Undesirable consequences of travelling - Why tourists destroy the world

Why tourists destroy the world: Mass tourism, especially mass tourism cruises, is becoming harder and harder on people and the environment the consequences are undesirable. What we need is a radical reform of travel and cruises in special.

by Earl of Cruise

"Good travellers are heartless," Elias Canetti, a German writer and nobel prize winner, born in Bulgaria, wrote 50 years ago. During a visit to Marrakech, the writer observed blind beggars with undisguised interest. Although the original fascination still shines through in his description, it also reflects the horror of his own disrespectful behaviour.

Crowds at the Sacré-Coeur © cthkim / Pixabay

This disrespectful behavior can be seen not only with beach, fun and party, event, etc. tourists, but unfortunately too with cruise tourists. Modern day cruise lines "invented" the democatization of cruises with prices afordable for everyone, especially at "the lower end of the food chain", as John Maxtome-Graham once said, "and made a great fortune with!"

These modern day cruisers are mostly disrespectful towards locals they meet after disembarkating a cruise vessel and expect the same cuture and "enviroment" as on board and at home. Their overdemanding attude, the overworked and underpaid staff on board is hardly willing to accept, but pressed, is taken ashore and into destinations with a different culture and living standard.

A much stronger horror should actually affect today's tourists. Because a "good traveller" now lives with much greater contradictions. He also maintains that consumerist relationship with his host country and its attractions for which Canetti was ashamed. But today, fiercer competition and a massive acceleration of wage labor and the world in which we live have long since taken hold. For the hotel staff at the holiday resort and on board cruise ships - as for many individuals in general - "we have to run ever faster to keep our place in the world", as sociologist Hartmut Rosa, German sociologist and political scientist, aptly writes. Further in times of Social Media the frontier of shame is sinking with the tourists curiosity and greed for sensations, disrespecting others privacy.

Europe’s tourist hot spots are looking for new ways to cope with “overtourism,” where cities like Venice, Dubrovnik and Barcelona are struggling to manage huge crowds arriving daily on cheap flights and cruise ships, courtessy by Business Recorder

The stressed staff is thus confronted by the driven traveller who rushes on holiday - and chooses the fast route by plane. That very plane, that once canibalized the liner shipping, now is a "partner" for transporting the vast passenger numbers into mass market condos - ashore and at sea, and too into upmarket cruise vessels. This, however, comes at a high price: the misery that Canetti found so unseemly attractive threatens to be exacerbated by the mass tourism. After all, every holiday pilot increases climate change with his CO₂ emissions and thus contributes to the destruction of those natural spaces and cities for the sake of which the travellers set off. The cruise vessel have their share in the port or area of destination. The Geiranger Fjord in Norway and others are filled with CO₂ clouds, preventing the sunshine and causing lung problems for the inhabitants. In other ports, such as Warnemünde the unfiltered exhaust swap over land and giving the teritory a distinctive Eau Chanel No 500 - inhabitants have to close their windows. And the passenger masses are shipped aeway to other destinations around, and can breathe fresh air. From 2026 onwards only clean cruise ships can enter Norwegian fjords.

Tourism now accounts for eight percent of global gas emissions. The trend is rising, as the industry is growing: seven billion holiday trips were recorded worldwide in 2017, 1.3 billion of them abroad. An increase of five percent is expected for this year. Long-distance travel sells everywhere where a middle class exists - or is just emerging. German, US American and Britons are still most drawn to the distance. Chinese tourists are already in fourth place, and the strongest growth can be seen in emerging markets such as Brazil or India. By 2025 expert predict 2 billion travellers.

Every holiday airliner and cruise vessel is currently exacerbating climate change

All those small everyday flights add up to a worldwide migration movement, happening at one time when the consequences of climate change are unfolding its destructive force in many places. Cape Town declared a water emergency at the beginning of 2018. And the legendary Great Barrier Reef is already so damaged that the Australian government has launched a rescue programme. However, this loss affects travellers last. They benefit from the perverse luxury of being able to ignore the environmental consequences of their actions. After their holidays they return to the more temperate climate of those countries that are most likely to have the financial means to adapt to the conditions on a heated planet. For their hosts in the global south, however, it's often literally about everything. And then we have in a certain country a certain leader wining about clean coal ... And the courtiers declare the rise of the oceans levels is caused by throwing stones and rocks in the sea ...

Cruise shpis in Geiranger Fjord, © courtessy walkaboutgourmnent.com

In another form, the undesirable effects of travel become apparent when beaches become party miles or cities and / or their centers become theme parks, as it is happening in Amsterdam. Party tourists agressively shout at inhabitants that they have a right for party ... Pardon this is terrorising the inhabitants, those and their ancestors who created the city. However, in many places the rush is politically intended. Emerging and developing countries in particular rely on income from tourism. But they don´t realize that mass tourism is giving less revenue to the country and its people as luxury tourism can do. The city on Dubrovnik, ancient Ragusa, the Golden, 6,000 residents, is flodded on a daily base of 25,000 to 45,000 from cruise ships and land based vacationeers. Peru wants to attract twice as many tourists by 2021 as before, 7 million per year. And this is including Machu Pitchu - doing it as Peru wishes, UNESCO threatned the site will loose its status as Cultural Heritage. Vietnam wants to accommodate 13 to 15 million travellers annually. The hospitality industry is also a growth engine for economically troubled European countries such as Greece or overindebted metropolises such as Berlin. While the infrastructure of Berlin can cope with a certain amount  tourists more, other places are not able to do so. Or they have overstreched their limits as Barcelona and Mallorca. Mallorca is reducing its holiday capacities to max. 65,000 hotel beds, restricting - it will be controlled severe - private flat rents and cruise ship calls. A move that Bar Harbor once did - max 4,000 to 5,000 cruise guests per day are allowed to disembark now. The hit on Barcelona is more severe than anybody may think of. Prices for flats exploded, as more and more are tranformed into private rentals. The authority of Barcelona is thinking too about a restriction on cruise vessels turn overs - disembarking and new embarktions and cruise calls.

The dark sides of the boom can be seen in the everyday life of the locals: On Piazza San Marco in Venizia, Ramblas in Barcelona, Dubrovnik (Ragusa) or Simon Dach Straße in Berlin there is hardly any way through at certain times of the day. Many individual travellers are already breaking new ground. In search of the authentic, they rent a temporary room in the old town via Airbnb - and make the situation even worse for the locals. In Spain, analogous to gentrification, people already complain about "turistificación". Venzia is reducing the turn over of cruise vessels, and seeks desperately for another access to it Porto Maritima. The cruises vessels destroy the foundation of the city, and downsize Venezia to an amusement park - officials are asked by tourists, when the park will be closed! A normal for non brainers, that eventually know the plastic replica in Las Vegas.

You need the tourists, but you hate them too. But do you really need the mass tourists? Those are reflecting only only on cheap Chinese fakes, reflecting local handcraftsship.

In many holiday areas the patience of the locals is exhausted. In Barcelona and Mallorca, the regional government has increased the tourist tax and limited or is limiting the number of beds by law following protests by citizens. Cities such as Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin are also increasingly taking action against the rental of housing to tourists. In some places, new hotels are no longer approved. These countermeasures can provide some relief - they will not completely slow down the urge to go far away - which is by no means a human right, except that for holidays, to recreate. Because travelling is today more than just consumption. And in mass tourism no longer an art, or art of way of life. Behind it is also a driving force that is more fundamental than the business of recreation and escape from everyday life: wanderlust.

Satisfying wanderlust, easy like never before

Satisfying this wanderlust has never been easier than today. At the same time, the adventure of the last 50 years has given way to routine global air travel tourism. Where US Americans and Europeans in the 1930s barely made it over the next market town (except as soldiers in the war), destinations such as Goa or Marrakech are now easily accessible. Since low-cost airlines have existed, a flight from Berlin to Rome may be cheaper than a train journey from Berlin to Cologne - and only takes about half as long. All too often, comfort triumphs over guilt.

Tourists flodding Venezia, courtesy by italylogue.com

Travel has been fundamentally democratised - at the expense of ecological destruction. But why else is the world given to you, if not to preserve it? So it makes sense to demand and enforce restrictions: with landing stops for cruise ships, a personal CO₂ budget or a high kerosene tax, which would make the business model of low-cost airlines and package tour operators impossible. Or the strict implemantation of exhaust cleaning systems in cruise vessels, including container ships.

Such a policy would be ecologically consistent, but it creates a democratic paradox. Because those who limit travel are in danger of falling into the trap of elitism - especially if more expensive long-distance travel once again becomes the privilege of the wealthy. A politically enforced renunciation would initially affect the less well-off holidaymakers. On the other hand, the claim to allow everyone to travel conflicts with the equally democratic concern to limit global tourism. This is represented, for example, by those Mallorcans who demand the right to determine the character of their island themselves.

But there is too another point, the mass market needs low fares and this on the other hand needs low wages, otherwise the mass market cruise megalodons will loose their business model.

A start can be strict air pollution limits, such as TIER III. Another limit will be forcing the cruise companies that they have to follow for real safety regulations. Actually 10 to 15% of mass market cruisers will have only a place in a life raft, not a lifeboat. And the crew is per se limited into the liferafts. Climbing into a liferaftin a cal, sea is a challenge for a trained person, but never for a normal cruise, and now think od a challenged person ...

If COSTA CONCORDIA would have been sinking on the open sea, we would have seen a desaster like that of a certain English liner or more so like the end of WILHELM GUSTLOFF.

However, democratic principles collide quite massively when the inhabitants of the global North deprive the citizens of the global South of the basis of life with their CO₂-emissions. What the middle classes see as a democratisation of travel is proving to be an undemocratic prerogative for the world's poor to damage the common global living space. This is no less unfair from the point of view of future generations, who are threatened with finding a devastated planet. Therefore, a restriction of mass tourism on land and on sea has become unavoidable.

From Europe to Beijing, comfortably by train

Restriction is necessary, but renunciation is often unfair. Therefore, travel itself should not be in question - but travel in total in its current form. It has to change radically. Cosmetic corrections such as "CO₂-levies" or planting trees, which airlines put into rainforest projects, are not enough. We need to tackle the real problem: how we deal with time and distance. After all, low-cost airlines are also tempting with their shortening: you can go on holiday faster and save precious free time. In this way, the traveller submits to the acceleration imperative that also shapes his everyday life during the holidays.

Crowded Palace of Versailles, and now add Chinese tourists, started only to travel the world, courtesy by Travel Weekly

A better way to travel requires a different approach to time. Away from fast consumption of exchangeable destinations to conscious enjoyment - a "slow travelling". The slow travel does not necessarily have to take place at close range: Beijing can be easily reached from mainland Europe by rail, via Moscow by the Trans-Siberian Railway, which also allows frequent departures. World experience as a real experiencing the world like an endeavour.

Such a way of travelling is of course more complex. Individual adaptation alone cannot therefore be the solution. The conditions for a different kind of travel must not least be created politically. The railways, for example, would also be a stronger competitor to the airplane for broad strata if their tickets were cheaper and their offers better tailored to travellers, for example with more night trains.

The same is for the North and South American travel to Europe - why not again with liners. Some may state our times are not able to cope with those long distance time consuming travels ... But as we have 5 min to 12 for our world clima, despite some ignorant ignoring the signs, there has to come a dramatic change to reducing our carbon footprints.

Slow and longer journeys for everyone - that would also mean an extension of the holiday period. The more time available, the greater the willingness to forgo the speed advantage of flying. Reducing annual working hours would be an important step away from the growth and acceleration paradigm.

It needs a change in paradigmas, such as 10 holidays only. In Germany we have an average of 30 labour days, and is the industry in Germany suffering?

Across the oceans again in a liner

Travelling on board a liner for 4, 5, 6 days deprices the traveller of jet lag. Business men can use the time to prepare for conferences and / or meetings. But that does need new vessels, as the current cruise vessels are not capable for the North Atlantic traffic, only in Passenger size. And for the priveleged there can be special luxury liners as well.

Nouveau NORMANDIE as a First Class only liner

With the prolonged holiday, the history of mass tourism experienced its worthy continuation. After the nobility and wealthy bourgeoisie, the workers only conquered travel for themselves when holidays for all were introduced: in 1936, under the Socialist Léon Blum, the Popular Front guaranteed all French people four weeks of paid annual leave for the first time. Today, more days off could not only give a different weighting to paid work and leisure time, but also promote a different relationship with the world - and travel that allows leisure. And real travelling widens the personla horizon, it is educating, it is making you the nore open minded, especially to strangers.

It needs a new world economic organization, no longer based on personal greed with Panama and Paradise Papers. No longer Neo Liberalism, an organisation of economics from the 15th and 16th century. A new repect for those that are working for owners of businesses.