in retrospect it’s kinda weird that i, a hapless american, can just show up whenever i want in another country without speaking a word of the native language and expect to be kept alive by the power of money alone. one could imagine things turning out quite differently
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people whomst have been in lisbon say it’s unusually crowded with tourists this year and locals are maybe annoyed. it is sort of wack that tourists can just flood your town if too many moderately wealthy people start talking about it excitedly
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to my ratbrain the obvious econ 101 solution to this is to jack up prices (for food, hotels, etc) but *only* for tourists; the point here is to price in the negative externalities of tourism
wonder if this has been tried 🧐 or maybe the profits of tourism are too appealing
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haha nice
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
travelandleisure.com/travel-news/ve
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i believe this is part of the purpose of hotel taxes. staying in a hotel in your hometown is pretty rare so tourists or other passersby end up paying nearly all of it
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But these aren't really externalities per se. Tourists don't like being in crowded destinations either, which incentives people to spread out. See all the tourists which don't want to visit "touristy" destinations.
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the profits of tourism are also 10% of the Portuguese economy. People like to whine but a lot of people's livelihoods depend on tourism.
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simply charge money for tourist visas until you get the amount of tourism you want, and let people vote on how much tourism they want
probably you can even vary the prices based on what regions of the country tourists are staying in and for how long
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altho possibly this gets you less tourism than optimal
i'm unsure how to weigh preferences when different people have different strength preferences
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It's done in one or two places, usually more traditional ones. Restaurants only, tho.
But I haven't seen none in Lisbon.
