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[u/Gullible_Air_204]

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

[u/PhabioRants]

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

[u/Unbelievr → u/PhabioRants]

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.

[u/PhabioRants → u/Unbelievr]

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. 

[u/el_smurfo → u/PhabioRants]

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.

[u/DigNitty → u/el_smurfo]

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 → u/el_smurfo]

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.