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?

@PattyPan

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.

when I first moved to Cambridge it did take me a while to get used to the bikes but after a few weeks was tutting with the best of them when tourists stepped out in front of them!

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**

And that's exactly what I was referring to in my very next post, when I said about badly-behaved tourists. Clearly, doing anything illegal or dangerous is the extreme epitome of bad behaviour.

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.

What do you expect, though, if you live somewhere that you acknowledge is very popular? If there weren't loads of people wanting to come there in peak times, it wouldn't be popular, would it?!

You can own a house/property/land in a village, but you can't buy the village and beach itself. All of the public space in your village belongs as much to anybody else as it does to you - and as you get to use it much more than almost everybody else in the country, I don't see how you're that hard done-by, when others want a turn.

Agree with FrangipaniBlue. I also live in the Lakes and love the area. One of my favourite walks gives me a 360 view which looks over two lakes, an abundance of fells, Scotland, and the sea. You cant beat that on a good day.

Most locals understand that the area relies on tourism and that, as a result, it has lovely bars, shops and restaurants for us to enjoy, and actually many tourists can bring a lot of benefits. On the work side of things, most people round here appear to work in the nuclear industry, but the tourist job market is great for sixth formers/returning university students. I do also know a fair few people who own guest houses/B&Bs, so in that sense tourism is their livelihood.

If tourists are in the likes of Keswick, spending their money in the shops, cafes, attractions and pubs, enjoying their time sensibly and unobtrusively, then that's great. However, the issue is when they're a drain on resources which are already stretched here. The National Trust rangers aren't here to chase wild campers/pick up litter, nor is it fair that ambulances can't get through because stingy people are blocking the roads rather than pay for parking, while the mountain rescue teams aren't here to be called up to the likes of Striding Edge because a family of four has gone up with the wrong equipment/no prior knowledge. It's these instances which are a relatively common occurence and which make living in a touristy area an real issue.

@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.

I lived on the Royal Mile for two years. It was fun for a while being in the centre of the festival, but the never ending noise (including the ghost tour that threw fake rats at the audience right under my bedroom window three times a night, every night) and the sheer rudeness of the tourists got quite wearing. We regularly had people try and follow us into our stairway because they assumed the whole area was a museum. When the tattoo queue was outside our door we had to run the gauntlet of accusations of jumping the queue when we were just trying to go home. It was so hard to get anywhere with tourists walking at snails pace crowding the pavements. I’m glad I now live out of town. I avoid the town centre in August if at all possible, and at new year.

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll I did not say I was hard done by but when tourists come up and abandon their cars everywhere leaving pedestrians/wheelchair users/people with buggies to walk out on the main road to get around the cars and cause a danger then I get pissed off and it is constant in the summer where I am. Also most dont seem to see the litter bins and leave a trail of rubbish behind them. I am not disputing that people should come and enjoy the beaches but be mindful of others while doing so.

@Taliskerskye

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.

@Taliskerskye Well considering I don't have a bike and can't ride due to severe arthritis in my hips and knees along with gyny issues which make riding a bike impossible your point is mute. And no 9 miles is not half an hours bike ride round here most fit cyclist don't travel more than 10 miles per hour on our roads which cause an equally large problem! You clearly have never lived or spent any significant time in the south west so I don't think you can judge it! I have lived in both London and the south west and I can tell you it is MUCH worse in high season down here!!!

I pretty much leave them to it. I very rarely go into the city centre anymore. And it's year round now, not just certain events etc. And the city seems to have no interest in mitigating over-tourism. An irritating new development is for guided bike tours around the path network where I live. It used to feel a hidden, very much a local thing, totally away from the tourist rammy, but no more.

I live just outside of Edinburgh now but lived there for 36 years and was born there. I remember being at The Worlds End pub one night and I was outside having a fag and I got talking to this very posh English man and he said to me, “good grief I can’t believe I am actually speaking to someone in Edinburgh who is actually from Edinburgh”, obviously he wasn’t speaking to the right people then if he thought this but it just goes to show the amount of tourists Edinburgh has and it’s a very small city.

To the PP above who lived at the Royal Mile, well my friend lives there too and she has the old style windows with the 12 little panels and then on the outer window she has double glazed, do you know if the windows are like this purely for the noise?

Panes not panels

Pickledpenguin

Fair enough, then - sorry if I misconstrued your thinking. I think we're pretty much on the same page, then

I grew up in a mega-tourist attraction city & live near touristy areas now (5 miles). I am baffled by people who dislike the tourists. Where I live now we have few local employment opportunities, especially for young people. We so badly need local jobs.

People who are most financially secure or stable (esp. retired persons) are the most anti-tourist ime. I find it dismaying. One local village shop has signs up like "Stay out if you are a tourist because we don't want your covid!" Like they forget what it's like to be young & starting out in the world, or clueless what it's like have no family connections to help you get a good career, or not aware that tourists contribute hugely to prop up local economy.

Yes the traffic can be bad sometimes, but most of us have a lot of choice about exactly where to live by adulthood, we can choose to live in places that let us avoid the worst local bottlenecks, or take the train + cycle the last 4 miles to workplace, etc.

I've lived in a small coastal town for over 20 years. Dh grew up here. Even at its height it was a place that attracted predominantly day trippers. It was a rundown place for years and is in the process of being redeveloped which is great.

This week however, has been interesting, probably exacerbated by the ending of lockdown, the school holidays and the weather. I drove down the prom yesterday at about teatime and it was heaving with people, mainly teenagers. There have been numerous reports of fights and antisocial behaviour. And my god, the litter.

I want people to come here. I have no probs with teens coming here (I have them myself) but I want to feel safe walking around in my own town and I want my sons to feel safe doing the same. Not sure I could say that this week. Hopefully it's just a post lockdown blip while everyone gets it out of their system.

This also happens!