Overtourism II - Attack of the Cruise Ships
It’s been a couple months since I first raised the prospect of a series of pieces on the causes of overtourism - the fodder for many internet hot takes, much handwringing, and the cause of many legitimate problems, from environmental degradation to overcrowding. But as with all things, identifying the causes of the problem is the first step to addressing it. That is why I’m disaggregating the causes of overtourism, and examining each cause in isolation, the pros and cons, and what we as a society can do about it. My first piece in this series was on the problem of Instagram, and it’s impact on tourism. This time, I will tackle the problem of cruise ships.
Cruises, by their very nature, are designed to make only short term stops atmultiple locations. This creates a low value, high impact tourism. The high impact tourism is fairly self-evident. 3,000 people disgorged from a single ship roughly every day or so who tramp through the same areas is obviously going to have a high impact on an area, be it too much foot traffic, or the physical damage to a location. The come, they trample through, and they go.
As for the low value, cruises give fewer monetary benefits for a location compared to other locations. First, cruise ships, at least the giant megalithic ones are not owned by local companies. A Bahamian businessperson is not the owner of a Disney Cruise Ship that goes to the Bahamas. Disney is. And while there are chains everywhere, staying at a Marriott at least mean local people are employed at that Marriott, which is not the case for a cruise ship that hits 10 countries in 10 days. That brings us to another major loss of revue for a location, hotel stays and taxes. One of the key selling points of cruise ships is that the transportation and place to sleep are wrapped into one, meaning, that no one on a cruise ship is spending money at a hotel (or an AirBNB but that is a problem for another piece) or paying the related taxes to the local government, which of course is responsible for the infrastructure being used by the tourists. Situations like this are why Venice plans to enact a tax on people visiting the city for just a day.
Tourist revenue also comes from tourists buying food, alcohol, and souvenirs. And while the sheer volume of people may mean that some tourist souvenir shops and strategically located restaurants do well, that doesn’t mean that money is spread around evenly, especially to places even a few blocks from the main thoroughfares. It is feasible that the sheer volume of tourists from cruise ships, while causing massive impacts, could least make up the revenue for souvenirs and potentially meals. I took a half-day ferry tour/trip in the islands around Portland, Maine a few years back. When we docked for lunch, everyone else on the ferry went to the lobster restaurant literally right next to the boat, while I walked around the island instead, ending up eventually at a restaurant maybe a mile from the harbor where I had blueberry pancakes. I definitely spent less than a single person would have at that harbor restaurant. I did support a different local business, though, one that was not getting the tourist dollars, so the overall impact was likely a wash. But I don’t have numbers, so take my anecdote with a grain of salt.
Beauty I’d never have seen if I’d stayed near the ferry
The temptation, of course, after this, is to stop cruises. Write them off as a bad system and make them not be a thing by cultural fiat. But that’s obviously not an answer either (even if it were possible). First of all, not everyone who travels has the luxury, either in terms of time or money or both, to figure out their own itinerary and make all the necessary reservations for an individual trip. I do it, but that’s because I love this stuff, and planning trips is basically a hobby for me. Secondly, not everyone has the mobility to travel around the world independently. There is a reason that cruises have long been stereotyped as for the elderly – and it’s not fair to penalize them for wanting or needing an easier trip. Also, some people just like cruises. One of my colleagues recently went on a cruise to Bermuda, and she loved it. For her, the cruise was a relaxing way for her to go someplace warm and unwind. Not everyone travels to go see semi-obscure 5,000-year-old ruins. Some people want other things from their vacations, things that cruises are well-suited for.
Finally, there are places where it is desirable or even necessary to take a cruise. Visiting Antarctica, for example, requires taking a cruise. The Norwegian or Chilean fjords are also locations cruises are definitely desirable. Personally, I really want to go on an all-female tour of Egypt that includes a multi-day cruise up the Nile. Partially because, as a woman who, outside of English, can only manage very, very limited Spanish and travels the world by herself, that’s really the only way I imagine visiting Egypt, for both practical and safety reasons. And partially because I just want to travel up the Nile by boat. It’s a thing and I want to do it.
So where is the middle ground? How do we mitigate the problems of cruise ship tourism without penalizing people? For one method, I like Venice’s idea of ticketing day-trippers. There are arguments against it that say it turns Venice into a “theme-park attraction” rather than a living breathing city, which are completely fair. But, at least to me, it seems like a reasonable stop-gap measure. Countries or cities could levy a cruise ship tax to offset the damage those tourists cause, if only through literal foot traffic, increase the benefits of visiting as an independent traveler, and make up for lost tax revenue.
Another method is to drastically limit the size of cruise ships allowed in ports. The Titanic carried roughly 1,300 passengers and that was not only an immense ship of the day, it was just supposed ferrying people across an ocean. Today, many cruise ships carry 3,000 passengers who disembark multiple times during a trip at different locations. That is a huge number of people. So one simple control measure is for locations to ban cruise ships over a certain size and capacity. Even dropping the maximum capacity from 3,000 to 1,000, which is still a lot of people, for ships allowed to dock would have a huge impact, at least if the number of ships was held constant.
Cruise ships are not going to go away, but neither is their negative impact on locations they visit. Cruise ships are part of why independent travelers try to visit certain locations early or late, in order to avoid day trippers, who frequently come from cruise ships. Limiting their volume and access to locations will mitigate that problem without denying the option to people for whom cruises are the best option, and in turn hopefully limit overtourism in popular coastal cities.
