# Tourists Threaten Many of the World's Great Tourism Sites



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*The Rush to See It Before It's Gone
Tourists threaten many of the world's great tourism sites *
By Mac Margolis; With Barbie Nadeau in Naples, Sana Butler in New York and Quindlen Krovatin in Beijing 
17 April 2006
Newsweek

When Ernest Hemingway wrote "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," a holiday was the last thing he had in mind. Who could have known that this classic tale about a failed writer dying of gangrene in the shadow of Africa's tallest mountain would spark a stampede? Every year, some 10,000 vacationers huff their way to the 19,340-foot peak that untold tour operators have flogged with Hemingway's words: "Wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun." Now, thanks to global warming and deforestation, the snowcap is receding and could vanish within 15 years, scientists say. Soon travel agents may be spinning a new pitch: "Last chance to see the snows of Kilimanjaro." The vanishing snows are emblematic of a worrying new era, when no destination is timeless. Thanks to rising incomes and falling airfares, the number of tourists hit a world record of 806 million last year. 

Those hordes--combined with forces ranging from climate change to civil war, industrial toxins to runaway development--are laying siege to some of the world's most treasured sites. From the millennial gates of Machu Picchu to the moonlit waterways of Venice, we are in danger of losing places we thought were eternal. Visitors ride go-carts along the Great Wall of China and steal artifacts from the crumbling temples of Luxor. Stonehenge has been cordoned off. And many tourists are now booking to see sites while they still can. "There definitely is a rush to see and explore the world before it changes," says Matt Kareus of Natural Habitat, which operates excursions to Antarctica, where fast-shrinking glaciers threaten the photogenic whales and penguins. 

Of course any rush to visit will only compound the problem. The world's most esteemed monuments are in danger of being loved to death, says Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund (WMF). "Without proper management we can easily get out of control." Conservation International reckons that "unsustainable tourism" poses the main threat to half the cultural heritage sites in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to one in five sites in Asia and the Pacific. Cambodia's once remote Angkor temples now receive a million visitors a year; the Taj Mahal gets 7 million. China reported a staggering 1.1 billion visits by its citizens to domestic tourist sites in 2004. 

Popular tourist destinations have also been hit in recent years by global warming, an epic tidal wave, tropical storms and war. The spate of disasters has alarmed the travel industry, the world's largest earner of foreign exchange. For the first time, the World Trade and Tourism Council (WTTC) will dedicate an entire session of its annual summit, to be held in Washington this month, to health and natural disasters. "Whether it's natural or man-made catastrophes, this is the reality," says WTTC chairman Vince Wolfington. "And more and more we're going to have to deal with it." 

The alarm has been amplified by a growing flood of warnings about climate change. A United Nations study recently found that the number of annual catastrophes provoked by "extreme weather" and water-related emergencies has tripled since the 1970s, while economic damage has increased sixfold. By now everyone knows that Venice is drowning, but even such apparently untouchable monuments as the Tower of London and the adobe mosques of Timbuktu are said to be vulnerable, thanks to the flash floods and rising water tables caused by global climate change. Granted, these are worst-case scenarios: the WMF list of the 100 most endangered World Heritage sites includes the entire country of Iraq (due to war), New Orleans (Hurricane Katrina) and Mexico City (which is sinking into the earth due to the depletion of underground reservoirs). 

The man-made threats, particularly from economic development, are more immediate. The tower at the Helsinki-Malmi Airport is a gem of 1930s modernist architecture, but if city developers have their way, it will be razed to make way for a 10,000-unit suburban housing complex. And Vesuvius may be the least of the worries facing Naples, a city of 1 million nestled in the volcano's shadow. Chaotic traffic has pumped so much pollution into the air that the façades of medieval buildings are disintegrating. Urban hucksters hurl up four clandestine buildings for every legal one, turning this U.N. World Heritage site into a boneyard of scaffolding. "See Naples and die," the Bourbons boasted during Naples's golden age. Skeptics have a new saying: "See Naples before it dies." 

The good--and bad--news is that tourists come from hardy stock. 

Just a year after the Asian tsunami swallowed hundreds of miles of South Asian beachfront, vacationers came streaming back. Archeologists and green groups blame the massive Three Gorges hydroelectric dam for destroying centuries-old cultural splendors, but Chinese sightseers line up to snap pictures from the concrete ramparts. Even the empty space where the World Trade Center towers once stood has become a tourist attraction. "We are all aware the world is more unpredictable," says Julio Aramberri, professor of tourism at Philadelphia's Drexel University. "But tourism is much more resilient than you'd think." 

Managing the onslaught is now a subject of fierce debate. "Sometimes it takes coming to the brink of loss to make people recognize what they value," says Burnham. Listing endangered sites helps raise their visibility, but it can also backfire by attracting more tourists for a final glimpse. Steeper admission prices help, but favor the rich. Some experts are turning to crowd engineering, such as timed tickets, a technique that many museums and Disney theme parks mastered years ago. 

UNESCO's World Heritage Centre channels money to safeguard sites, while the WMF works with local governments, civic groups and the private sector to restore imperiled monuments. By now it's apparent that travelers may be spooked, delayed or detoured, but not deterred. A world awash in tourists can be a curse for its endangered treasures or a source of funds to save them. Getting the balance right could be the difference between future generations' beholding the living wonders of the world or merely reading about them in a storybook.


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## go mid east (Sep 19, 2005)

Interesting article, but I think it's too easy.

I think that tourists can draw attention to things and thus promote preservation by showing that if the thing is kept up, they will keep coming and spending their money. Imagine if the Taliban didn't blow up those ancient Buddhas carved in the mountain, for example, they could viably turn it into some tourist cash for money-starved Afghanistan.

I went to Angkor Wat in Cambodia in 2002 and no-body was there. No one. We had the entire sites to ourselves, apart from maybe 10 other tourists at one time. They have the area pretty well managed and cordoned off, etc. As far as I could tell, Cambodia needs visitors, and tourist dollars.

That's only one place, but I've never really seen a place so overrun with tourists that they are the reason for pollution. Even in tourist packed places like Cancun or Bahamas the people are all pretty well isolated and don't really go around in smog-producing vehicles, they hang around on the beach in a big clump.

Cruise ships are another story entirely.... someone should do something about their pollutants.

Global warming is killing coral reefs around the world, and it's not because of tourism.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Tourism could tear page from history books *
Updated 5/15/2006 4:24 PM ET

Although the theft of artifacts from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad has grabbed the most headlines, the destruction of archaeological sites throughout Iraq, mostly from widespread looting, has upset scholars even more. University of Michigan archaeologist Henry Wright has compared the damage to tearing pages from mankind's history book.
But tourism, not looting, has driven one site to the top of antiquities scholars' concerns lately. Near Mosul in Northern Iraq, about 30 miles northeast of the ancient Assyrian capitol of Nineveh, is Bavian, the site of a gigantic rock relief overlooking the Gomel River that depicts the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, praying to the gods Ashur and Enlil.

Sennacherib was a major bad guy in the Old Testament, besieging Jerusalem around 701 B.C. He also had captured Israelites and deported other captives to his empire to work on massive irrigation works near his capital. Bavian was where this massive effort began, a 50-mile-long, and 40- to 65-foot wide aqueduct built with an estimated 2 million stone blocks. Stone markers, or stelae, depicting kings, bulls and other inscriptions celebrate Sennacherib and the aqueduct.

An April expedition by the Chicago-based Assyrian Academic Society, reported last week on an archaeological e-mail list run by the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, reports the site "is in serious jeopardy of being destroyed." A local mayor has hired a construction firm to dynamite caves out of the rock hillside holding the fragile relief, the society reports, so that visitors to the park there can enjoy some shade.

"Dynamiting anywhere near the reliefs could do damage to them," says University of Chicago Assyriologist McGuire Gibson, by email. He calls the Sennacherib carving one of the most significant standing monuments of ancient Assyria. "These reliefs are almost 2700 years old, and natural processes and some old human actions have damaged them. But they are still in remarkable condition. The threat of damage to create a place where people can picnic out of the sun, without the consent or oversight of the State Board of Antiquities, would be a very bad idea."

In addition, the society reports that visitors are crawling over the relief and chipping away pieces as souvenirs.

Gibson and other scholars have contacted Iraqi antiquities officials, who have started an investigation. They hope that local enthusiasm for protecting potential tourism sites, and news stories like this one, will halt the dynamite.

Each week, USA TODAY's Dan Vergano combs scholarly journals to present the Science Snapshot, a brief summary of some of the latest findings in scientific research. For past articles, visit this index page.


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## CrazyCanuck (Oct 9, 2004)

At one point in Chitchen-Itza you could climb the pyramid, I did, and i'm glad I did. Climbing is now closed to the public.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Sustainable tourism the route ahead as sector fair ends *

MADRID, Feb 5, 2007 (AFP) - After four days of pitching for custom by laying out their "sustainable" development credentials, tourism professionals brought the curtain down Sunday on Madrid's 27th FITUR international trade fair. 

With the multi-billion sector worth a double figures slice of gross national product to countries as large as hosts Spain, 13,190 firms from 170 countries eagerly showed off their wares to more than 250,000 professionals and members of the public. 

According to organisers, "FITUR manages, year in, year out, to reinvent itself," promoting destinations across the globe. 

But this year saw participants strive to respond to a call from the Madrid-based World Tourism Organisation (WTO) to use tourism as a sustainable development tool to combat poverty. 

The fair took place in the week the WTO announced global tourism had hit a record high last year after a 4.5 percent rise in numbers pushed the total to 842 million, boosted by large rises in the number of visitors to and from China, which should receive an arrivals boost with next year's Beijing Olympics. 

Almost half of the firms attending the gathering, which Spanish media dub the world's second-biggest after Berlin's equivalent, were from outside Spain, currently second only to France in the global destination popularity stakes, although the WTO forecasts China will overtake it by 2010. 

After King Juan Carlos opened the event by labelling tourism an "essential instrument" to develop cooperation between nations, visitors jostled to see what was new and scan a range of promotions. 

Four countries -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Niger and Zimbabwe -- were first time visitors -- while Estonia and Latvia returned after missing last year's edition. 

"We have registered a satisfying level of interest," a Niger spokesman said. 

Europe had the largest overall representation with around 30 percent of exhibitors compared with 17 percent for the Asia-Pacific region, with Africa bringing up the rear with 10 percent. 

After the WTO, a UN agency, drew up a tourism ethics 'charter' prioritising green-friendly projects, poorer nations were relying on the exhibition to place themselves on visitors' radar. 

One such nation was Bolivia, represented by vice-minister for tourism Ricardo Cox, who stressed the importance of tourism for poorer countries with large indigenous populations. 

"We have developed plans to involve indigenous groups directly in tourist development, whereas previously that was not the case and so they did not reap the benefits," Cox said. 

"Yet it is they who really know the area and can open up their traditional culture to the visitor," Cox told AFP. 

Cox said Andean nations were increasingly popular destinations for those with an adventurous streak and stressed the importance of cross-border promotion with many visitors to Bolivia coming via Peru after visiting Inca sites such as Macchu Picchu and Lake Titicaca. 

He added climate change was also a challenge with nascent winter sports offerings hit by global warming. 

"Climate change affects all of us, wherever we are. So the sustainable theme is truly a worldwide one," said Cox. 

Cox said Bolivia was also offering "political" tourism in developing "La Ruta del Che," visits to haunts frequented by Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who was killed by Bolivian troops in 1967, a decade after helping Fidel Castro launch the Cuban revolution.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*From Kyoto to Machu Picchu: world's heritage at risk *
6 October 2009
Agence France Presse

From vanishing Kyoto merchant houses to the tourist-inundated ruins of Machu Picchu, heritage sites around the world are under pressure as never before, according to a New York-based preservation group.

The World Monuments Fund on Tuesday released its biannual watch list of global architectural treasures at risk from urban development, tourism, neglect and bad planning.

The 2010 list comprises 93 sites in 47 countries, including ancient structures but also 15 that were built in the 20th century and are already deemed endangered classics.

Some sites, like the traditional wooden houses of Kyoto in Japan, or thatched royal tombs in Uganda, may be modest from an architectural standpoint, but represent immense cultural and historical riches.

The list also includes Peru's breathtaking Machu Picchu ruins, the Gaudi-designed Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, and iconic US architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin and Taliesin West houses.

The common factor was "places that define and enrich our lives and our environment -- and our world wouldn't be the same without them," Bonnie Burnham, the fund's president, said.

"They're on the watch list because they're losing ground," she said.

One of the biggest culprits, according to the World Monuments Fund, is intense urban development, with high-rises and other modern buildings blamed for killing the character of ancient cities like Kyoto.

In Seville, southern Spain, the romantic old center is carefully protected, but a plan to build a skyscraper just outside that zone threatens the landscape, Burnham said.

Tourism brings other challenges, the fund said, highlighting the mysterious, circular ruins of Chankillo in Peru.

Burnham called Chankillo potentially "the next Machu Picchu in terms of adventure tourism," but stressed that poor management, not the number of visitors, was often the real problem.

"The tourism industry is not a villain here. Generally it's a lack of real will power by the locals and owners of the site," she said. "These are really planning issues."

Some causes on the list are already close to being lost.

For example, a trove of 50,000 petroglyphs on boulders in Pakistan is about to be submerged in water from the Diamer-Bhasha dam.

But in many cases relatively modest funding can make a big difference by helping with planning, the fund said.

One treasure targeted for protection is the Native American complex at Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, a place of continuous inhabitation for some 1,000 years and now under growing tourist pressure.

The challenge, a Native American representative said, is not just to maintain the adobe buildings, but to ensure respect for the site's less visible attributes.

"This is a living monument. It's a living site. It's a sacred site. It's sacred to us because that's who we are," said Luis Zamora, sporting beaded moccasins and a colorful blanket over his shoulders.

"If you've ever been there, then you will feel the spirits," he said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Survey finds discontent among Native Hawaiians about impact of tourism on their culture*
12 February 2010

HONOLULU (AP) - A survey by the Hawaii Tourism Authority has found significant discontent among Native Hawaiians about the impact of tourism on their culture.

The study also found that Hawaii residents overall appreciate the benefits the tourism industry brings the state.

The survey was conducted last August and September, and released Friday.

It found that almost 60 percent of Native Hawaiians interviewed disagreed that tourism helps preserve their language and culture.

The study also found that Hawaii residents generally believe the tourism industry does not help sustain the state's natural resources.

Tourism authority chief Mike McCartney said the agency is devoting $1.6 million to promote Native Hawaiian culture and preserve natural resources.


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## siamu maharaj (Jun 19, 2006)

How interesting. Just a couple of days ago I was watching a movie based in Hawaii and thinking that the Hawaiians must really hate all this.


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## Marsupilami (May 8, 2005)

In my island (Easter Island), a finn removed a moai's ear because "he heard a voice telling him to do so", and a japanese painted a moai's lip with painting...:sleepy:


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

The largest living organism (the Great Barrier Reef) is slowly bleaching thanks to "Global warming"


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Venice set to introduce an entry fee and booking system for tourists *
Aug 23, 2021
CNBC _Excerpt_

Venice is set to impose an entry fee for visitors in a bid to prevent huge swathes of tourists descending on the city.

Italian newspaper La Stampa reported over the weekend that a package of measures designed to control tourism, which include requiring visitors to book in advance, pay a fee and enter the city via electronic turnstiles, is set to be imposed from summer 2022.

The entry fee is reportedly set to be between 3 and 10 euros ($3.52 and $11.73), dependent on the season.

More : Venice set to introduce an entry fee and booking system for tourists


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* How Venice Is Retackling Overtourism After a Year Without Visitors *
Condé Nast Traveler _Excerpt_
Sep 13, 2021

In May, at the opening of the rescheduled Venice Biennale of Architecture—pandemic edition—banners hung from every doorway in the Arsenal emblazoned with the question “How will we live together?,” the theme of this year's show. As I explored photographer Marco Cappelletti's hauntingly beautiful City to Dust, a collection of images depicting an empty Palazzo San Marco and a shuttered Rialto Bridge, every step I took made an unsettling crunch. The floor was constructed of terrazzo tiles in the shape of Venice, suggesting the damage crowds do to the city. “Because the tourists trample her soul...” the narrator of an accompanying video stated grimly. “Every single step is, for every single visitor, a physical confrontation with his or her potentially harmful impact on the environment.”

Bemoaning the perils of Venice—the cruise ships and dwindling population; the fact that it's more a theme park than a place where people live and thrive; and, don't forget, it's sinking!—is nothing new. Observers have lamented the city's overexposure since at least 1909, when Henry James wrote in Italian Hours, “The Venice of today is a vast museum...and you march through the institution with a herd of fellow-gazers. There is nothing left to discover or describe....” But this was hardly the Venice I encountered when my architect-husband, John, and I arrived a few weeks before the Biennale—when tourism was still banned in Italy—to build an installation for the exhibition. What we found was a city grappling with how to move forward with the world paused.

More : How Venice Is Retackling Overtourism After a Year Without Visitors


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Miami Beach has a ‘blotto-tourism’ problem. It’s time to regulate the party * 
Miami Herald _Excerpt_
Oct 26, 2021

Miami Beach has reached a critical inflection point. Spurred by geographic shifts occurring in the wake of the pandemic, the city and the broader region are increasingly becoming new hubs for the tech, finance, media and real estate industries, attracting companies and talent from coastal cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But Miami Beach also faces some deep challenges, most visible in its so-called entertainment district, the area that runs along Ocean Drive, Collins and Washington Avenues, more or less from Fifth Street to 15th Street. It’s an area that has been rife with partying and, unfortunately, increasing violence. 

There’s a name for what is vexing the area and Miami Beach broadly — over-tourism. It has plagued cities like Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Paris and more. Left to its own devices, over-tourism metastasizes and destroys the fabric of places. It damages their brands and tarnishes their images. In Miami Beach, over-tourism has turned into what I call “blotto-tourism” — where people travel to an area to party and get drunk — fueled by the pent-up energy of the pandemic and enabled by cheap airfares and accommodations. 

The over-tourism plaguing Miami Beach is at odds with its emerging knowledge economy. Miami Beach’s share of the knowledge, professional and creative class workers that drive this new economy now rivals that of Silicon Valley, Boston or Washington, D.C.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article255270026.html#storylink=cpy[/b]


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* How to avoid overtourism and uncover the real Atacama *
The Telegraph _Excerpt_
Dec 1, 2021

With light twinkling through its empty eye sockets, even a dead cow looks ethereal on the Altiplano’s high plateau. Polished brilliant white by an unabating wind, the animal’s spiny vertebrae gleam against the backdrop of a vibrant turquoise lagoon. The carcass has been dropped accidentally by a cargo lorry and it’s hard to tell how long it has been here. But with no one to witness a passing of years, the desert affords everything an opportunity to grow old gracefully. 

Time unravels slowly in northern Chile’s Atacama region, a landscape shaped over millennia and seemingly borrowed from another world. Fossils of ancient monsters such as megalodons and giant sloths rest in mineral-streaked rocks and volcanoes rising 2,300ft high. Pink flamingos dare to dance on lakes so salty they suffocate life.

But in the past few years, the region has suffered a graver alien invasion: overtourism. Pre-pandemic, the small town of San Pedro de Atacama received more than 1,000 visitors a day, overrunning popular attractions such as the Moon Valley and El Tatio geysers, with very little money trickling back into local pockets.

More : How to avoid overtourism and uncover the real Atacama


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Tourist-Weary Amsterdam’s Plea: No More Clog or Waffle Shops *
Bloomberg _Excerpt_
Dec 9, 2021

Amsterdam announced this week that it will take ongoing plans to reduce the impact of tourism one step further. Faced with a downtown now dominated by souvenir shops and take-out food stores, the municipality will offer nonprofit organizations money to buy out businesses aimed at tourists, and use the properties instead for other more locally-oriented purposes. 

The new plan unfolds in a city that has decidedly fallen out of love with its role as a tourist honeypot, where the volume and prominence of places catering primarily to visitors in its historic heart have started to repel longer-term residents. The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified these feelings in Amsterdam (and across Europe’s tourist cities), as residents got a chance during lockdowns to see what their hometown was like without tourists — and decided they liked it. It’s a feeling that the city’s leaders share.

“Our city center is going through an unreal period,” said Mayor Femke Halsema and Finance Commissioner Victor Everhardt in a joint letter to the city’s assembly in April 2021 announcing a focus on de-touristification. “In the places where it was busiest until March last year, it is now empty. We do not wish to return to more bustle, our retinas have a sharp image of the Amsterdam city center at its best: freedom-loving, lively, original, and with room for everyone who loves it. Let’s keep this image in mind.”

More : Bloomberg - Are you a robot?


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Venice will soon charge tourists €5 for every day they spend in the Italian city*
The Points Guy UK _Excerpt_
Jan 10, 2022

Venice is preparing to charge an entry fee to visit the Floating City in a sweeping crackdown on “hit-and-run tourism”, it has been announced.

The ancient canal city, authorities say, is not only sinking under rising sea levels but beneath the weight of day-tripping tourists.

In order to limit the number the damage caused by tourism, visitors have been told they’ll have to buy a ticket for every day they spend there or be turned away at the city gates.

Tickets will cost €5 per person per day and must be booked online before you go.

“The aim is to discourage one-day tourism, hit-and-run tourism, arriving in one day and leaving in the same day, tiring and stressing the city, and encouraging slower tourism instead,” explained Simone Venturini, the city’s deputy mayor for tourism.

More : Venice will soon charge tourists €5 for every day they spend in the Italian city - The Points Guy UK


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