Instead of giving visitors visa free access who hold strong passports, rather make them require a visa prior to entry (meaning they can’t just pack their bags and go, now having to pre-plan in advance and line up for getting a visa & paying money for it, they’re not alone since hundreds more are doing the same thing. There’s also the guarantee whether they’ll be eligible or get rejected on the spot).
It may cause strain on visa applications that’ll lead to mass rejections due to overload. If I were a country that’s suffering over tourism, just rescind visa free access for ALL nationalities (including those who have strong passports like US, UK, DE, FR, AU or CA to name a few) as in when they check visa requirements: it’ll be rewritten as “visa required” rather than “visa not required” prior to entry.
Or, they can apply for a tourist visa many times as they’d like but reject them. (Basically a real life travel “shadow ban” if that’s the right way to say it), leads to them giving up as they’ll know a visa will never be guaranteed regardless of numerous attempts. However, would this move alone reduce over tourism? Since you can’t just show up in someone else’s nation uninvited (illegal immigration).
Has over tourism killed a city that wouldn’t have otherwise slowly died due to economic stagnation? Tourism obviously has negative externalities, but it also provides economic activity to places which otherwise would probably need to make other tradeoffs to prevent economic collapse.
I recommend you to visit Florence or Venice. To name a couple cities in which to see the effects of overtourism.
They are theme parks for tourists nowadays. If you see the cities some years ago and now, you see how they are a shadow of what they were. Tons of traditional shops closed to be bought by shitty chains that sell the typical stuff you see everywhere else. Restaurants closed so a mcdonald could open, traditional shops closed so a zara could open… and so on.
I did.
In regards to Venice, what would the city look like without tourism? What economy would there be for a city out in the middle of a lagoon after all industry moved out? Yeah, it is a fucking theme park. But is that worse than a ruin?
I never said I didn’t want tourism. I specifically talked about overtourism. I’m not against tourism, I’m agaisnt having BnB’s by the thousands in a city as small as Florence.
I’m talking about living in an appartment block where there is a BnB (or three). I talk about trying to rent a house to live there when nobody will rent you because they make in a week of tourist rentals more than they make in a month or two of normal rental. Tourism is fine. Overtourism kills cities.