For a moment, close your eyes and imagine a child walking through the city streets, or a calm conversation of old people in the main square with a cup of coffee or people watching a football game. Imagine a local market where fresh fruits and vegetables are sold, harvested in the surrounding fields in the morning. But now wake up from the dreams and move to a noisy street leading to the Venetian cathedral of St. Mark. Here, where children used to run and old people used to talk, in the places where famous Venetian history was made, we can only see crowds of people who are shouting in search of a place for the best photo.
Tourists have been coming to Venice for a long time. But there have never been so many of them – 16.5 million each year. Today, this mass of people makes life impossible for the locals, which of course makes them angry. Imagine your favourite bakery turning into a souvenir stand. Or, instead of selling fresh fruit on the market, only sliced fruit would be sold in plastic containers. There are simply too many people, which is not a good experience even for tourists. We can understand the protests against tourists that took place in cities such as Barcelona and Venice in 2017. 2017 was the year when people started talking about mass tourism.
The number of tourists increased from 25,000 in 1950 to 1 trillion in 2017. All of this is the result of tremendous growth in recent decades. The number of inhabitants is increased by more than one percent each year, which in the current state of the population means about 100 million people per year. Then we must consider the rise of the middle class of the population in the fast-developing countries and we already have a huge number of tourists. The problem is because they treat the Earth worse on their travels than at home. They party in the home of the locals and then leave. However, ordinary people who want to leave for a well-deserved vacation cannot be blamed for the excessive growth of tourism in recent years.
According to the authors of the documentary film about mass tourism Crowded out there are many reasons for the excessive development of tourism. First, there are low-cost airplanes controlling the sky and transporting millions of passengers per year for the price of a few pizzas and one beer. At the same time, the fuel for the aircraft is not taxed at all, despite the heavy burden on the environment. Then we have an endless promotion of trips across all possible media, all of which make up the list of places they should visit and give people pressure to visit these places. The tourist destinations themselves often pay journalists and bloggers to write about them. This creates a large number of non-critical articles. Probably the growth of tourism would not be such a problem if mass tourism alone would not be focused on some of the main points that rarely deal with the question of when is the number of tourists too high. The problem of large cruise ships is becoming more and more important. Cruises today are relatively cheap, ships are getting faster, more enjoyable. You cannot even experience the sea spirit on these ships, or even the spirit of the city where you stop for a few hours, you go on a guided tour and back to the floating hotel again. Not to mention the pollution of the oceans. The cruise ships also spoil the city panorama with their size.
Problems related to tourists appear everywhere. Indonesian island of Gili Trawangan can be walked through and through in over an hour. In the last fifteen years, it has developed into an island for entertainment, and today mostly tourists produce 9 tons of rubbish per day. Evidence for this is a rubbish field in the middle of the island. As long as mass tourism will fill the wallets of large corporations and the money gets into the treasury, nothing will change. We should create pressure on governments to adopt laws to regulate the number of tourists. There are methods to calculate how many tourists can come to a given location before living conditions worsen both for people and for the entire environment, but hardly anyone is using them. People in leading positions are not too concerned with the problem of mass tourism, as they do not seem to see the problems of their population and leave cities to become places for tourists and not for their inhabitants.
The real charm of some cities is slowly disappearing, romance is pushed into the background, but we must be aware that not everything is lost yet. We must become responsible tourists and travellers. When traveling, we must be aware that the place we visit is the home of someone else. If not humans, then animals and plants. We have to respect the local environment. We cannot reduce the number of tourists themselves, but we can make sure that our trips become more sustainable. Sustainable tourism is tourism that strengthens the positive traits of tourism, such as the possibility of preserving natural and cultural heritage and providing money for the local population. Sustainable tourism minimizes the negative effects of tourism, such as the increase in waste and the lack of drinking water because of tourism. Sustainable tourism is tourism that does not worsen the situation of the local population and the environment. When we are on a trip, you should ask local restaurant owners and accommodation providers to tell us some secret places or just tell us where to avoid crowds.
It is still true that each destination has its own hidden corners. And let's not forget, the sea is nice in the autumn as well. Check which accommodation providers and restaurants are responsible towards nature and are sustainable before travelling. We must be aware that not everyone likes tourists, and that sometimes the locals want to keep the hidden places of the city hidden.
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