nobodies at instagram and they just want to share with their friends. I do not have instagram nor post pictures elsewhere, but I also don't feel entitled to tell others how to live their life. The real problem here is breaking the law (e.g driving off-road), influencer or not, tourist or not.
Hot tip: enjoy the moment, then find a similar scene on google images and share that if you need to. No one ever knows or cares the difference.
On the contrary, my circles would probably reverse image search it and then call me a fraud. My circles probably wouldn't care if I went to Iceland, though.
Do you really want to be part of such circles then? Especially if you clearly state that it's an illustration, not a picture report made by yourself.
For a long time I've shared the same view that all the good pictures have been photographed, but with all this commercialization of the information it becomes nontrivial to find a good free hi-res image even of relatively known places without watermarks and outside of walled gardens.
This, how many photos of the same scene are required ? 1
Is it more or less digital waste than hacker news comments?
When an instagrammer dies, where go all the likes and the pictures?
At least, with paper-printed photos, you have|had material stuff to inherit with some context and history.
> When an instagrammer dies, where go all the likes and the pictures?
The Internet Archive, of course.
You are aware that posting a picture on Instagram doesn't preclude you also archiving it, yes?
Ah the irony. :p
You get buried with copies saved to glass discs in 5D!
> Let's hope the future learns people that most of these instagram shots are basically digital waste.
That's very condescending of you. Lots of people like having real visual memories of places they've been.
I like having visual memories too. But are my memories triggered by a self-made almost identical photo of a specific glacier or tree at a touristic attraction?
In the last couple of years I've not taken photographs of things from which I was sure already tens of thousands of photos exist.
In my opinion people forget the importance of the experience itself. It seems as if there must always be some form of evidence to show others that you've been to some place. Preferably while you are still there.
In my experience, my own picture does trigger a different response than a basically identical photo from somebody else. I have a wall dedicated to pictures of my various hiking trips, and replacing them with professional photos doesn't have the same effect. I've tried.
I also don't think taking a picture and being present in the moment are mutually exclusive at all. It takes five seconds for me to snap a quick photo. It's really not that big of a deal.
I just returned from a short vacation with my kids and I took a bunch of photos. Every one has somebody from my family in it, often doing something goofy. Yesterday, while waiting at the dentist office I was flipping through them and it was wonderful.
The memory trigger wouldn't be as strong with a stock photo.
What if I told you that taking a picture is itself an experience? Especially if you're a little bit careful about composition; you have to move around and determine how best to position the camera, what time of day to get the light you want, which glass configured in what way, etc.
Some of my clearest memories of places I've been are of places I took photos, for exactly this reason.
This is silly and pure conjecture. That's my opinion. I love taking photos and I love seeing my friends photos of the things they experience. Not some photo from the tens of thousands of photos that exist. People can do two things at once. Take a photo and enjoy the experience.
As already linked: https://xkcd.com/1314/
There was a paper a little while back saying that if you took a photo of something you remember it less well. This was troubling to me as the designated photographer in my family, but not particularly surprising. Definitely made me consider sometimes to leave the camera in the backpack and just soak in the moment.
definitely this. When looking for a good photo, you look basically with one eye and with a set frame, deliberately turning off the 3D immersive experience. I've learned this trick after countless very bad images of very beautiful things, but it's equally important to be able to turn off this mode and enjoy the full experience.
This is a good point. I often forget I've even been to a place until I look at a map of picture locations, then zoom in and remember that time. I'm not sure I'd put much stock in photos of a place leading to its destruction until there is real evidence. My friend telling me about his visit to Scotland did a lot more to make me want to visit than his pictures.
Which is irrelevant, as they can have them without posting them, as it's something for others to marvel to.
> But I found that a photo never does justice to the moment.
Pics or it didn't happen.
“The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious, but not because of the masses themselves, but because this society is essentially a consumers’ society where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection or acquisition of more social status, but for more and more consumption and more and more entertainment… To believe that such a society will become more “cultured” as time goes on and education has done its work, is, I think, a fatal mistake. The point is that a consumers’ society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches.”
Hannah Arendt
I find that the root issue is individualism. There are immaculately clean cities in east asia whos parent societies would definitely qualify as highly "consumerist." It's not consumption that's the problem but the parameters within which that consumption is allowed to proceed. As well, in individualist societies we seem far more comfortable to discard our trash wherever and just forget about it. A more collectivist attitude appears, from my experience, to get people to be more thoughtful.
> There are immaculately clean cities in east asia
Isn't it because they have armies of cleaning people in the streets ? A friend of mine told me about it, I think he was in South Korea, Seoul perhaps, at the time. He told me people mostly act the same but their cities are more efficient at cleaning the mess before it piles up. I don't know if there are other laws similar to that [0] but it probably explain some behaviours too.
I agree with the underlying point though, some people just don't give a shit. I visited a small greek island last year and was appalled to see that locals were throwing their trash, old furnitures, construction materials, &c. over a cliff, straight to the ocean.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore
I've frequented China quite a lot the past year. They usually have people that clean the streets regularly as part of their job. They often hall two wheel carts around to carry their equipment and large brush that has fallen from trees.
However, I don't think Chinese do a great job of separating their trash that well despite having recycle bins and trash bins clearly labeled on the streets.
I noticed this when I was [briefly] in Seoul. It was a combination of individual and presumably municipally employed workers cleaning up trash throughout the city and private employed workers cleaning around larger commercial buildings. Outside of banks, too, I remember people hosing down and washing the sidewalks. That's something I haven't seen in the US (not with such regularity, at the very least).
Not in Japan. No armies of cleaning people are required.
Not true. They clean it every morning. There's trash covering the streets of Tokyo before it gets picked up.
Source: live in Shibuya for 3 months every year.
There was an article recently of a new wet vacuum cleaner they were using in trains to clean the vomit left from the hard-drinking salarymen.
What? They literally keep an army of senior citizens employed on municipal crews to pick up trash and scrape gum off of surfaces.
Kids clean their own schools in Japan.
https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/stor...
Whereas in the West, we just tell ourselves stories like all cultures are equal, and even though it's obviously not even remotely true, most people seem to believe it.
8 of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world are in East Asia. Of the top polluted cities in the world 8 of 10 are in Asia. Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search.
The grandparent is probably pointing to Singapore. That is a state that is infamous for being extremely clean and tidy. At the same time, it is highly consumerist, with so much of its traditional community infrastructure demolished and replaced with shopping malls.
Don't the massive government penalties for littering have something to do with it? It turns out that, yes, after all, laws and punishment do act as a deterrent.
No, time and time it has been proven that the inevitability of punishment is a deterrent, not the punishment itself. A punishment for littering could be 10 years of hard labour, but it doesn't matter a little bit if there's no one enforcing it and there's no police on the streets. Like.....you know why people are speeding? Not because anyone thinks "meh, the fine is only $200, I can afford that" but because they think "I'm not going to get caught today".
Yes. It works in Singapore. In places like japan and Taiwan though, they have much more respect for their country. Even Thailand. In Phuket I’ve seen the locals who live off tourism on the beaches picking up rubbish the tourists leave behind. Never see that sort of thing in the west. Malaysia and Myanmar however they just throw it out the window as they drive.
There is a difference between individual pollution and state level pollution though.
Germany may pollute the air/rivers less than China but come to Berlin; in some neighbourhoods you might think you teleported to a third world country where trash are simply threw in the streets to rot for weeks if not months before the public services finally do something.
Come to Munich and you will find no such thing. I don't think single examples can prove a point here.
The point these examples definitely prove is that within a single country it is possible to find extremes running both ways and that apparently city governments have a lot of impact on the appearance of the cities.
I was about to write that I visited Munich and other places in Bavaria last year and it was very clean, though there were a fair number of cigarette butts around, but nothing like what the OP was saying about Berlin.
Munich is such a great city for work-life balance and a sustainable approach to living while still being very “modern”
I'm not sure that I would call "what if we only let rich people in" a "sustainable approach".
Because, apparently, it's a huge part of rich Berliner culture to "not give a shit about anything".
It's a very individualistic city.
Individualistic is a very kind, even positive term for that in my opinion. I would think if we called it a shithole city instead, they would be less inclined to act that way due to the shame.
No offense to good Berliners of course.
>There is a difference between individual pollution and state level pollution though.
Sure, in the same way that there is a difference between the individual and the state/corporation/organization.
I don't see how this makes allocating carbon footprints any more accurate, nor does it indict "individuality" or any other ambiguous concepts.
> I don't see how this makes allocating carbon footprints any more accurate, nor does it indict "individuality" or any other ambiguous concepts.
I'm not sure what you are referencing in the first part of that sentence. I was replying to "Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search." which is false because it compares two things that are close but have no points of comparison. Heavily polluted asian rivers doesn't mean asians are more or less individualist and has nothing to do with the way they handle urban trash.
Has anyone found or looked into what are the differences between the neighbourhoods where trash is thrown on the street and the ones that are clean?
8 of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world are in East Asia. Of the top polluted cities in the world 8 of 10 are in Asia. Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search.
Those rivers and cities are all in the manufacturing regions that supply goods to customers in the west. The root cause of the pollution is our consumerism coupled to the governments of Eastern countries enabling exceptionally cheap labor that we exploit. To blame the nations of East Asia for the problem is a pretty poor analysis on your part.
It's like saying that USA is mostly taiga, and tundra, because there's Alaska. Most of those collectivist societies have very dirty cities (both in terms of ecology, and esthetics). And nobody seems to care. Singapore, and Japan (and Korea, but only in south) stand as exceptions.
East Asian national parks are also completely paved over and devoid of almost any remnant of a natural experience. And please don't tell me it's only westerners breaking all of the rules in US national parks.
Can you explain why this seems so to you? Totally not my experience with visiting national parks in Korea and Japan. For one thing, much of Japans un-developed nature is such because its largely as impassable now as it was in the 1600s when Basho wrote Ooku no hosomichi. I dunno why you'd bother paving anything.
EDIT: It's also certainly not just westerners, but again, my experience has shown me that there are societies that do better at training citizens not to litter.
Never been to Korea or Japan, but I spent several months exploring the parks of China. I never want to go back.
So your experience of "East Asian national parks" is just China?
You really should not extrapolate to a whole continent from such a small sample.
Do be fair, they did say "east asia" and China does make up the majority of east asia by population and land mass.
Yes, but at the same time it is a-typical in its approach to many concepts, apparently including national parks. And even there, given the size of the country there is a very large chance that OP's sample size is small even within China alone.
They could have just as well been more specific and simply said 'China' or name the specific parks rather than to write 'east Asia'.
My main point was just that he was not "extrapolating to a whole continent". Which is a nitpick, however, it also makes your nitpick more nitckpicky due to his generalization becoming far less general.
Chinese tourists are considered some of the most rude and dirty, and China is a collectivist society.
I think it’s just a problem with tourism.
“are considered”?
This is a ridiculous stereotype. I’ve seen Chinese travelers around the world and they’re as sophisticated as anyone
It's certainly a generalization, but I'm not sure how to talk "societies" (per the post I was responding to) without generalizing. So it's definitely a stereotype, but I don't think it is an unearned stereotype. And like all generalizations, it not accurate on a person by person basis.
Just look at what China did to its own environment to get a sense of how much that society values the environment.
Yes I agree, I have been traveling a lot recently and Chinese tourists usually seem respectful and amongst the best behaved. This stereotype is ridiculous.
I think you're both wrong. Since the dawn of civilization there has and always will be people disrespectful of nature. Your proposed causes are merely localised perturbations.
I think the _recent_ issue is in the title, and it's global, it's social networking. I can't think of any other force in the world that pushes huge numbers of people who have basically no interest or respect for nature, to go out into it, not learn anything, not gain any respect, and then destroy it... Selfies are a natural resource for social networking, and the natural world is full of them, ripe for exploitation.
> Pictures are the a natural resource for social networking, and nature is full of them, ripe for exploitation.
> [..] it is an economic function of photography to supply the masses, by modish processing, with matter which previously eluded mass consumption.
-- Walter Benjamin, 1934
It's like people shifted from even that, to needing to have a photo with themselves front and center. Trample nature, then mess up the photo, too, and of course, burn a whole lot of kerosene.
To be less bitter about it, if people had more imagination and confidence, they wouldn't need to see everything first-hand, and wouldn't need to collect external proof that they're "someone". That seems achievable and worthwhile.
In spite of our individualism, most Americans still stop at red lights and wait for--sometimes inordinately long--lengths of time for it to turn green before proceeding despite there being no cross traffic and no practical reason why they should. They do this even if they know there is no enforcement or traffic camera.
They do this because they are educated and have the value inculcated in them very early on that "red means stop and green means go." They also learn that behaving in compliance with this rule is critical for the orderly functioning of society. Interestingly, when people are out of their cars, suddenly their ideas about the iron law of traffic lights get way more loosey-goosey. Part of this is because they sense, deep down, that the traffic laws aren't designed with non-car road users in mind, so cyclists think it makes more sense to treat red lights as stop signs and pedestrians resent not being able to walk wherever and however they please.
But a bigger part of it is that all the social conditioning is based on driving and not on walking. So that deep-down sense of "This is wrong" that keeps people in line doesn't exist once they're out of their cars. This guidance even applies in the car for signage that isn't common. Stop signs and traffic lights are explained to you from when you're a child. But Yield signs and 4 way stops are not always and, consequently, you see a lot less compliance among drivers on this front.
In places like Japan, it's not some property of the "communitarian culture" that magically makes people more likely to pick up after themselves. It's drilled into them from childhood. Kids are expected to tidy up at home by themselves. It's a standard part of the pre-K and early childhood education to clean up your spaces regardless of who made the mess. And when the cleaning staff comes by to do the deep cleaning, the children are generally told to THANK THEM for their contributions rather than taking them for granted.
Culture isn't some exogenous force that falls out of the sky or is bred into our genes. It emerges as a consequence of how we socially condition ourselves, what we teach our kids, what we expect from each other, and what we are willing to put up with. To put up with shitty aspects of our own cultures rather than adapting or changing is a choice we make.
I don't find "individualism" to be mutually exclusive to "collectivism" in this way. They may counter balance each other to some degree, but I have serious doubts that there is any issue that can be elevated to "root issue".
Especially with concepts as ambiguous as "individualism".
How would you explain Singapore then?
> A more collectivist attitude appears, from my experience, to get people to be more thoughtful.
Doing something good today, just because of peer pressure, means a person might take part in a progrom tomorrow, for the same motivation. I'd rather say collectivism and thought are directly opposed.
> The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.
-- Hannah Arendt, "On Evil"
And when it comes to large scale pollution, plastic flowing into the ocean, Asian nations at the very least don't seem any better than western industrialized ones, do they?
> where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection or acquisition of more social status
My understanding of these instagram folk is that it's definitely about social status and very often about making money. "Influencer" is a career. Maybe if Iceland offered to promote these influencers' work in exchange for good behavior, some concept of mutual benefit could be worked out.
I appreciate the businesslike hacker approach but paying inconsiderate assholes so they behave less like inconsiderate assholes doesn't sound like a great idea.
Or throw them in jail/fine them to fund better protecting natural resources?
I hate to sound cynical but the reason it seems like everyone knows someone who's gone to Iceland in the past 5 years is because the government has been heavily subsidizing flights and hotels to this exact end. There really was no other outcome :(
Also the government only needs to levy a 1000 USD fine on a few people in order to stop a lot of this because the American press will seize on it immediately.
This isn't exactly accurate.
WOW air, the budget airline that was offering cheap flights from the US is now bankrupt. They were able to offer the flights so cheap because they were operating at a loss trying to take market share away from Icelandair.
The biggest problem has been the government's inability to control the tourism industry, which more or less runs amok, taking all of the profit and contributing little back other than general tax revenue.
Members of parliment have proposed various solutions to deal with tourism, but most often there is no agreement, and no concrete actions put into place.
Basically there are laws that prevent the government from taxing people differently, so it's illegal to tax tourists different than locals, so it becomes difficult to take advantage of tourism money for government to create facilities, hire people, build infrastructure, etc.
It's happening, but it's not what it could be.
Various "nature pass" fees have been proposed, hotel taxes, flight taxes, etc.. but no matter what the idea is someone is always against it, which has made curbing the situation hard.
With WOW air just disappearing recently, the economy is still adjusting to that.
Icelandic speeding tickets can quickly escalate to the equivalent of tens of thousands USD, and their speed limits seem really low, especially the main ring road. However, you really don't hear many stories in the American press about ignorant tourists getting raked by Icelandic speeding laws.
I've been to Iceland once on a business trip and the tickets were outrageously expensive, the fun bit was that the same - now defunct - airline would have happily taken us to the USA for a small fraction that they asked for the trip to Iceland. And that USA trip would be through Iceland...
Clickbaity title implies that all tourists that visit Iceland trash the place and this could not be further from the truth, I thought people were pretty well behaved. This article was about a few bad actors, literally. Iceland’s economy is now heavily reliant on tourism but tourism always comes at a cost and this needs to be factored in when choosing this as your source of income as a country. You don’t hear about the Ecuadorians complaining about tourists ruining the Galapagos Islands because they put a lot of effort into managing tourism there. Tourists are all the same, they just don’t care about your country, deal with it, manage it. Restrict the numbers, increase the cost, use the money to make repairs and clean up the mess. If not then don’t let them in (by making it prohibitively expensive to get there) and find another way to make money for your people.
I don't know what percentage of Iceland's tourists are behaving in the manner described by the article, but I disagree. There's nothing wrong with educating tourists about proper conduct in a guest country. Some will just ignore the admonitions but others may adjust their behavior. I do agree that a country should account for possible ecological/environmental costs and factor that into fees passed onto tourists.
Same is happening in the Faroe Islands at the moment. We're at the early stages, though.
Last summer was absolutely terrible, with tourists not getting informed.
Don't get me wrong, I do not blame the tourists at all. The tourism board has put out a whole lotta campaigns, social media marketing and shit. But they didn't do anything to prepare and inform this huge influx of people.
"Unspoiled and authentic" is the message. People go trekking across the mountains, and into the private property of farmers. One farmer has threatened to shoot tourists, with messages of "Tourists fuck off to your own country".
At least one person has died. A drunk festival attendee, I believe. It can get foggy extremely quickly. They fell to their death off a mountain, because they couldn't see where they were walking.
This could have been prevented by guided tours, but that would ruin the "authentic, unspoiled, whoa nature" image that the tourism board is going for. Alternatively, educating tourists on do's and don't's. A pamphlet at the airport and the dock.
Iceland should make up its mind. Flights to Iceland (from pretty much anywhere) are extremely cheap, presumably due to some sort of Icelandic tourism-board subsidy. This attracts people who choose vacation destination based on price... who might not be the most motivated to nurture (or even pay attention to) the local character of the place they visit.
That’s a pretty classist thing to say. Rich people aren’t more respectful of nature than people on a budget.
There are two algorithms for choosing a vacation destination:
1. sort vacation destinations based on actually wanting to go there, and then filter based on ability-to-go;
2. sort vacation destinations based on ability-to-go, and then pick the top one.
AFAIK, there’s no correlation between wealth/class and which algorithm people use. Rich people are sometimes rich because they’re thrifty, and so are no less likely to employ algorithm #2; poor people are sometimes poor because they tend to splurge on the things they want whenever they come into money, and so are no less likely to employ algorithm #1.
My point is rather that people who employ algorithm #2—regardless of who they are—tend to not actually care about the place they’re going to (since they never had it in mind to go there at all, never did any research or looked forward to visiting, etc.); and that, by making tourism as cheap as possible, Iceland is encouraging people who employ algorithm #2 to visit, without really increasing the number of people who visit due to employing algorithm #1 (who, presumably, are the ones they’d actually like to have as tourists.)
Iceland is not going to be near the top of any affordability list, cheap flights or not.
They certainly litter less. And yes, there are socioeconomic factors in play of course.
Or, another take on it: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/david-sedaris-was-right-...
Flights to Iceland are cheap because the airlines' business model is being a hub for cross-Atlantic flights. Later on, advertisers started marketing towards those who were already crossing the Atlantic, encouraging them to spend time in the country since they were already there.
It would be possible to tax tourists more for their stay, limiting low-value tourists. It would also be possible to just put a hard limit on the number of visitors, which to me sounds like a reasonable solution, as no country can handle this growth in visitors in such a short time.
[Warning ascerbic and anecdotal story below]
Iceland was the goto choice for my colleagues at a startup in London. A few days before they typically went and forked out top dollar for premium outdoor gear (Rab / Fjallraven) and discussed their plans to mount Kirkjufell.
Iceland is the mecca for many hipsters at least for the UK.
I put it down to Sigur Ros, Game of Thrones and that its still not a very touristy place.
Like most hipsters, they know the price of everything but not the value. They check into their AirBnB place and use their phone as their main method of interacting in the area, rather than interact with the locals and build an appreciation of customs and the lay of the land.
Anyways back to the story, one of these well kitted out souls managed to sprain their ankles going for a leasurely walk in the boggy areas of Iceland, only 5 minutes after leaving their hotel.
I just worry now that the Scottish government are trying to market the highlands and outer islands as the "Iceland of the UK".
I can assure you that it's also a destination for hipsters in Canada, if not much of North America.
I've long wanted to go, myself—but it's a touch out of range. It's expensive enough to plan a trip to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, or the Yukon (from Toronto)!
Icelands performance during the European soccer cup also provided a kickstart for tourism. Thing is, it is an incredibly nice country with incredibly nice people.
Back the tourists used to be nature lovers, either individual travelers or in small groups with local guides. Now you have mass tourism (at least compared to the old days). And with that you get all the problems that come with it.
You see the same thing in Yellowstone--inattentive Instagrammers with selfie sticks hoping to snap the perfect pic next to the wildlife and scenery. Nothing quite as real as being scalded by a hot spring when you're used to viewing the world through a screen.
Mass tourism has ruined travel for me.
Try Yellowstone in the summer if you want ruined. Non-stop traffic jams, trash everywhere, random punk kids carving crap into every tree on a path they meet, and nearly every tree seems to have carvings scraped off it multiple times.
Why? There are millions of places to visit, the vast majority of which are nearly empty. You don't have to go to the big name locations, there are plenty of others that aren't crowded.
But the unspoilt places inevitably require more effort both upfront and whilst there. The holiday starts to become more like work than relaxation!
If and when I go somewhere, I try to go in off season. And if there is no such thing as off season for a place, I just avoid it.
Yeah. Much of the 'real world' is turning into something like a Center Parks (if you know of it) experience, where what we believe to be reality is nothing of the sort. At least some trips are immune though, like a tropical chill out on the beach. It's the long dreamed of trip to Florence, for example, that is likely to be marred.
This comment made me realise why this thread gave me an uneasy feeling. It's not being upset about people travelling, it's being upset about the wrong people travelling for the wrong reasons. I don't see why your long-dreamed of trip is more virtuous than one someone chose because they saw a nice picture on social media.
Same everywhere. I still remember going to the NY ball drop new year's eve - all I could see was camera flashes, hundreds of them every second. It was disgusting. I was one of the very few people who wanted to see stuff with naked eye :(
Do these super talented artistic photographers see the photos they take, even once, after they have taken it?
> Do these super talented artistic photographers see the photos they take, even once, after they have taken it?
Nope, similarly the affect of using cameras in museums has been studied before. In real life it's pretty blatantly obvious that 99% of people don't go to museums and galleries for their interest any more, it's all about being pretentious and shoving as many pictures on facebook as possible so their friends think they are cultured. every time I go there are people who never look away from their phone, just take a picture, next, take a picture, next... all the way.
I find it difficult not to be disgusted by it. If all they really wanted was a picture they could have bought a book far more easily, but they don't want a picture, and they aren't interested, they just want to put it on facebook.
I try to ignore them but they often try to make you get out of the way for their important pictures of EVERYTHING if you dare to appreciate something with your actual eyeballs for more than 20 seconds.
Ok enough this thread is not helping my attitude towards people.
I take tons of photos when I go on vacation in a foreign country, but I don't put them on Facebook. I do put them on Google Photos so interested people (who I specifically invite) can look at them if they choose. (GP also has some convenient features, like being able to add descriptions/commentary to each photo, and being able to see on a map where it was taken.)
Getting a photo book wouldn't help me though. I like to take photos of many things that tourist photos don't show: random city streets, bicycles, vending machines, cars, graffiti, other tourists, locals, shopping districts, residential districts, trains, signs, Apple stores, grocery stores, etc. I like to try to capture what life is really like in a place, good and bad, and a book of tourist photos isn't going to show you that.
> I like to take photos of many things that tourist photos don't show: random city streets, bicycles, vending machines, cars, graffiti, other tourists, locals, shopping districts, residential districts, trains, signs, Apple stores, grocery stores, etc. I like to try to capture what life is really like in a place, good and bad, and a book of tourist photos isn't going to show you that.
That's great, it's good to take photos like that as a tourist and I wouldn't judge anyone taking photos of any kind in that whole category. But to be clear, i'm talking about something quite different, they are not photos, they are just an extension of social network selfies, "proof I was here", it's about excessive concern with self-image and nothing else - when taken to the extreme in the ways I so commonly see now, it has absolutely no relation to how one takes a genuine photo to capture happy moments, personally unique interests etc when visiting or exploring. These other people have become the extremities of a robot feeding an algorithm.
Many tourists have zero respect for local culture, people, environment etc - no wonder cities around the world are getting annoyed. We live in wonderful times, with travel being so accessible. If we are a bit responsible and respectful, travel can be a fantastic experience - but no, we have to abuse it, as with every nice thing in life. This might come off as bitter but it is also true, so I understand when you say this thread isn't helping your (our) attitude towards people.
Yes, my kids and I often go back through my travel photos and reminisce. They are almost all on Instagram (plus a local copy). We’re not climbing over safety ropes to pose though.
Think of photography in that situation like a hobby, just like people might want to learn programming languages or whatever. There’s a personal sport to it - challenging yourself to get a great shot or document what you’ve seen. Each to their own.
The difference is we aren't disturbing anyone while learning programming languages - the biggest nuisance I can think of is a newbie writing wrong/out-of-date tutorials on the web. Whereas photography by its very nature can be super annoying to others - you have to be polite and wait for some dumb tourist is taking a photo of his girlfriend, you can't enjoy anything in peace with flashes going off all around etc.
>you have to be polite and wait for some dumb tourist is taking a photo of his girlfriend
Actually, you don't: I usually just take a picture of them taking the photo of the girlfriend.
As for flashes, these days with everyone using their smartphones, the phones are smart enough to usually not activate the flash when you're outside. It's not as bad as the "old days" when I used to see dumb tourists with disposable film cameras taking flash photos of the Grand Canyon at night, thinking somehow they were going to light up the entire canyon.
Why was it disgusting? Were they thrashing something, like those in the article?
Because I couldn't see anything, all I could see were flashes every direction around me.
And yeah, trashing is a never ending issue. You should see the early morning clean up at Times Square, on new year's day - it is quite a sight
Except in this case there is a very good reason to care how other people enjoy their experiences.
LOL, if you consider me a twat for caring how other people enjoy their experiences when it is responsible for polluting nature, then so be it - fuck you very much.
Definitely the downside of cheap travel.
When I was young, my grandparents had a little un-winterized summer cottage in upstate NY in an area that was still pretty active with NYC metro area tourists... basically boorish and annoying people swarming everywhere. ("Hey, look at the cow! Moo! <throws rock at cow> Why don't you mooo!") That isn't a thing now anymore, and of course the folks like from every city globally venture off to Mexico, the DR, and various nature-y places now.
Yuck.
I m really looking forward to the day when we ll be looking back at this era of compulsive selfpromotion with disbelief at the level of kitsch we managed to achieve.
We need to become more vocal about tourist etiquette so that it becomes part of the social consciousness I think. Back then, we were making fun of people we considered unwashed for not having passports and being untravelled, and now we are surprised that unwashed people are ruining nature in other countries.
I was just there a couple weeks ago. The only incident I saw of this was a recently married couple taking photo's on a cliff, they went out over the ropes, a misstep probably would have killed them.
Also when you rent a car there, they inform you that going off road is prohibited. I guess some people choose not to listen.
Yeah, people die taking selfies pretty much every year on one of our local hikes here in Washington. It's the easiest trail with a spectacular view(~1200ft of gain) in the entire metro area, so people flock to it in droves. It's a hike out to a cliff that looks down on a valley floor.
Every single "outdoorsy" girl on Tinder has a picture of themselves there, standing in front of the precipice.
There's also the easiest snowy mountain in the state, which everyone hikes up every year in tennis shoes as soon as the trailhead opens. One year Search & Rescue was called 4 times in one week because some hikers got stranded in the snow because they chose not to do any basic research about the conditions and assumed that since they wear tennis shoes during the winter, hiking through foot-deep snow in them is definitely okay. That week the county sheriff went on the news and asked people to please stop hiking that mountain for a couple of months.
Rattlesnake ledge?
Hiking in Washington is... frustrating to say the least.
I've even seen whole families with small children show up to snowy trailheads in tennis shoes expecting to do the full hike while I'm walking out with an ice axe dangling from my bag. They don't check trail conditions ever. I'm surprised more people don't die or get injured around here especially in the winter.
Now I try to find hikes that require some route finding as the people you come across on those hikes are generally people who are actually into hiking and not ig likes.
/Pretentious rant
Happens all the time in Scotland - I assume people look at the height of the mountains and assume they are safe for a quick stroll if the weather is nice.
e.g.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-457...
"Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team said the walkers' attire had included shorts and leggings, but no jackets."
I've never actually said to people I've passed that I thought they were inappropriately dressed (though maybe I should do) - but I have given people maps and directions when they admitted they had no idea where they were or their phone batteries had died (I take backup printouts of maps so not a big deal to give a copy to someone).
Yep that's a regular occurrence here as well. People assume that because it's in the high 70s on the valley floor that it will be the same temperature at the peak. Well, if you're gaining 3000 feet of altitude the temperature might be in the low 60s if you're lucky. And there will be wind chill as the air currents cut across the peak.
I've also seen a ton of hikers go 3 or 4 miles in without any food, water, or emergency gear at all.
I've heard of people on St. Helens doing the climb up the summer route in shorts and T-shirts with no other gear and becoming hypothermic at the top and requiring rescue. And that's a permitted route, meaning you have to win a permit lottery the year that you plan to do it.
What they need is a "stupid hiker fee". Some states require hikers to buy a hiking pass, and the fees for this fund rescues, but if someone doesn't get the pass and needs to be rescued, they can be charged the entire cost of the rescue.
They could do that and also require people get a card that says they're aware of the dangers and have a minimal set of equipment such as the 10 essentials to ensure that they can survive while they wait for search and rescue, which could be overnight in bad enough weather.
<squinty face>This sound an awful lot like insurance.</squinty face>
Basically, that's what it is. The park or local government is selling these "passes" which really amount to insurance, so that that government has the money to pay for rescues if they need to (or if rescuees don't/can't pay), and maybe also for other expenses involved in park upkeep. "Use fees" for public parks are not uncommon. Virginia State parks generally charge such fees for parking, for instance, as does Grand Canyon NP.
Its largely a scale thing too. When I was growing up I used to go on weekends away and camp overnight in rest areas, side of the road or private places. It worked great. A few decades later those areas are really popular with tourists but there is no room for hundreds of people to do the same. Meanwhile the new generation of locals can't do it any more and have to stay in hotels now - which they can't afford. Just another reason to leave the region and move to a big city.
I went in the winter of 2014 and saw cute fuzzy horses on the side of the road, so pulled over to look at them. When I got back to my car I realized it got stuck and had to embarrassingly ask locals to help. At least I didn't drive off road. Some farmer pulled me out of the ditch with his truck as some other locals helped shovel the snow around my tires.
In the meantime, Icelandickers themselves trashing their ecosystem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAubG28uODM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uba84Q6qwKM
Solution: put a Pokemon Go character inside the crater of a volcano.
Ok, but make sure it's active, we don't want them polluting inactive craters :)
I noticed this when I visited Iceland a few years ago. Lots of tourists littering, jumping over barriers/ropes at waterfalls, and ignoring the signs that say "don't go near the ocean - it washed away a family last week!" Stupid and selfish on so many levels.
Sadly, I also noticed the same thing on Skye last month.
It goes beyond just numbers of tourists (a problem in and of itself, and one I'm obviously part of). Some people are just selfish pricks.
I think this is a potential basically everywhere, unfortunately most people do not respect the environment and given access will treat nature like a city. Where it becomes an issue is more a matter of forces acting to encourage "normal" people with no previous interest in nature to go and e.g have their piece of the pie for their worthless facebook pic.
Anecdotally, I've seen this multiple times on smaller scales in nature reserves in the UK, social networking and selfies definitely play a big role. It's usually the places with easy access, almost no commitment or effort required, easy selfie opportunities... in these locations in recent years i've observed massive amounts of litter and disrespect, to add insult to injury these intruders tend to be ignorant of safety in general, hurling rocks, boulders and bottles into the path of walkers and climbers bellow from cliff tops.
The reaction from local authorities is to add more fences and gates, locking previously available easy access routes... basically keep the barrier for entry into nature reserves high enough for careless people to stay away.
Went on a roadtrip through England in 2017 with a friend.
Your second paragraph was the reason we didn't like it at Stonehenge. Busses and busses of people, littering everywhere. They had to prohibit going near the rocks, as people would break off parts of it to take home (who in their right mind would fucking do this), draw on them, damage them otherwise... Huge bummer for me and my friend.
On the other hand, wandering through Dartmoor, meeting 5 people the whole day was absolutely one of the best memories of the trip. Easy access, no effort required is exactly the tourist category that we didn't enjoy in the end.
I visited Japan a couple months ago during "Golden Week", which is their big national vacation week. Several of the sites I visited were absolutely packed with (Japanese) tourists. No one was vandalizing anything, littering, or even acting rude and obnoxious, or in any way I could see breaking any of the rules. As an American, it was rather weird because American tourists wouldn't be like this at all. It's pretty amazing to see a culture where people know how to act properly even when there's a high degree of crowding.
There are pros and cons of that culture though, Japan takes it to the other extreme from what i've read.
What extreme is that? As far as visiting when it's packed with Japanese tourists, I didn't see any downside aside from (obviously) some long lines and lots of people in the gardens.
Sure, Japan has some issues such as too much overwork in their culture, but America has that too. How many Silicon Valley engineers only work 40 hours? And how many poorer people have multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet and they still can't afford health insurance?
Go on just about any cave tour in the US, and there’ll be at least one chamber filled with graffiti from sometime before the cave was protected/commercialized(1) as it will have been a popular youth spot. It’s never cleaned up because it’s now historical and gives the guides a good opportunity to lecture against vandalism.
(1) choose your preferred description
> sometime before the cave was protected/commercialized
It doesn't matter what official designation it has or when it attained it, I'm using "nature reserve" to distinguish it from non-descript fields and planes. The point is that some parts of these amazing places got very easy access for uninterested people as roads and suburbs sprawl... and then the damage happens, but it becomes even worse due to selfies.
Iceland is trying to reduce its dependence on oil exports, which is a good thing, by directing efforts towards Tourism. But looks like this is also affecting nature in its own way. It is like we can't really interact with nature without destroying it in some way or the other.
Instagram does affect people a lot and the same people deny it. I am not on Instagram, never got onto it as I realized the impact FB was having in my life when it was the most popular medium. Uninstalled the FB app as well, I do access it through the browser occasionally, necessary evil and all that. But of course, instagramers (don't know if this is even a word) think they are inspiring people. What do I know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hope Instagram goes through their new change of not showing the number of likes to viewers. Would be interesting to see whether that has any modification of societal behavior of people hooked onto it.
A while back someone posted a comment on another story about travel and tourism - I forget who - basically saying that travel is the ultimate extension of selfishness and narcissism. I disagreed, and I still do, but I will agree with that statement entirely when it concerns Instagram influencers.
I’ve lived in touristy areas all my life. The phenomenon of locals being disinterested in the tourists is not a new one and existed long before social media. Mysteriously they don’t seem to mind the money from those same tourists (or live on trust funds).
>Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature
Rightfully so!
My city recently opened up a direct flight to Reykjavík.
Sadly, I've seen how people treat our national parks.
I hope Iceland use the increased tourism revenue to up their ranger presence and fine and/or deport the offenders.
To Iceland if you're listening: we're not all bad, I promise :)
Tourists: people that would be better off elsewhere in a place that would be better off without them.
There are so many countries and towns all over the world I have seen which basically just prostitute themselves for tourism. It's as disgusting as it is disgraceful. I don't want to see that - I like societies who welcome foreigners but do not depend on their money and hence won't sell their soul to this economic segment. It's obvious how the majority of the population suffers from this attitude where every service is made for customers who won't come back and accordingly is the quality.
Iceland is a role model in this regard.
Typo in title: should be "Icelanders".
Unfortunately, you're wrong here. This is from BBC, and they're using a very peculiar and annoying British-ism where they refer to an entity in the plural sense. They do it all the time with companies, saying something like "[Company] have announced earnings" instead of "[Company] has announced earnings" as in American English. Their reasoning is that the company (or country in this case) is composed of many people, so you should use plural. But it's awkward-sounding and annoying, and really doesn't make sense. An individual person is composed of billions of cells, but we don't refer to him or her with the plural tense.
Those causing the problem should pay the price. So a small tax on the tourists to clean up after them should be in order.
There may come a time where tourists are tagged with GPS trackers. Those who go off the beaten path could face fines.
Maybe a GPS tracker attached around the neck and it zaps you if you go off course.
That might lead to weird rise in BDSM tourism to your area
They need tougher laws & throw these digital attention whores into prison for 2 years. Deny them access to their IG, or all SM, for the entire time.
Guaranteed to stop bad behavior.
Easy:
Hand every tourist a brochure about the Do's and Dont's. Aka, like Singapore prints warnings (DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS) on their landing cards.
If laws and rules are disrespected fine the sweet bejeezus out of those assholes (like in the thousands of $ range) and ban them from the country (or ideally, from the Schengen room) for 5 to 10 years.
The problem will solve itself in short time.
We have something like that, which you find in the airport and various places.
https://www.inspiredbyiceland.com/icelandicpledge/
The people that need to read it the most though, either don't or don't care.
This should just be common sense to every traveller anywhere.
It's really a sad reflection of where we stand that this does not seem to be the case.
Thanks for the link.
*Iceland tires ...
At first they were just shitting up the Web - now it's the real world too :(
This isn't even remotely comparable to the tragedy of nature being so carelessly trashed.
I think it's an analogy, not a comparison. "Eternal September" being a time when there is a ceaseless influx of those who are unaware / uncaring of the rules.
It's not really a ceaseless influx if those people are inevitably leaving.
It is comparable in kind - an influx of the masses spoiling things for the pioneers.
In importance yes, but in analogy it's pretty close.
oh that old elitist complaint is still hanging around?
OP s got a point, the current tourism bubble is mainly driven by peer pressure.
Using "elitist" as an insult is getting old. You have to accept that behaviour shown by uneducated people is often inadequate. (Of course, "uneducated" about what... that depends on the context. We're discussing netiquette here but it could be anything else.)
sorry, maybe 'snob' is a better word to describe folks who cannot handle the unwashed masses invading their domain. But in seriousness, I understand the impact a bunch of oblivious (willfully or otherwise) people can have on a here-to carefully curated and managed space, I sympathize.
Is it snobbery to think that maybe those unwashed masses should get their shit together and not trample on the places they've just landed?
Well it depends on the 'place'. Complaining about the common folk using USENET? yes, that's snobbery. Complaining about too many people messing up a natural space? No, that's not snobbery.
Snobbery? Those "common folk" destroyed (as in, made completely unusable for its intended purpose) USENET.
"me too"
Walking on moss and sitting on glaciers. Whatever is Iceland going to do about such anti-social and destructive behavior?
Okay, so restrict their entrance and live without their tourism money. :')
That would require withdrawing from Schengen, and probably the EEA, impacting Icelanders’ travel rights to Europe.
That's one option, but another would be taxes: increase landing tax for flights, hotel tax, car rental tax, tourist services tax, etc.
Or simply limit numbers: require that people buy tickets to enter particular places (including national parks), and restrict entry once the place is "full".
If Icelanders aren’t happy with their current level of sovereignty, then perhaps they should do that. Otherwise they may consider directing some of the 10% of their GDP they generate through tourism to solving some of these problems.
> That would require withdrawing from Schengen
No, Ireland isn't in the Schengen zone. Irish people are free to visit Europe (since part of the EU). Also a Schengen VISA DOES NOT allow one to visit oversea French territories. You can't visit The Guadeloupe with a Schengen VISA. So things are a bit more complicated and wouldn't necessary impact Icelander's ability to travel to Europe, it entirely depends on what kind of deal Island signed with the rest of the EU.