If you live in a place popular with tourists, how do you feel about?

[Crunchymum]

Currently in a lovely little Airbnb cottage, in a pretty seaside town and I wonder how the locals feel about us tourists.

I get that tourism has major positives - employment / local economy benefits but I'd hate to live next door to an Airbnb or share my lovely beach with a billion others on BH weekend or deal with the noise and rubbish left (not even litter per just the sheer volume)

We are Londoners so are well versed on avoiding tourist hotspots unless we actually want to be in the hub but in smaller places it must be hard for the locals to avoid the tourists?

I can’t believe it’s my fault for living in the area where my family have lived since the 1800’s. Yeah I’ll just upsticks and fuck off then!!!!

I don’t think this works as an argument. Most people have had to up sticks and fuck off away from where their ancestors lived.

It’s fair to argue that it is difficult to move away from existing family networks and that some kinds of tourism have a negative impact on the economy because they do not redistribute income efficiently.

I used to live in a popular sea-side town. Tourists didnt bother me much as I still had places to park, could walk to the beach and had a better choice of restaurants pubs etc than I probably would have had if it was not a tourist resort. Obviojsly I also knew when to avoid certain places - eg the prom on sunny bank holidays!!

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

I've always lived on national parks and generally welcome tourists as they bring much needed revenue to the area and winters are nice and quiet. However in later years the rubbish chucking from tourists has become unsustainable and is destroying the countryside. i feel like going out there with a shot gun and a lot of the locals are getting very angry about it.

The litter problem isn't just confined to tourist places and areas though, it seems to me that it's a growing problem absolutely everywhere, and I wish I knew why.

In Liverpool we used to only get tourists in the city centre but now due to the costs of city centre hotels they have moved further afield. I am about a 10 minute drive from the centre and near a large Premier Inn. There are always tourists (usually groups of men) in the beer garden opposite

It is weird because I can't see why you would want to spend time in a suburb.

Liverpool makes a LOT of money from tourists though, especially with The Beatles and Liverpool FC

At my parents house in a popular seaside town on the north Norfolk coast atm.

They are truly delighted to have the tourists. They cause rubbish on beach and traffic jams but the £££ they bring to the local economy are worth the few weeks of too busy a year. I have to drop them in town as no parking. And if DM wants to pop to butchers etc she goes at 8am before the hoardes hit town.

Plus the tide is wrong this week so beach is better in evening once everyone has gone back to hotels/caravans.

I think there's quite a big difference between city and rural/beach tourism too. I've lived in Edinburgh, London and Cambridge. London for years and years and worked in Covent Garden so very touristy - and I loved that. It was such a pleasure, mostly, to see people enjoying the city. Same for Edinburgh though I didn't live there long and it can get a bit MUCH there. Cambridge was a bit different - though it's very beautiful, I didn't really enjoy living there and found the tourists quite tricky at times. It was just sometimes really difficult to get to the bank/post office/shop, which wasn't the same as in a bigger place like London where things get more dispersed (and you don't always have to go to the bank in the centre, though the only branch of my Scottish bank was in fact just off Trafalgar Square!).

I now live in an area which isn't super-touristy but does get some visitors, mostly local-ish. And not far from a beach which gets a lot of daytrippers. It's ok - we just avoid the peak days. But further up the coast it's very, very busy and family who live there couldn't get out of their village yesterday as the traffic was just... stuck.

It's nice to live somewhere people want to visit, though, overall.

I’ve lived in two popular tourist hotspots. It can be annoying but I’m not sure what people expect . People will always want to travel and see places , that’s normal. It would be a boring life if we all stuck to our own town for life. It seems like some thing people should never visit other places at all.

Absolutely hate it. The summer/Bank Holidays/Easter brings tourists flocking and you can't park or get around easily in town, or drive normally anywhere. Camper vans and caravans everywhere. This bank holiday we just stayed at home, it was pointless trying to attempt to go anywhere. Can't bear it.

@BashfulClam

It’s all very well saying tourists bring money but when it takes 2 hours to get to Asda because the roads are blocked when it should be a 10 minute drive it gets wearing! I can’t believe it’s my fault for living in the area where my family have lived since the 1800’s. Yeah I’ll just upsticks and fuck off then!!!! Boozed up teenagers from the local city get the train to our area on s jive day to have a ‘beach party’ they leave rubbish, bottles, piles of sick, piss on children’s play equipment, fight with each other and then with locals, generally get in the way of us trying to just live our lives. It’s my fault though apparently.

This!!! People who live in the city do not understand how difficult it can be to move about in the countryside when the tourists arrive and increase the population by 300% London and big cities have the infrastructure to make it work. Yes it's busy, yes it slows you down but your not talking hours. As I said upthread the other day I was stuck behind a car towing a caravan trying to pass another car and caravan going in the opposite direction. Neither could reverse round the corner. I turned round after about 10 minutes and went another way, but that diversion itself was over 25 minutes. So I got to where I was going 40 minutes later. That's just one incident on one day. This is what we deal with multiple times a day every day in high season. Devon lanes are not built for the traffic of day to day traffic let alone when the tourists arrive.

Also I find some people extremely hypocritical I have people I know who live in the area I used to live raging that tourists dare to go there at all but then a week or so later they post themselves in a hotel and out for food and drinks where I live now.

@Dobbyafreeelf
What are you talking about. Getting stuck in horrendous traffic is daily in London
Not being able to get 6 tubes in a row is weekly in London
Not being able to get on any bus is weekly in London
And it was horrific this weekend. Because the infrastructure is not there to accommodate the amount of people that decided to visit for the BH weekend.

Why are some country people so bitter

21 million people stayed overnight as a tourist in London 2019
Mainly in an area that’s approx 5 square miles!
That’s not including day trippers which was apparently an estimated 280 million in 2017, I mean that’s so many I don’t even think that can be true!!!
It’s the worlds 3rd most visited city. Actual whole world.

It's all very nice if things go your way, but if it's public property, be it a residential road, a trunk road, a beach or whatever, it belongs to everybody and everybody has an equal right to use it.

Of course they have the right to be there and drive there etc, but what people DON'T have the right to do is just dump their cars (illegally) in passing places or at the side of narrow country lanes and disappear for the day @WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

It never happens during the off-season. People see a full car park and instead of turning around and going elsewhere, they just dump their cars wherever they fancy. It's like they think they've got the right to park there because they've made the journey.

See this from last weekend:

www.lancs.live/news/local-news/police-plea-avoid-wasdale-head-20708838

"Officers report that a crash at Wasdale Head is causing major delays and the road is blocked - with emergency services unable to gain full access to the area due to inconsiderate parking.

Cumbria Police say that National Trust wardens are reporting that all the car parks in the area are full - and they are asking people to avoid the area as there is "nowhere safe to park".

Yes, of course people have the right to visit the area but parking in a way that blocks emergency access is inconsiderate and lazy at best, selfish and life-threatening at worst. And it happens every single BH weekend, school holiday and nice weather day.

It's not surprising that people get pissed off.

[quote Taliskerskye]@Dobbyafreeelf
What are you talking about. Getting stuck in horrendous traffic is daily in London
Not being able to get 6 tubes in a row is weekly in London
Not being able to get on any bus is weekly in London
And it was horrific this weekend. Because the infrastructure is not there to accommodate the amount of people that decided to visit for the BH weekend.

Why are some country people so bitter[/quote]
@Taliskerskye Not bitter at all thanks!!!

I'm sorry but it does not take you over an hour to get to your nearest shop to get a pint of milk! Here at the moment it has been! The roads are gridlocked with tourists. In London you have buses, trains, hell you even have pavements!!! You don't always need to drive!
From my home there is no way you could safely walk to a shop. It's 9 miles even if you could. That's not a supermarket btw just a corner shop. There are no buses or trains.
You haven't a clue I'm afraid!

9 miles! That’s a 1/2 hour cycle ride. Even faster on an electric bike of hills are involved.

I once did a cycling holiday in Devon. It was quite funny to cycle past stopped cars.
I presume you can weave in and out of stand still traffic!
It’s an inconvenience I get that, but it’s not the end of the world, like it’s not the end of the world for me that I physically can’t walk down Oxford street sometimes it’s so packed.

It’s just this weird monopoly that people mostly from the SW think they have on having to endure awful tourists. My point is they are in lots of places that we chose to live in for the other benefits we get.

@Waitwhat23

I grew up in Edinburgh. Once I got a chance to get out, I took it. Trying to get across the city to work was virtually impossible between late June - end of August and the whole of December. Services like street cleaning are re-routed to the city centre during the Festival so residents in every other part of the city receive a poor service. One landlord tried to make us take an 11 month lease until the end of July and then take another 11 month lease from the beginning of September so he could rent out the flat during the Festival for 4x the price. He really didn't care that we had no where else to live during that period.

Great if you're a tourist. Dreadful as a resident.

This was my experience of living in Edinburgh too. It got to the point that I used to plan my summer holiday so I could leave town on the first day of the Festival and return when it was finished. At Hogmanay, you couldn’t even cross town to visit friends, you had to go the long way round because everything was cordoned off for Edinburgh Hogmanay ticket holders. Pissed me off immensely, it felt like the council were running the city as a theme park. I live in another city now which is also a huge draw for tourists but I never feel so pushed out as a resident.

9 miles! That’s a 1/2 hour cycle ride. Even faster on an electric bike of hills are involved.

Not all roads are safe or suitable for bikes.

Usually it doesn’t bother me much. But this week has been absolutely brutal in Cornwall and it just feels horrid. Too busy everywhere and impossible to do normal things like get to work on time, do a round trip to the supermarket in any less than 3 hours or not have to leave an extra hour in hand to get to a hairdressers appointment.

We have to go everywhere by car. And now there are just too many bloody cars for the road system we have.

I live in a very popular seaside village. Half the country visits on a hot day and in summer we just do not bother with the beach at all. Tourism is great for businesses locally but a plague for those of us living here.

Live in a tourist town and I enjoy the summer. When people come down for holidays, the place has a great atmosphere. Was great when people came after lockdown 1.

Only thing I would say at the moment is, I wouldn't come here, as they've closed half the bloody roads and some businesses, because of the G7. It's a right pain in the arse.

I used to live in Cambridge and found it a nightmare because the tourists were all so unaware of their surroundings. People just step out backwards into the road to take a photo without even checking, and then you have to slam your bike brakes on. There’s one bridge that’s particularly bad for this which unfortunately is one that is quite steep so you really need the momentum to get you over it.

I live in an extremely touristy area, though tourism accounts for a considerably lower than expected percentage to our income. Tourism is a massive part of the area and we're well known for it; it certainly adds to the local economy, but we don't rely on it.

On the whole I think it's great that so many people come here. Everyone is within their own right to go away for the weekend - I do it myself - and can create a vibrant buzz.

Tourism is good. Over-tourism is not. I do find that over-tourism in overseas/foreign places is taken seriously but if you're living in a place in the UK with over-tourism you're told to get over it or move away if you don't like it. I understand the notion, and I think I'd completely agree if everyone showed respect. The vasty majority of visitors do show respect, but there are always, and I mean always (especially since holidays abroad have declined) people who are incredibly disrespectful. Where I live, places have been so understaffed - because there physically aren't enough people here to serve visitors - and more and more people have been rude. I know many people who work in hospitality and it's exhausting for them. We are human here too! We do live and work here. And at the end of the day, it can negatively impact our daily lives - a friend of mine drives to work (she has to as lives in a neighbouring village and public transport is shocking) and it took her an hour and a half to find somewhere to park - she allocated time to park but was late... to serve customers (she works in hospitality).

Of course we like and appreciate visitors but I don't think brushing off legitimate issues is productive for anyone!

Live on the South Coast and hate tourist season. Just going out and doing something that you would reasonably expect to be able to do is horrendous when they descend on the area. We wanted to go out and buy the usual DIY bits last weekend and getting there took three times as long because of the traffic. Our neighbours were discussing which day would be best to go to the rubbish tip again because of the congestion tourism.brings to the area. Last year when lock down was lifted it was awful, Miles and miles of traffic jams, litter and general disrespectful behaviour, locals complaining on social media of catching tourists stuck in the traffic jams peeing in their gardens!

I'm originally from London but 7yrs ago I moved to Chichester. Nearby is Bognor Regis, West Wittering & Hayling Island. Yes, it gets busy around the BHs & half term so I avoid certain areas during the day because of traffic. It's never really caused an issue & I have no problems with tourists because these areas rely on the income they generate.

Our family income relies on tourism so I'm deeply grateful for it.

I actually used to visit where I live now, as a tourist, so I can't really complain.