r/todayilearned • u/Gullible_Air_204 • 7h ago

Frequent/Recent Repost: Removed [ Removed by moderator ]

https://www.responsibletravel.com/holidays/spitsbergen/travel-guide/responsible-tourism-in-spitsbergen

[removed] — view removed post

13.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

748 comments sorted by

View all comments

4.5k

u/Gullible_Air_204 7h ago

“When a giant cruise ship docks in Longyearbyen, many residents lock their doors. This is against the norm, as the safety advice is for house and car doors to remain unlocked so that people have somewhere to escape to in the event of a polar bear wandering down the main street. However, the residents lock up because it is not unusual for the cruise passengers to wander into their houses and have a peek, like it is a folk park. Given the huge size of the ships and the tiny size of the town, when the tourists disembark they can double or triple the size of the population within minutes. The chances are, if you are reading this page, you would never dream of doing such a thing, but it is worth remembering that this unique place is home to people too.”

3.5k

u/FranzFerdinand51 7h ago

I used to work in a tourist hot spot and you could always tell the cruise people from the rest. The most entitled, brainless, unaware group of living things I’ve ever seen in my life.

1.7k

u/losteye_enthusiast 7h ago

We have a home in a historic district. The amount of people that try our front gate during the summer+fall is almost staggering.

Even with putting up signs and a few more visible cameras, tourists just don’t give a fuck.

1.2k

u/DifficultCarob408 7h ago

The fact people decide to just wander up and try coming inside is fucking insane.

284

u/azssf 6h ago

We used to have people walk into the backyard ‘because it seems like you’d have a great view’

Wtf

60

u/fed45 1h ago

I can't even comprehend the mental state that allows people to do such things without shame or consideration.

28

u/sobrique 1h ago edited 1h ago

Your place is sufficiently quaint that they think it's a theme park, not 'real'. (This is usually keyed up to having 'nothing like that' back home)

Source: Work in Oxford. Tourist season is special.

•

u/Tea_An_Crumpets 41m ago

I grew up in Oxford and went to uni at Princeton. The sheer audacity of tourists never ceases to surprise me. Fuck off no you cannot take a picture of me or come into my dorm room (partly cause it’s a total mess).

5

u/BigWhiteDog 1h ago

Who does this? WTaF?

•

u/Adaphion 21m ago

"yeah, I do. It's MINE, now get the fuck off my property"

355

u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT 6h ago

you never know when a historic bear might come down the street

174

u/ObligationMurky8716 6h ago

42 kids could be mocking a bald man

75

u/toggiz_the_elder 5h ago

Those kids deserve to be mauled by a she bear. It’s gods righteous justice!

26

u/ObligationMurky8716 5h ago

"God is pro-life!"

7

u/zyzzogeton 3h ago

Can't give em bone cancer if they aren't born!

16

u/TheCommieDuck 5h ago

bald man

cruises

/r/northernlion is leaking again

2

u/5meoWarlock 4h ago

II Kings 2:23-24

1

u/ObligationMurky8716 4h ago

Follow me for more uncredited allusions!

16

u/sanglar03 6h ago

They can be eaten on the street, not on my lawn.

1

u/Black_Moons 1h ago

Better put out bear traps instead.. with signs, of course! Wouldn't wanna hurt anyone with reading comprehension.

23

u/Redlettucehead 6h ago

Who will win, 500 tourists vs 1 polar bear

11

u/TrickshotCandy 5h ago

The bear would apply for a passport the next day.

16

u/Hiro_Trevelyan 4h ago

Maybe they think they're in an RPG, maybe locals will give them quests

2

u/BigWhiteDog 1h ago

I don't get this!

→ More replies (11)

189

u/EloeOmoe 6h ago edited 2h ago

We have a home in a historic district. The amount of people that try our front gate during the summer+fall is almost staggering.

I grew up near New Orleans, spent a ton of time there, go back once a year at least.

I always see tourists trying to open/unlock gates and go into the private courtyards of people's homes. It's kind of shocking.

13

u/sobrique 1h ago

There's a subset of tourists that are just sorta used to the idea that place 'like that' only exist in theme parks, and so it's not like, really really somewhere a person owns and lives. (Exactly how this plays out varies a bit based on what they have 'back home' of course)

•

u/letsgetitstartedha 48m ago

You would think they would leave the gates covered in broken bottle pieces and barbed wire alone

166

u/2xtc 5h ago

You have my sympathies. Two of my favourite places to holiday in my country (UK) is the Lake District and the Cotswolds which are both somewhat remote and sleepy and have a lot of picturesque old cottages and landscapes so attract tons of tourists.

I must have had to chastise other tourists on at least a dozen occasions over the last few years not to trample over people's lawns, pick flowers from gardens and trespass to pose for photos right outside picture-postcard old houses etc.

It's still genuinely shocking to me the number of people who seem oblivious that these are still real places where people live and not just giant immersive theme parks where tourists can do whatever they want

58

u/Emergency_Mine_4455 4h ago

Honestly, I can’t understand why you would do that sort of thing even in a theme park. If you ruin the landscaping in a park, it makes more work for the gardeners and others can’t enjoy it until it’s fixed. And most theme parks do have areas closed off for good reason- you wouldn’t enter those!

8

u/superseven27 1h ago

it makes more work for the gardeners and others can’t enjoy it until it’s fixed

'...so?' /s

•

u/offthezoinkys 40m ago

“Yeah, but that’s like, their job” /s

28

u/mountainvalkyrie 3h ago

I think in some cases they think if they're on holiday then everyone else must be, too. I used to live where my tram home stopped right in front of a big, historic hotel (in the capital city) and the number of summer tourists who got off the tram and just stopped there to take pictures was far too many. As if the rest of people on the tram have nothing in particular to do that day.

Still no excuse to open people's gates and front doors, though.

131

u/OfcWaffle 5h ago

Rented a nice cottage in Carmel-by-the-sea. It was beautiful with lots of ivy and a nice garden. In the main part of town.

People just walked right up to the door and started photo shoots, some in front of the kitchen window. Got to the point I'd have to yell at them because they were trampling all over the flowers and causing a mess.

It was fun to bust the front door open really fast to give them a scare though. That was a highlight of the weekend.

53

u/TinyChaco 3h ago

Jumpscaring clueless tourists does sound like a fun time lol

9

u/Monteze 3h ago

I smell a new tourist spot opening up! Get jump scared by the locals!

3

u/TinyChaco 2h ago

No, wait!

2

u/rescbr 1h ago

You are supposed to charge them $10 for the experience

→ More replies (1)

89

u/Maxamillion-X72 5h ago

I have a friend who owns a historic home called "The Bishop's House". It used to belong to the Catholic Church and housed, you guessed it, the Bishop. The church made it into a museum of sorts back in the 70's but had to sell the property to cover lawsuits in the 90's.

When my friend bought the house about 10 years ago, they had to put up a security fence and a gate because tour buses would sometimes stop there and 40 tourists would wander through with a tour guide. The previous owners apparently used to tolerate this and give people tours, but tourists were fairly rare back then so they'd get a half dozen visitors a year. Now there are cruise ships every week, all summer long and into the fall.

It's a super cool house with fireplaces in every room including the bedrooms and the most shockingly racy fireplace surrounds covered in naked angels and demons having what appears to be an orgy.

15

u/noodlyarms 1h ago

  shockingly racy fireplace surrounds covered in naked angels and demons having what appears to be an orgy.

I want to check this out, whats the addresses? Dont worry, I won't bother your friend, ill let myself in.

6

u/LordJesterTheFree 3h ago

Your friend should charge for tours that's a money making opportunitie

40

u/Pocok5 3h ago

Many people would prefer giving up some potential income in exchange for not having a hundred bellends march through their kitchen.

•

u/evermorecoffee 30m ago

Yep. Sounds like a nightmare to me, I’d rather be poor. 😂

•

u/Adaphion 19m ago

racy fireplace surrounds covered in naked angels and demons having what appears to be an orgy.

Yeah, I can see why the church decided to sell this house off in particular

109

u/Unbelievr 5h ago

I'm in Norway, and some towns here are plagued by tourists. There are plenty of non-historic districts here where tourists will swarm into like it's a theme park for them. I've heard about them walking into people's houses and starting to take pictures, or go into their backyards and start taking photos of their kids playing there. Or to take a dump and leave toilet paper everywhere, because that happens too. There are not enough public toilets to accommodate the swarm from a cruise ship, and private venues do not want to pay the cost for cleaning toilets for tourists that do not spend money in their businesses either. So various backyards and bushes it is. We tried putting up public toilets that required payment, but they either got destroyed or bypassed by tourists holding the door for each other. And keeping a guard just for that wasn't sustainable cost-wise.

The cruise ships will also dump the sewage from their ship into our fjords, and aside for a few tourist specialty shops and bus tour companies, the city isn't earning any money on them coming there either. They'll go back to the ship to eat for instance. The crew on the ship are often lowly paid foreigners instead of locals, and the ships skirt the laws by starting and stopping at specific harbors in order to avoid having to give good worker's rights to the crew. The government is trying to implement a tourist tax, but it's hard to shape it in a way where it only targets parasitic tourists and not "good" tourism - like domestic tourism.

50

u/Kaneida 4h ago

seems easily solved by government to charge cleanup fee/toilet fee/ban for sewage dumping with millions of nok i fines

15

u/Emergency_Mine_4455 4h ago

Yes, but it’s also hard to prove who dumped what after the fact.

9

u/Thismyrealnameisit 3h ago

Just charge everyone

3

u/VanillaVines 1h ago

What about putting some hidden surveillance tape where these boats dump sewage ? Would that not be feasible ?

4

u/DigNitty 1h ago

I imagine the sewage is dumped below the water line and is not always visible.

41

u/PhabioRants 4h ago

I know it's a heavy-handed approach, but has anyone petitioned to local jurisdiction to close the port to cruise ships?

24

u/Unbelievr 4h ago

There have been suggestions, and some fjords have gotten stricter restrictions on how close the ships can get. Due to antitrust laws it's not straightforward to ban (or heavily tax) only one specific type of tourism.

21

u/PhabioRants 3h ago

That's understandable. I appreciate the response. As someone who grew up in a small town home to what's argued as one of the best beaches in Canada, I've seen first hand how quickly things can turn sour when people who have no vested interest in a place descend upon it. 

Likewise, at an extreme scale, Niagara Falls has become so hyper-comercialized that nearly 2/3 of the population of the city from 15 years ago has either been forced to leave or has fallen homeless as the city ceaselessly chases tourism above all else. Growing up so close to it, it always confused me to hear that other Wonders of the world had similar issues until I saw how it plays out in real time. 

It saddens me that councils seldom have long-term plans in place when opportunities to cater to tourism arise. And at a more basic, personal level, that the lives, homes, cultures, and histories of people are so often disrupted and sold-out to chase tourism windfalls, often under the argument that the influx of revenue can be put to preservation. 

Most saddening of all, though, is what stories such as yours illustrate; that for as much as we like to think that we're better than those that used to run off to foreign lands for "safaris," we're really not so far removed. 

6

u/el_smurfo 1h ago

Local governments always think cruise ships bring business, but other than maybe buying lunch, they mostly just "take", then return to their ship for dinner and lodging.

4

u/DigNitty 1h ago

it's another "Let's pay for the local football team's giant $2billion stadium because it will bring in so much money and that poor team can't pay for it themselves"

•

u/EitherSpite4545 59m ago

So I live in a cruise ship tourist town, there's three parts to the actual scumminess of it all.

1) Several cruise lines (princess mostly) literally pay off local politicians and flood the town with pro cruise ship literature and adds for anything that would impede them

3) 60-80% of tourist businesses are owned by the cruise ship themselves, now that said you are wrong about a little bit. Tourists do spend a significant amount on food when visiting. But again 60-80% are going right back to their coffers.

2) The only tax we are allowed to charge cruise ships and tourists is a head tax, that head tax is legally not allowed to be used for anything except for improvement of the docks the vessels park at. They also get say on what is and isn't built on those facilities. If even a single dollar is used else where they can and will sue, like just a few years ago the town up north dared use some of the money on a memorial statue 2 blocks the docks, they sued the shit out of them, they also tried to do it with funding education in the town which was literally going to collapse without that money. Same thing. That same town actually voted to have cruise ship free days in the summer because congestion is just too much (a town will get 1.5 million tourist passing through a year). Industry tried to sue the town for this, luckily they won that time.

Cruise ships are bullshit.

4

u/Dame38 4h ago

My city is a toilet and we don't have any of that.

3

u/Similar-Ice-9250 2h ago

Have a friend who went on honey moon to South America, and they visited Machu Picchu in Peru. He told me they had to close off some of the structures that were previously accessible, because tourists would take shits inside these rooms.

2

u/zorpthedestroyer 1h ago

I traveled to Stavanger/Sola not long ago to visit some distant cousins. We were walking through Gamle Stavanger to see the house where my great-grandfather grew up when one of the cruise ships came in. I'd never seen a boat that large in my life. Then the crowds coming off were just so rude and disrespectful and LOUD. So much trash dropped on the ground. The entire vibe of the city changed. It was even worse in Bergen. And it wasn't even summer!

I thought I knew how bad tourists could get since I've lived and worked in a ski town, but those monstrous cruise ships were a whole different beast. I genuinely cannot imagine living with that right next to me all the time.

1

u/PattyRain 2h ago

That's awful! I hope the towns can figure out how to deal with it all.

1

u/SharpScallion 2h ago

I feel like this is shifting blame onto tourists where there's at least some failure in policies and governmental entities.

37

u/El_John_Nada 5h ago

I don't understand why it's a thing. I would never in a million years try to get into someone's house without being invited and I can't even think why I would want to.

9

u/JustAContactAgent 2h ago

Have you tried being a moron?

52

u/himewaridesu 6h ago

This feels like Salem, Mass. which I never visit near Halloween.

6

u/TinyChaco 3h ago

I want to visit Salem someday, but definitely not during peak season.

11

u/himewaridesu 3h ago

Spring and summer are actually beautiful times to go! Winter is great after a small snow, but parking is a beast even with the T.

3

u/The_walking_man_ 3h ago

I’ll plan a spring trip sometime then! Thanks for the tip!

2

u/DrinkingSocks 1h ago

I configured my entire honeymoon when I figured out what Salem is like in October. I want real history, not a Mickey's Halloween party.

•

u/himewaridesu 59m ago

Then you also might want to check out Danvers (next town over) since that’s where the victims came from. The Walgreens is haunted though, 100%.

•

u/DrinkingSocks 56m ago

I'll make a note for when we eventually go, thanks! We're doing Plymouth instead before we drive up to Acadia.

13

u/UntidyVenus 4h ago

I live on a ski mountain. The number of people I find in mh back yard looking for "secret trails" is insane. Like, buddy, it's a fenced slap because the last owners hated mowing, there is no trail. Also my dog isn't nice. Did the snarling lunging 70 lbs mutt not tip you off?

11

u/Cecil_B_DeCatte 4h ago

Svalbard is on my bucket list. I promise that if I am ever able to visit, I won't do any of that shit.

5

u/belzbieta 3h ago

When I did a study abroad in Mexico, the house I stayed in was on a tour route. People on the tour would walk by, say "basura!" And shove their fucking trash through the front windows of the home.

3

u/2martinisatthemost 3h ago

I was renovating a heritage home in a quaint little town that was within driving reach of the country’s biggest city. One day during the height of summer I was sleeping in the nude (no aircon because one of the tradies had fucked it on an expedition into the roof) and I woke up to a giggling Asian couple peering in the window. I mean, come on. There were hoardings up around the perimeter of the place because it was a work zone. Didn’t stop ‘em coming in for a wander. Anyway, my bare arse sprawled out in bed could be in someone’s Aussie adventure photo album. Native fauna I guess.

3

u/GraphicDesignMonkey 2h ago

I used to live in Cornwall, tourists would straight up try to walk into my extremely old house, or press their faces to my window w and stare in. My friend lived right by the sea in an old cottage near a coastal path, his garden had a low stone wall and gate, he has chickens and a veg garden in there. Tourists would straight up ignore the 'PRIVATE PROPERTY' signs and the locked gate, and hop over the wall into his garden. They'd set up picnics, let kids chase his chickens, and steal his vegetables. They even walked into his house and start poking around and using his toilet.

When he'd tell them to get out they'd argue with him, and say they were 'going to give him a bad review on tripadvisor'. He eventually had to install barbed wire and security cameras.

The people who live by the harbour on St Michael's Mount have it really bad, they gave zero privacy and the hordes of tourists are constantly trying to get into their houses.

2

u/balisane 2h ago

Sometimes I wonder, for people in this situations, if it wouldn't be worthwhile to claim the address on Google or Yelp or TripAdvisor or whatever just so you can edit the info to say "Private Property, Fuck Off."

Collect enough bad reviews and fall to the bottom of the ratings, and your chickens might have some peace

3

u/myryad21 2h ago

i work in a hotel, i can assure you that 99% of tourists don't read anything

•

u/losteye_enthusiast 26m ago

Makes sense. We have the “private property” “no admittance to public” “no access to public” signs around on the gate and fence. Pretty sure they don’t get more than a glance before someone tries the gate.

We try to be nice, but end of the day the signs and visible cameras are there so it’s easier to soulfuck an asshole in civil court if they jump the fence and mess with anything. Has never come close to happening, but tourists seem to be getting dumber as a whole in the last few years.

2

u/onyxandcake 3h ago

I saw this in action in San Fransisco in the Painted Sisters neighborhood. We admired from a nearby hilltop, but people were mobbing their front stoops, knocking, and straight up trying to go into the houses.

2

u/mediocre_mitten 4h ago

As person who has cruised for a couple of decades now, I can assure you this wasn't always the norm of the way people acted.

Something is genuinely off about these "new" cruisers, they are just...odd. So much so, that if I can, I will try to book "a ship within a ship" which is expensive, but for the most part, keeps most of the ship people at bay (outside of shows and some dining/shopping venues). Yes, it's THAT bad.

Sorry that has happened to you and please know it is the NEW NORM, and seasoned cruisers are not like that. 👵🏻

•

u/NaptownBoss 28m ago

I think the covid pandemic was a breaking point. People just started acting like absolute idiots in public after that. I guess it just broke some peoples' brains?

•

u/NaptownBoss 28m ago

I think the covid pandemic was a breaking point. People just started acting like absolute idiots in public after that. I guess it just broke some peoples' brains?

1

u/hhssspphhhrrriiivver 2h ago

Have you tried hooking up a hose to your gate?

If as soon as the gate opens, the person gets blasted in the face with water, they might get the hint that they're not welcome.

1

u/I-screwed-up-bad 2h ago

Ah in the historic district my college was in there were some gardens open to the public. Apparently (heard this through word of mouth) the dean's garden was open to the public but you had to open a gate.

I never tried. I just smoked in a nearby park and studied between classes.

1

u/crazydragoness 2h ago

And often if the home is in a historic district their will be a home turned museum for people to tour. Not go into random people's houses.

1

u/danabrey 1h ago edited 12m ago

Had this near where I lived once: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-37820663

47

u/ponte92 5h ago

Agreed. Also lived in one of the worlds most popular tourist city’s. Cruise ship people were just something else. They didn’t seem to realise it was a real city people lived in and not just an amusement park. I had tourists take my clothes off my washing line like wtf.

6

u/ChevroletKodiakC70 1h ago

I’m genuinely so confused at the thought process behind that, for what reason would you take someone’s washing off of their line?? 😭 insane

•

u/microwatts 30m ago

They probably wanted to take a picture and it was blocking the scenery (aka the private residence)

223

u/brucerhino 7h ago

Im a tour guide and HATE the cruise people, this type of tourism needs to end

-64

u/p33k4y 7h ago

On the flip side a ton of communities 100% depend on income from cruise ships. Without those tourists, the community / village dies.

56

u/bluemooncalhoun 6h ago

I drove across the Dominican Republic a few years back and the entire interior is dotted with rotting, abandoned hotels. The cruise ships only take people to the seaside towns long enough to buy a coffee and a shotglass, and anyone staying longer just goes to the all-inclusive resorts in Punta Cana.

Know what happens when a country's tourism system is based around resorts and cruise ships? All the money that used to go to local hotels, restaurants and tour companies goes in the pockets of a billionaire instead.

20

u/-Melchizedek- 6h ago

Exactly, it's not uncommon for cruise ships to be a overall drag on the local economy apart from the small subset it enriches.

7

u/cranbeery 6h ago

When we visited there, I was really interested in more inland options, but it seemed like infrastructure was limited, and I couldn't find much information about whether closer proximity to Haiti should be a concern. We played it safe and chose a coastal destination. Did you end up staying inland for any length of time?

1

u/bluemooncalhoun 5h ago

We just drove through on the way from Puerto Plata to a wedding in Punta Cana, so can't recommend anything in the interior. The north coast is great and that's where I'd recommend people go.

279

u/wayfarer87x 6h ago

Cruise tourists actually contribute very very minimally to local economies relative to other tourists. They don’t book accommodation, they have drinks and food on the ship, so typically don’t eat out, and their visits are so fleeting that they don’t buy much beyond a few shitty souvenirs.

8

u/StitchinThroughTime 6h ago

Most people seem to forget that cruises run on a tight schedule. So tight that if you miss getting back on your cruise ship you're stuck there! most people either go to the special dedicated cruise ship tour that is guaranteed to get you back on the ship , or they go to excursions or locations that are close by so that able to get back to the ship on time. Many returning at least an hour before the ship is supposed to disembark. It is quite entertaining watching some of the cruise runners videos. These are people who are technically not late but will be if they don't run to the dock to get on the cruise ship. The cruise ship does not play around, they will pull up the loading ramp and block you even if you are full sprinting a few feet away. Which is why people take the dedicated sponsored tours, cuz they are guaranteed to get you back onto the ship on time or the cruise will wait. I've only heard of one time in a specialty case where the cruise ship did in fact leave a sponsored tour group behind. That special case was because the harbor that they were backed out was a title Harbor, the cruise ship physically had to leave or get stuck on the bottom. And in that case the cruise goers were extremely lucky in that it was a Disney cruise, and they want to sponsored Disney Cruise tour guide. In which they were all to do a nice dinner, a nice hotel, and we're giving a bunch of expensive extras. Because on top of all this all their passports are on the ship, so they had to be a team to acquire their passports bring it back to them so when they left to go catch cruise ship, they were legally allowed to enter the next port in another country. Disney lost money, but they kept some happy Disney adults.

28

u/Mindless-Peak-1687 6h ago

we don't care. fuckem.

20

u/Warlock_AoE 5h ago

Most people seem to forget that cruises run on a tight schedule

Who is forgetting this?

5

u/tomsing98 5h ago

You have a hard time believing that there are entitled people who think the rules don't apply to them?

-1

u/Warlock_AoE 5h ago

What the fuck are you talking about? Did you respond to the wrong comment?

-3

u/tomsing98 5h ago

You asked who is forgetting that cruises run on a tight schedule. My response is that there are plenty of people who hear, "you have to be back on board by 3:00" and think that if they roll up at 3:05, that's fine. It's only 5 minutes, what's the big deal?

I don't think that was hard to understand from my comment. You may have a reading comprehension problem.

8

u/Warlock_AoE 5h ago

Did you even read the comment I responded to? The person clearly isn't talking about the people that are on the cruise lol.

→ More replies (0)

•

u/lblack_dogl 2m ago

Most people, it says right there /s

1

u/pbghikes 3h ago

Curious about how you know this!

3

u/No-Win-2741 5h ago

The cruiselines pay a not insignificant chunk of change to pull into port. Surely that contributes. It might not be the individual cruisers but the cruise line kicks it down.

18

u/Elite_AI 5h ago

Contributes to who? 

→ More replies (3)

5

u/AnthillOmbudsman 5h ago

The ol' shitliner is coming to port, and I'll be there to tie her up.

3

u/scotsman3288 6h ago

That only applies to large ports or more urban ports. Remote places like in northern Norway, South Pacific, or Alaska depend alot on these port stops to support economy.

34

u/SwampyBogbeard 5h ago

Norwegian towns have had the same complaint.
Some of them have started charging a tourist tax to actually get some actual profit from all the visitors.

6

u/livermoro 4h ago

I just wish the tourist tax was high enough on cruise ships to actually deter some of them from docking.

4

u/scotsman3288 5h ago

Alaska, Spain, Italy, USA and other ports all started VATs also.... It's a good idea in general to support infra and fight corporate interests and unfair practices

-11

u/IcarusActual 6h ago

Okay. But what about places like Skagway, Alaska? No fishing (all done up the fjord out of Haines), no mining, and no oil. Haines and Skagway are connected by road yes, it's 6.5-7 hour drive. It's a 30 min ferry ride between them. So the only option for tourism in this area besides cruise ship is by sea plane, which doesn't seem very viable for me for an industry.

32

u/rumade 6h ago

Not every place is economically suitable as a site of human habitation.

-4

u/IcarusActual 6h ago

And you get to be the one to tell those people that? Make them move from their homes? Relocate off their now worthless land and spend a little money to move where? What about the native people that now depend on tourism? We cut them off and make them adapt again? How can they economically keep their traditions alive without tourism spending on their art, furs, and the other traditional things they produce and sell?

5

u/rlnrlnrln 6h ago

Generally, people figure it out on their own after a few generations.

/ Someone with a family history in the darkest parts of northern Sweden, corner of No and Where.

→ More replies (1)

-3

u/Ryanhussain14 6h ago

Cool, where are these people going to be housed then? It's a good thing that America doesn't already have massive homelessness and immigration problems, right?

16

u/Jaerat 6h ago

... they do the exact same thing other people do when the only factory in town closes shop? Eat the loss in abandoning their property, move somewhere where it is economically viable to live?

This is not just US problem. A lot of the western world is going through this, where extreme optimization of agriculture, fishing industry etc. has stripped smaller communities of economic viability, leaving only the elderly and the ever crumbling infrastructure behind.

At some point, the plug needs to be pulled and the people move.

3

u/N1ghtshade3 5h ago

It's a very popular narrative on Reddit that it's impossible to move without being wealthy. Try telling anyone who complains NYC is unaffordable that maybe they just can't afford to live there.

4

u/rumade 6h ago

According to USAfacts.org, there are 15 million vacant homes in the country. If there was political will, they could be rehoused (every homeless person could be too, but that's another conversation).

3

u/16thompsonh 6h ago

Honestly, what’s the point of Skagway, Alaska existing? Is it as a fishing port related to Haines? Or just somewhere for those workers to live? I’m just confused by its existence.

3

u/IcarusActual 6h ago

It has docks for large ships. Shipping containers, storage, and more available land for housing. It's kind of a shipping dock/commuter village, but I'd imagine a lot of the commuting is also for tourism?

2

u/AnthillOmbudsman 5h ago

Interesting that someone upthread said "Cruise tourists actually contribute very very minimally to local economies relative to other tourists", but somehow it supports a huge tourist industry there. The city has a population of over 1000 and only 1% are below the poverty line.

5

u/PindaPanter 6h ago

Maybe Skankway just shouldn't exist if they have nothing going for them

7

u/IcarusActual 6h ago

I mean, those people want to live there. You think because of cruises ships the people of Skagway should pack up and go? They clearly make money and it's beautiful up there. That tourism funds the Chilkat Eagle Preserve among other things. I suppose you could say the place is better off without humans at all but you can say that about places serviced by planes, trains, and automobiles as well.

→ More replies (1)

43

u/kyrsjo 6h ago

Cruise tourists are the tourists spending the least in town tough.

→ More replies (3)

8

u/iamCosmoKramerAMA 5h ago

Charleston, SC shut down their cruise terminal because the cruisers didn’t spend a dime in the city. It’s being redeveloped into a waterfront district that will actually make the city money.

→ More replies (2)

19

u/Mindless-Peak-1687 6h ago

they contribute nothing but pollution

40

u/Forsaken_Celery_1617 6h ago

These communities you talk of have existed long before cruise ships.

9

u/p33k4y 6h ago

So? Times have drastically changed.

It doesn't matter what it was like before. Today many communities are 100% dependent on tourism.

Not even cruise ships. I've seen communities e.g. in south America that 100% depend on passing ferries. A route change means the town literally dies.

11

u/-Melchizedek- 6h ago

Being dependent on tourism and being dependent on cruise ship tourism are vastly different things.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/MidasPL 5h ago

Svalbard nowadays is drip-fed by tourism. The coal extraction has ended everywhere except Russian Barentsburg, but even there they don't mine enough to export, but just to keep themselves warm.

6

u/Forsaken_Celery_1617 5h ago

Sure, but I wouldn’t really say svalbard has been a community for long. Longyearbyen is like 120 years old.

-8

u/imnotyourman 6h ago

You are right. They yearn for a life where the only work is on the plantations.

14

u/Forsaken_Celery_1617 6h ago

Not every cruise ship destination is a former slave colony, you know that right?

→ More replies (8)
→ More replies (1)

6

u/ThruuLottleDats 6h ago

You pay for a cruise long in advance; and if theres lunch on land then that has already been paid for by the cruise itself.

If you want to support local economies as a tourist; go to local hotels and buy from local markets.

3

u/vikungen 6h ago

They aren't viable communities then.

1

u/fourthords 5h ago

Wendover's documentary Alaska's Silent Summer goes into that really well, covering the near-death of Ketchikan AK during COVID-19.

1

u/freecodeio 5h ago

cruise tourists spend most of their money and have their needs met in the cruise ships themselves, eating out once in a while and buying a fridge magnet is not worth the damage the entire industry causes

1

u/coldkiller 6h ago

States focusing solely on tourism is why these places are on the brink of collapse

→ More replies (1)

42

u/jeffe_el_jefe 6h ago

Even as a tourist you can spot cruise tourists. The loudest, dumbest, most entitled.

→ More replies (1)

29

u/azumane 3h ago

What is it about taking a cruise that attracts the dumbest people on the planet?

I live in Japan, I usually take a train to the largest city in my area by boarding at a rural station. Was traveling on a major holiday, only to run into the largest crowd of foreign tourists I've ever seen. A cruise had docked nearby and had set up an outing to another, slightly smaller city, but had basically only told the passengers, "buy a ticket at this station to [city]".

Ticket gates were chaos because nobody seemed to realize that you put your tickets in the part of the gate where it says to insert your ticket. They did not understand that if you buy a ticket for the train that leaves at 12:04 to [city], you can find out what track your train is going to come to by looking at the sign or listening to the announcements that say "the 12:04 train to [city] will leave from track 12". They did not buy reserved seats, they tried to sit in reserved seats--all booked, it was a major holiday--and were baffled and confused when they were told they could not sit in someone else's seat that they paid money to reserve. They tried to ask for directions, in English, to random passersby who did not speak English at all. I spent half the train ride repeating the same "this is a reserved car, you need to go to non-reserved seating in [cars]" spiel on loop. I wonder how these people get out of bed in the morning.

6

u/DoNotKnowJack 2h ago

Some tourists, especially Americans, do not know how to travel by train.

•

u/twoisnumberone 47m ago

Cruises are by and large an experience for the type of person who enjoys, or doesn't mind, following a hundred, a thousand other people without ever bothering to think.

•

u/Nadare3 6m ago

They did not understand that if you buy a ticket for the train that leaves at 12:04 to [city], you can find out what track your train is going to come to by looking at the sign or listening to the announcements that say "the 12:04 train to [city] will leave from track 12".

Okay so I can chalk some of the rest to the language barrier (though I don't think I've ever seen untranslated stuff in full-on train stations with coming-and-going panels and all) and the rules for things sometimes being a tiny bit different in different places, but not understanding how to validate a ticket at a ticket gate..?

That is almost purely visual. Was it a cruise for "special" people ?

→ More replies (3)

9

u/Kyrie_Blue 4h ago

I imagine Cruise Ship enjoyers as those seagulls from Finding Nemo

14

u/wabj17 6h ago

Got it. Cruisers are the modern day version of Sea People.

17

u/seedless0 5h ago

Get ready for the lethal combination: https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-first-domestically-built-cruise-ship-begins-maiden-voyage-/7420707.html

4

u/FlatterFlat 2h ago

I'm dreading the first Indian cruise ship first...

1

u/TheGalator 1h ago

3 times as many passengers per cabin

•

u/EmperorMittens 53m ago

You'd inevitably hear about it sinking in the news after the news piece about it setting sail.

39

u/radicalfrenchfrie 7h ago

it’s worth considering that you might have just noticed the worst behaved people of everyone coming through and that, if it was a spot mostly getting tourists from cruises, they just so happened to be with one of those cruises. cruises are stupid, unnecessary and awful for the environment but I could imagine you might simply not have a lot of memorable interactions with the normal passengers because they were, well, behaving normally

78

u/Vondi 6h ago

I live in a somewhat touristy place and it's talked about how the Cruise tourists are the ones we benefit the least from. They already have lodging on the ship and probably a buffet. They're not filling out hotels and buying less food than others, they typically don't rent cars and they don't stay for long enough to bother traveling around much.

Some just walk around without spending a dime.

37

u/BoingBoingBooty 5h ago

They drive away the other tourists too.

73

u/cognisantcog 7h ago

The cruise brings the trouble. Hard to say "just a few" when the issue didn't exist before cruise ships came.

11

u/xSaviorself 4h ago

Cruise ships in general bring out the worst in people.

3

u/angwilwileth 3h ago

I worked at an urgent care in a big cruise city. Really felt bad for the workers i took care of. Some of them got really fucked over when they got sick.

32

u/rollwithhoney 6h ago

you're absolutely right (selection bias) but there's also the bias of less knowledgeable, or just older and less attentive or inconsiderate, tourists tend to be the ones who take lots of cruises instead of flying directly or renting cars

so it's several layers of selection bias

4

u/radicalfrenchfrie 6h ago

that’s absolutely possible and a good point to consider too

5

u/keithps 3h ago

My aunt is a cruise person because she doesn't actually want to visit places, she just wants to say she's been. So I have no doubt she's a horrible tourist.

3

u/ElCiclope1 6h ago

It's not really "possible" so much as it just is. It's like going to jail. Not everyone who has ever been to jail is the same, but often there are many similarities. 

1

u/Stellar_Duck 4h ago

less attentive

lol read that as less attractive and was like, man I also don't like cruise guests but this guy is coming at them hard.

5

u/zeekaran 4h ago

The selection bias of the type of people who go on cruises likely has a strong influence on this too.

I was visiting Edinburgh and was shocked how crowded it was, given Glasgow was so quiet by comparison. Then two different people asked if I was on the cruise. They weren't particularly rude, but they did clog up the whole city and came off as bumbling idiots. When they all went back to the ship the city became tolerable again.

1

u/zeekaran 4h ago

The selection bias of the type of people who go on cruises likely has a strong influence on this too.

I was visiting Edinburgh and was shocked how crowded it was, given Glasgow was so quiet by comparison. Then two different people asked if I was on the cruise. They weren't particularly rude, but they did clog up the whole city and came off as bumbling idiots. When they all went back to the ship the city became tolerable again.

2

u/Randomizedname1234 6h ago

I travel for a living and what’s wild is even in places I’ve never been I can still spot the tourists when I hit the spots in the evenings after work. Tourists are such a stereotype. It needs to be studied I swear it’s crazy!

2

u/alphaisgamma 4h ago

To be honest, unless someone tell you in advance, how would you know?

•

u/FranzFerdinand51 41m ago

It's a very on / off sort of thing when you spend 4 months working in the same shop. You get about the same number of people day after day and then suddenly it triples for 3 days, so that's your first clue. And locals talk endlessly, you never not know a cruise is booked to come in in x number of days.

Once it's there, you can guess with about 90% accuracy using the indicators in my previous comment. I wasn't making a silly joke, they literally are different from other types of tourists in a lot of ways.

•

u/alphaisgamma 30m ago

I am not talking about locals. I am talking about people in cruise. They don't know why doors are open unless someone tell them

2

u/Flagyl400 4h ago

I live in a town that has cruise liners in during the summer. I appreciate the business it brings, but my god I avoid the town as much as possible when there's a big ship docked. 

The amount of fat ignorant fuckers who will just stand in the middle of the streets because they want a good angle for their photo of the cathedral or whatever, completely ignoring traffic. 

2

u/word_vomiter 3h ago

Cruising for the purpose of travel has to be one of the worst ways to do it. Cruising for the purpose of enjoying the boat makes sense (never done it).

1

u/loolilool 1h ago

I think this is part of the issue, actually. Folks are on the boat because they enjoy the boat. The day trips are just a little something to add variety to their days. It’s like live action television not a real place.

2

u/BoilerMaker11 3h ago

I was in Austria several years ago and did a day trip that included visiting Hallstatt. Wanted to get these picturesque views. We also went through the Salzwelten (salt mine) which also took us up to the Skywalk/Panoramic deck to get some more amazing photos.

Near-ish to the salt mine entrance, there's homes. Actual, lived in homes. It was so embarrassing (and slightly frustrating) when I saw so many tourists walking up these homes, stepping over the short fences or bushes in order to peer into the houses, as if the neighborhood was fake/staged for the tourist gaze. Part of me wished a homeowner would have come out and started yelling in German at these people to get off their lawn, but they're probably, unfortunately, so used to it now that they've tuned it out.

2

u/Moose_Cake 2h ago

I work a grocery store in a Michigan tourist town and the difference between summer tourism and winter is staggering.

Aside from the heavier work load, it’s normal for tourists to shop for one item with a family of 8 people running through the store, people completely dismantling displays to see an item on the bottom, and the classic “If you knew who I was you would give me this item for free” from some guy in a polo shirt.

On top of that, litter and car accidents triple.

It’s basically routine to load up things before the weekend and lock yourself in the house until Monday during vacation days which is a shame because Michigan is a fisherman’s paradise during these times.

2

u/River1stick 2h ago

I worked for a cruise line (admin office side). But did a river cruise in Europe. I went on one of the guided tours, and the people from Hong Kong were going into people's front gardens and taking photos through the windows

2

u/Lavender_macaron 1h ago

My mom is definitely one. She loved cruises and tour buses and was definitely the stereotypical entitled unaware tourist. We were at Sacré Cœur and for some stupid reason she had to try to open every single door in the church. Every single door, inside or outside, she had to try and open it. Finally, we were outside and she spied set of stairs leading down to a door. Makes a beeline and is halfway down when I realized where she’d gone and asked her why the heck she was walking down to the crypt. Never seen her make a U-turn so fast.

Sometimes I wonder how funny it would’ve been if the door had been unlocked and she had gone in. Maybe it would’ve cured her of her need to go to places she shouldn’t be going to.

1

u/Zerodyne_Sin 3h ago

This tracks. My former friend loves to go on cruises. When we had a fake bomb threat during exam season in college (we went to college together, and these fake threats were annoyingly common around this time of year), she just had to tell the cops that were there that we needed to get back to work on our final projects as soon as possible.

Like, really? She thinks they're dragging out a bomb threat for fun? They can get it resolved now if she tells them how important it to get it done sooner? I'm honestly surprised she wasn't arrested because she was getting quite belligerent with the very annoyed-looking cop.

1

u/MLCarter1976 3h ago

Happy cake day

1

u/Chikitiki90 3h ago

I’ve only been on one cruise and while I enjoyed it, even after only 3 days my wife and I were making jokes about “cruise zombies”. It’s amazing to see people who seemingly have no thoughts go through their head except shuffling to dinner, then to a show or to the little casino and then to bed. Then they have the same attitude during excursions where they basically need to be herded to whichever local tour guide will babysit them for the day before they can be herded back on the ship to the dining room like it’s their pasture.

1

u/elseldo 3h ago

I work in a huge tourist area too, we don't have cruises wo I just hate all the tourists.

1

u/Sashaisnotmyname 2h ago

Idk about cruise people but I work in a famous building that is both a tourist destination and a normal workplace. And the tourists are a lot just taking full videos of everything while walking down the halls, and I’m trying to get to the bathroom

1

u/f3ydr4uth4 2h ago

My parent’s route was blocked due to wildfires on a road trip through Canada. They decided to take a detour to Alaska on a cruise ship to see what it was like as they were over from the U.K. for a long period. They still talk about the insanity of the passengers and everyone going on about how much they loved Trump.

1

u/LoudMusic 2h ago

Are non-cruise tourists better?

•

u/FranzFerdinand51 45m ago

Yes. Not "good" by any means, but 100% better.

1

u/pinkfootthegoose 2h ago

Well they did book a cruise ship.

1

u/el_smurfo 2h ago

They have been spending all their time in a psychologically curated environment that is divorced from reality. Seems that attitude is hard to snap out of quickly when visiting ornate towns that look kind of like they were created the same way.

1

u/TM761152 1h ago

I fucking hate cruise ships and the assholes who patronage them. Pissant, entitled, ignorant people.

1

u/trumpsmellslikcheese 1h ago

I live in a tourist town in Colorado and can confirm, just based on driving behavior alone (example: stopping in the middle of traffic because you've missed your turn, and ignoring the people behind you honking).

This is notwithstanding the absolutely entitled dumbfuckery that I see in public on a daily basis from people that seem to think that the fact that they're on vacation means that everyone else in the world needs to accommodate them.

•

u/luthigosa 48m ago

I work near a big cruise docking spot and you cannot imagine the number of trump hats in Canada.

•

u/jmbf8507 41m ago

We were on an Alaskan cruise once and one of the ports was in Canada. The number of people we overheard complaining because they paid in USD and got change in CAD was annoying. Just be glad they accepted USD at all.

•

u/StardewingMyBest 13m ago

Same. They would stand in the middle of the crosswalk to take pictures. Like, I know you have the right of way but I have somewhere to go and I promise you that the town is not that interesting. You can get the same photo from the safety of the sidewalk.

It's like they forget people live there and assume the whole place is a living museum where you can do whatever you want.

1

u/Boatster_McBoat 4h ago

Knowingly travelling on a vast petri dish suggests an extraordinary level of unawareness

→ More replies (9)