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That’s because tourism heavy economies have a tendency to screw over low income locals to favor high income tourists.
Whoever made this meme doesn’t live in a city where new houses are bought up to be turned into shitty airbnbs
Hey I got news for you, that’s not just tourist towns.
The tourists love the town for how it was before they got there. We did too…
Its funny how the blame is on tourists who have to pay exorbitant amounts but not the owners of the property. Its almost like the exploitation of people whether tourists or locals is just the divine nature of our world so it must be the fault of tourists (or immigrants in other places) and never the owning class
In places like south Spain and Greece the “tourist” have outbid the locals and are the owning class.
It’s not like they’re hating on backpackers living in local hostels. It’s hating on the people pricing them out of their own cities. And then renting it out as an Airbnb in the “off season” for 10x the local rent.
There’s even a television show dedicated to this new colonialism https://www.aplaceinthesun.com/
Europe is like that nowadays. Rents have skyrocketed only from Airbnb and the tourists. Why rent it to a local when a tourist will pay more? Not to mention it ruins the economy. If another covid happens, market will crash, like the one in the USA.
I used to live in a Northern Wisconsin town almost entirely comprised of tourism and snow birds for an economy from May to September. Most were people from Chicago and Milwaukee that moved “a little too fast” for someone who lived in the area, so they were easy to spot.
Once school started up, the place was an absolute ghost town. All of downtown completely shut down except one bar. The hotels either shuttered during the winter or operated a single floor of rooms. The population would drop by ~80%.
I loved living in The Great Northwoods of WI, as it’s absolutely gorgeous up there half the year, but I don’t miss standing at the bus stop when it’s -40F wind chills or shovelling out my car to drive somewhere.
Stargazing was incredible in the winter, though.
Strange. Scrolling through all these comments and no one pointed out colonial tourist countries. Like how do you even defend tourism in general when shit like that exists?
Hot take but tourism economy is the best economy and best quality of life.
Tourism encourages the best values:
- Environment is much safer and local government is held more accountable
- Great career diversity - even low tier jobs are service jobs instead of factory work and high tier jobs are real product business owners not finance or some other bullshit money shuffling.
- Cultural industries like art, bars, history, museums - all thrive under tourism economies
It’s up to communities to learn to manage it but well managed tourist spot is legit one of the best place to be a human in. I lived in tourist towns almost all of my life and it’s the best, especially in seasonal places where you have a low season vibe with communities just chilling and enjoying the rewards of high season.
The real issue stems from corruption where instead of managing this golden goose someone manages to squeeze all of the eggs to their own pocket and leave the rest unmaintained.
And one pandemic and your entire economy is dead
One boat stuck in a canal has had the same effect on other industries.
Historically mass plague has been far more uncommon than shipping/supply chain catastrophe. To an absurd degree.
Making tourism economies one of the most stable over the longest period of time. They also bounce back faster and more efficiently.
While also being less prone to permanent damage or shifts from a mass upset.
Hard hard disagree. I grew up in a tourist town, and every kid I talked to for over 20 years had one goal on their mind: getting out of there as soon as they could. Job opportunities outside of tourist focused seasonal industries were practically non-existent. Your choices were wait-staff, landscaping, or deli/grocery store clerk. Any other industries had at most 1 business in the single industrial park in the area. Tourists destroying local beaches was and continues to be a major issue. Everything closed after the tourist season so there’s nothing to do other than drink or do heroin, and during the summer there’s too many tourists to be able to go out and do something. Tourist areas consistently have the highest rates of substance abuse and homelessness. Low wages from low skill industries focused entirely on serving the out of town seasonal tourist economy combined with high CoL as prices are determined by what tourists can pay, not locals, and little long-term housing as rentals are focused towards short-term leases for the tourist season and competition for housing is fierce with wealthy out of towners buying summer homes.
I have the exact opposite experience and I also grew up in a tourist town.
Just like any other town you leave to get education and come back with your money and get a house to enjoy your home town :)
What you’re describing is mostly skill issue and conjecture.
Skill issue? Maybe. But conjecture? Hardly. The data says that across New England summer tourist towns consistently have the highest rates of drug usage, alcohol addiction, homelessness, and highest CoL for their region. And this is in large part attributed to the lack of job opportunities outside of the seasonal tourism sector, expensive prices caused by the focus on wealthy tourists, and the competition for housing caused by both landlords seeking seasonal rentals and the wealthy buying or building summer homes that will sit empty for 9 months out of the year. This is also backed up by the findings of the committee in my hometown that was created to solve the issue of young people moving away and the looming crisis that will happen as the town becomes more and more one massive retirement home with too many retirees and not enough staff.
Of all the people that I knew who grew up in my hometown (which is at least 2 generations of teens that I trained at work plus my generation), I found 2 types of people: those who left and never went back, and those who never left and never will.
Care to share this data because from googling around for regions I’m familiar with the story is exact opposite. I’m not familiar with New England but the data is quite the opposite for places I am familiar with.
https://invisiblepeople.tv/how-tourism-negatively-impacts-homelessness/
https://assets.moravian.edu/static/soar/proposals/2017/Keshodkar_LaBare_Proposal.pdf
https://www.flasprings.com/blog/drug-and-alcohol-addiction-in-tourism-hotspots/
https://wewantrelief.com/the-nexus-between-cape-cod-tourism-and-substance-abuse/
https://www.gdrc.org/uem/eco-tour/envi/one.html
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9389488/
https://www.uni.lu/en/news/the-dark-side-of-tourism/
https://mize.tech/blog/the-true-impact-of-the-tourism-industry-on-the-environment/
Just some examples I pulled up in some quick searches. One specific to Cape Cod that I know of that’s not mentioned here is the damage to fragile beach environments due to trampling delicate beach grasses by tourists who either don’t know any better or don’t care. The beach grass there is easily killed by walking on it, which not only destroys the environment that many creatures depend on, but also leads to rapid destabilisation and erosion and full on loss of the beaches within a handful of years (5 to 10 at most). It’s such an issue that there are constant beach patrols of environmental officers across more than a hundred miles of beaches every summer.
None of this is actual research just yellow articles.
Here’s real research:
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The Impact of Tourism on Local Communities: A Literature Review of Socio-Economic Factors Shows how tourism increases income, employment, and infrastructure in host communities. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373644263_The_Impact_of_Tourism_on_Local_Communities_A_Literature_Review_of_Socio-_Economic_Factors
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Social Impacts of Tourism Perceived by Host Communities – A Review Paper (2021) Finds that tourism promotes cultural exchange, social cohesion, and improved public services. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357139679_Social_Impacts_of_Tourism_Perceived_by_Host_Communities_-_A_Review_Paper
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The Economic and Social Impacts of Ecotourism on Local Employment and Income (2025) Case study showing ecotourism boosts jobs and income in rural areas while supporting sustainability. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1757780225000101
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Tourism and Its Socio-Economic Impacts on Local Communities Demonstrates that tourism stimulates small businesses, improves infrastructure, and raises living standards. https://www.researchpublish.com/upload/book/Tourism and Its Socio-Economic-2434.pdf
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The Role and Impact of Tourism on Local Economic Development Comparative study showing tourism contributes to GDP growth and helps reduce poverty. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287645318_The_role_and_impact_of_tourism_on_local_economic_development_A_comparative_study
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Exploring the Impacts of Tourism on the Well-Being of Residents in Host Communities (2025) Shows that tourism can improve residents’ well-being, community pride, and access to better services. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/13/5849
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Tourism Development and Its Socio-Economic Impact on Local Communities Reviews evidence that tourism improves employment, diversifies income sources, and leads to infrastructure growth. https://www.geojournal.net/uploads/archives/6-2-9-955.pdf
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The Social and Economic Impacts of Tourism Development on Local Community Satisfaction (2019) Finds residents perceive tourism as increasing economic opportunity and enhancing city services. https://www.sciepub.com/JCD/abstract/10306
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Challenges and Opportunities in Local Sustainable Tourism: A Systematic Review (2025) Shows how community-based tourism preserves culture, empowers locals, and strengthens local economies. https://posthumanism.co.uk/jp/article/view/636
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Role of Tourism in Sustainable Development (Oxford Research Encyclopedia) Explains how sustainable tourism supports economic growth, poverty reduction, and environmental conservation. https://oxfordre.com/environmentalscience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389414-e-387
Let me know if you need more actual research or i can also produce some blogs and yellow journalism articles if research is too high brow for you.
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Tourism economy is the best economy, for the tourists and their white western touristy values, not the working exploited local class who gets priced out of their life by rich owners.
Rich owners get disproportionally richer by tourist money (by definition much more than the locals, because that’s what makes tourism possible), and then the local economy bends around them.
“It’s up to locals to learn to manage it well and not get corrupted” - my brother in Christ this is basic individualism and victim blaming in a trenchcoat. “Corruption” isn’t a magical thing, it happens because of the proportionally obscene extra money in the pockets of the few.
It’s basically this: tourism doesn’t happen between equals, and the money of the richer tourists goes down the road all money does in capitalism. Concentrated further unless redistributed via politics, and politics bends to money over time.
If you live in tourist towns, as in going around exploring instead of having your future stolen and become nearly unable to both live and leave, you’re part of the people rich enough to enjoy the benefits, whether you know it or not.
I’m a digital nomad in south east asia and I lived in villages, industrial towns etc and I can 100% say that locals have a much better life in tourist towns.
There’s a reason tourist towns have so much immigration because people actually want to be there despite vocal minority raging on the internet - the stats don’t lie.
Sure. Only, what you’re saying reinforces what I said. Rich immigrants like you, from higher economic class, as well as rich locals and those capable of serving them, enjoy tourist towns. Duh.
No need to take into account those locals unable to work in those industries.
Nope I speak for the local pov of my friends not of my own. People legit dream to move to tourist areas here because life is legit better. You don’t have to believe me, just google real data. Would you rather work in some unregulated factory or take tourists snorkeling? It’s a no brainer.
People in Ireland tell me the focus is on keeping the tourists safe, not the locals. So criminals just learn who it’s okay to target
So you think without tourists it would be more or less safe?
I visited Astoria, OR and the bartender at the brew pub was out right offended that I mentioned The Goonies.
there’s better things to visit Astoria for, like the forests and the sea lions(season dependent)
Oh, I wasn’t just there for The Goonies, we were there for salmon fishing, but you know while you are there, its a thing. Like, they sell the shirts at that brew pub. It’s going to get mentioned.
Tenerife
Ouf, I guess I was in the good part in 2015, I felt extremely welcome.
Things have changed
Meh, depends on the tourist, but yeah that’s how I look at hockey kids, the state I give hockey parents is even worse.
fake news!
source - The Visit Estonia deepstate.
Having experienced life in a city with a heavy tourism influence, it’s not the tourists that’s the problem, it’s counterintuitively a select few locals ripping the arse out of it.
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Housing shortages and sky high rents because homeowners and flat owners stick their places on AirBNB and other types of peer to peer services they provide access to;
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Ludicrous policies imposed on residents by locally-contracted private enterprises like event managers extending their road closures and parking suspensions a quarter mile away from their actual event areas, fucking over residents who actually live there for the other eleven months of the year;
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Zero hour contracts for those in gig economy or service workers, who get used and abused for a few weeks a year and fucked off when the good times dry up, while business owners have made bank;
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Increased pressure on public services for a few weeks a year, caused by influxes of folk putting heavy demands on the staff but leaving local residents to foot the tax bill;
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…and the usual creep towards city centre locations trending towards tat merchants selling utter shite.
It’s important to note that none of the above is anything wrong, it’s just assholery for the most part…
…and then those small numbers of “locals” have the gall to blame Mr and Mrs Miggins from halfway across the globe for ruining the city. Fuck all of the way off
Do you live in Edinburgh by any chance? Because that all sounds familiar…
I was going to say the same thing about it being Toronto 💀
EXACTLY
This is the kinda shite that happens, you’ve also got things like the one time people mistook an actual decapitated corpse for a Halloween decoration and the entire old town had to be closed off
Sorry for the barely related anecdote it’s still such a crazy story
This all assumes it’s the locals and not wealthy migrants that bought a shit ton of real estate and are squeezing the investment for what it’s worth till some politician grows a pair. AirBNB is also a foreing wealthy company, it’s part of the problem because it used tech to evade regulations that protected against precisely what people are complaining about.
AirBNB’s CEO should be brought behind the shed and sent to the far away farm.
Edit: Also, good luck regulating US big tech. The US started a proxy war to have the entire EU by the balls, smaller countries alone have exactly 0 chance.
The problem is that Tourism enables all that shit.
Also beyond that, it lets politicians get away with mismanaging a country because you don’t need a highly qualified population with a good standard of living to sell the sights to foreigners.
The problem aren’t the tourists individually, it’s the systemic changes that their presence in large number innevitably leads to, especially in places were politicians are corrupt, refusing to take measures to at least stop the worst abuses and instead profiting from it themselves both directly and indirectly.
Nah, fuck tourists and tourism generally. Maybe if they didn’t wreck where they lived they wouldn’t feel the need to come looking to get waited on. Also, fuck economies that rely on tourism, how about some manufacturing or tech industry? Promoting tourism should be last on the list of priorities for any sane locale
Yes. Stay at home in your closed off little bubble. Never experiencing other cultures or places to help expand your world view and instead reinforce it with the echo chamber of those around you.
Oh, man…
I’ve lived in 4 different countries by now, visited even more countries than that and come from a very touristic country.
I can guaranteed you that you’re not “experiencing other cultures” or “expanding your world view” by being a tourist somewhere - you have to actually live there for years in the way the locals do (rent or buy your own house, work there, do you own shopping, make your own food, have a car and/or month public transport pass, pay taxes, etc) and at the very least learn the local language to the point of following their news to start experiencing their culture and expanding your world view.
Tourists don’t have to do even a fraction of the things locals have to do in their day to day, have zero of the worries people living there have, and pretty much only get to know local people whose work is catering to tourists and who thus just put on an act for the tourists.
Shit man, I’ve lived for over a decade in a foreign country and almost a decade in another and even then there are tons of local cultural elements I never experienced (and some of them never could have experienced since my familiy wasn’t from there and I did not grow up there).
As for “expanding your world view”, IMHO you get more of that from being good friends with somebody from a different country were you live than from merelly meeting people whilst travelling abroad, especially if you’re going to a place with the idea that you live in a better (in the sense of superior) place than they do (which in my experience is a common thing with American and British tourists) - in other words having the modern day version of the “enlightned white man amongst the savages” spirit.
Try going to live in another country for a year or more and you’ll see just how deluded is that idea that being a tourist is “experiencing other cultures”.
Been there, done that. It really depends on how you travel. I very much will drop myself in the middle of a foreign place for an extended time, make friends and talk to them to understand what is going on. You don’t have to live there for a decade and still not understand things (I’d argue you’re doing it wrong at that point).
But even a short term visit can greatly expand someone’s world view with access to the arts (museums, architecture, food, music) that they normally would not get in their own bubble. And there is a vast difference between just seeing it on a screen vs being there in person that opens up minds much more than they normally could.
So please don’t try to gatekeep traveling. It can have more a profound impact for people than you realize.
I mean… that’s one definition of tourism I guess?
I’m very much a “leave only footprints” sort of guy - I know Brits have a bit of a shit reputation particularly when it comes to inexpensive package holidays, but I think tourism and learning about the rest of the world promotes a greater understanding of the only planet we live on. Whether it’s food; culture; history; or scenes of key historical events - it gives a window into people’s own gaps in knowledge or empathy.
I agree that an economy based entirely on tourism is a house of cards in itself, but I don’t think it’s a binary choice. Humanity have always had a nomadic element and there will always be those who want to travel, but it should be done sustainably.
TIL I’m wrecking where I live and that’s why I like to travel. I could have sworn it was because I wanted to see and experience different places and cultures.
Wtf no. Tourism is awesome, you get to show people from around the world the awesome parts of your country and take them on amazing experiences. It makes a ton of money and encourages a beautiful town.
A world where every town was manufacturing, or tech sounds like a dystopian hellscape.
I second this. I watched my hometown turn into a tourism focus and there ended up being no careers so there was massive brain drain as people left to other towns and states for work.
A strong tourism industry in a small city does displace everything else. It’s one version of the Dutch disease that actually happens even when the government doesn’t actively cause it.
You sound like a basement dweller ngl
Maybe if they didn’t wreck where they lived
how about some manufacturing or tech industry?
So they should wreck their cities and nature, but by your own logic that would only fuel more tourism in areas that aren’t wrecked.
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Most of those places were doing just fine before becoming tourist destinations. This “economy” you speak of is just the profit margins of hotel chains. It very seldom benefits the people living there.
No, no suelte’ la bandera ni olvide’ el lelolai, que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái
But now that they’ve let it into their economy, it has grown like a parasite the type of which cannot be removed without also killing the host.
Would you look at a parasite any other way?
I think you can safely remove most parasites, if that’s what you mean?
I’m saying the parasite analogy only cements why locals hate tourists.
Ah, ok. Yeah.
If it was symbiotic, it wouldn’t be called a parasite, typically, so yeah.It’s not good, but also it’s too late to do anything about it.
The problem is usually wealth inequality. The residents have to compete with the tourists for resources, but most of what they could get in return gets gobbled up by late stage capitalism. Most people who have a direct relation to tourism to how it benefits them in their lives have no problem with it.
I remember talking to an ice-cream seller in Egypt and he asked me what I do for a living. When I told him I was an engineer he said ‘so am I’. The predatory behaviour of Egyptian street sellers made more sense after that exchange but it never stopped grating. I think the best way deal with it is engage with the people in a friendly way and have a laugh. Most of the time people just need acknowledgement, that goes a long way.
I mean on a macro scale sure but I think most of them just don’t like the stereotypical entitled and annoying tourist they’ve been routinely exposed to. Emotional responses rarely incorporate indirect economics.
Yeah, there are some bigots and dickheads too.
usually.
but
let me introduce you to the native People of the southmost part of Bavaria/Germany … almost Austria.
Example: A Boat-Person of the Beautiful Königssee spent almost all of the ride ranting about stupid dumb dumb tourists… .to tourists. the rants were only interrupted by short lacklustre descriptions of the beautiful nature and rich history… and a forgetable music stop with agressive tip fishing.
Now, this was off season and in german. Well, german - a non native speaker would likely struggle to understand his thick accent liberally spiced with words only they use. Half the people on board have no idea what the angry noise is about. The others don’t complain, they know: yes, this is a perfect example specimen. This is what the average local is like. this man is not rich probably, no, but certainly well off, safe, living surrounded by breathtaking nature and beauty…
And he hates everybody else with every fibre of their being.
I’ve met several people from this specifc small region, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world, who were exactly like this.
maybe their point is to protect this environment. every stranger is a potential danger to it, they dont want to risk. if they value the protection of nature over their livelihood, it can almost be seen as noble. just don’t ask them what they vote for
Don’t worry, those people hate other Germans (“Saupreißn”= Prussian pigs), and visitors from Munich, the capital of Bavaria (“Isarpreißn” = Prussians living at the river Isar) just as much.
There’s a joke about how they call Asian tourists “Saupreißn, Chinesische” (=Chinese Prussian pigs).
