“No one goes there any more. It’s too crowded.” –Yogi Berra
When did tourism become such a bad word, especially among – you know – tourists? I always find it a little strange to hear tourists complain that a place is too touristy. It sounds a bit like golfers complaining that the fairway is unnatural.
Of course it’s touristy, you’re here to tour the place aren’t you?
It’s also hard to miss the underlying snobbery that implies “things were so much better before all of THESE people arrived.” The delicious irony is that those people are thinking the same thing about us. While we may see ourselves as sophisticated travelers, to everyone else we’re just another lowly tourist taking up space.
That’s not to say there aren’t legitimate complaints. Mass tourism does have the capacity to homogenize a place. And none of us enjoy fighting our way through crowds. Certainly we’d all prefer to have the world’s most amazing destinations to ourselves. But that begs a somewhat philosophical question: if nobody visited these popular places, would they still exist?
Sometimes the answer is no.
Everywhere Once 