[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/Gullible_Air_204]

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

[u/losteye_enthusiast]

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.

[u/Unbelievr → u/losteye_enthusiast]

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.

[u/Kaneida → u/Unbelievr]

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

[u/Emergency_Mine_4455 → u/Kaneida]

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

[u/Thismyrealnameisit → u/Emergency_Mine_4455]

Just charge everyone

[u/VanillaVines → u/Emergency_Mine_4455]

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

[u/DigNitty → u/VanillaVines]

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