Tourists 24/7 365 days a year..

[IsawwhatIsaw]

I have lived in a tourist town for several decades.
And we always had tourists but it felt manageable with a quieter time during the winter.
But now there is no quiet time at all, and I actively avoid the centre as so many coach loads of people arrive daily . It’s so busy it feels oppressive.
So it feels like there is no let up at all. I spoke to a friend in Edinburgh who had a similar story - she is now looking to move out.
Just wondering if other cities experience this?
we are wondering about moving elsewhere, but like where we live.
Is it unreasonable to resent how our City has changed?

Trouble is the same happens in places without tourism or without a university or without plentiful local employment. Shops, pubs and other amenities close because people simply move away (or don't return to their home town from universities) because there are no decent jobs to keep them or attract them into the area.

Places like the Lake District would be dead without tourism as there's not enough local quality employment to sustain a decent level of local population. Loads of people already never return to their home town because there are no graduate jobs. Try being an actuary and living in Ambleside - you're too far away to commute to any insurance firms!!

Of course a balance is needed. Too much tourism is obviously bad, but there are plenty of places that would quickly turn to ghost towns without any tourism. It's down to the councils to find ways to keep it manageable and sustainable.

It’s tricky I admit and I do avoid the city centre of Bath in summer but it does drop off in winter a bit, enough to lure me back in. In summer we tend to go into Bristol which is busy but doesn’t have the coach tours and posh stag and hen dos.

I grew up partly in a very nice Mediterranean beach town. When I was young it was relatively sleepy, and now it is heaving.

I sympathise, OP, but in the case of my hometown tourism has been very good for the economy. (Traffic is a nightmare, however.)

The town has become a cultural magnet in consequence. And the increase in real estate values has just enabled my elderly DPs to sell their house for a huge multiple of what they paid, providing the means to live out their lives in an excellent retirement community offering higher levels of care when (there is no ‘if’ about it, sadly) this becomes necessary. Worth considering.

Methinks you are a bit of a moaning Minnie OP. Sure, be resentful and miserable, and move away. Live somewhere dull and rundown which no-one wants to visit. At least it will give you something else to moan about hey?

I understand and sympathise with you OP. I try and visit places that are not touristy but when I come across somewhere with lots of tourists (including me) I feel sorry for locals having to put up with us all.

There is one major improvement - language schools used to give students bikes (bright red or yellow) with no thought whether they knew how to ride or knowledge of the highway code. They'd ride around in crowds, wobbling all over both sides of the road, the wrong way down one way streets, pulling in front of cars etc. It was awful in the 90s but seemed to stop in the early 2000s.

Definitely more year round tourists though.

What town is this?

Yorkshire Street. Such a bloody shame

It was all fenced off the last few years, no reason for him to be walking through it at all. People just like a good moan over nothing

People who live in tourist towns complain about tourists. People who live in university towns complain about students. People who live in big cities complain about people moving in for jobs. People who moved into Soho complained about nightclubs and bars. People who move to villages sometimes complain about church bells being run. I think people want to complain

I was born and brought up in a small town in North Norfolk. We always had tourists in the summer, always. That’s not the problem, what @IsawwhatIsaw is saying is that now there is no break at all, and she’s right. I moved back about 20 years ago, and it’s just busier and busier, a few times we’ve had a complete snarl up of cars, nobody going nowhere, which is scary if there’s an emergency. This summer people parked where the lifeboat crew need to and it delayed them. The lifeboat is needed fairly regularly as people, often tourists get trapped by the tide.
It’s constantly busy now.

Yes, there is a "performative" element to it now that just really grates, no idea where the money is coming from, I would bet for a lot of people it is credit cards, but the cheap flights started over 30years ago something else has shifted, I think it is the social media influence but you would need to be pretty thick to think someone filming themselves in front of Edinburgh Castle for the ten billionth time is going to stand out in any way?

Im also a 10 min walk and August is horrible. Especially with the buses. Never mind with the fire now causeing delays etc

There are more people & more cars and very little investment in infrastructure so it is busier.

And what do you do when you go on holiday or on a day trip?

Tourists flock to old European cities in search of a lost culture. It would be better for everyone if people could actually retain and revive those lost cultures in situ.

I live in London and don't mind the tourists except that I will no longer get out of the way of some people taking photos.

I used to, always. But that was when it was a quick family or friend group snap.

But now the influencer types who pose, repose, pout, flick their hair round, toss it over the shoulders, walk toward the camera, peer back, peer away... I would never get anywhere if I waited for them!

In compensation for my meanness, if I see normal family / friend groups taking a quick shot, I offer to take it for them so they all all in shot. Figure it evens my karma out! 😂

I lived in Rye and then Battle - it was tourists all year. 🤷‍♀️

Thank you, yes it’s the no break at all that’s hard. It’s not the place I moved to decades ago.

I'm glad that it doesn't annoy you given that you live there. Once a week is probably an exaggeration, but I have been hit in the leg by a large suitcases once already this summer and had to jump out of the way of another. It happened a number of times last year too. Happens often at the top of Broughton Street, particularly last year when there was a large fuschia bush growing out over the street from the church yard obscuring the view and narrowing the pavement and people just let their large suitcases roll down the hill ahead of them - I've started coming up the other side of the street to avoid that. And that sharp bend of the pavement at the junction of Leith Street and Calton Road is another place where large suitcases are a problem but more difficult to avoid if you want to go in the back door of Waverley.

No, people like to get away and have a change. There's things I can see and do in other places that I can't in my home town.

I live in Ireland and it's becoming a total nightmare with tourists. They're blocking the roads around the beaches, the local buses can't get through. The council painted double yellows on the roads and they still parked on them but some cars were towed away so hopefully that will help.

They're also blocking life-boat slipways and yellow box zones. The roads are just packed all summer and every bank holiday. Us locals can't even use the local facilities. Then there's the campers...

ETA our local beach, last bank holiday had young adults parking their cars on the beach and sleeping overnight in them, us locals had to spend the next day clearing out the broken glass, disposable bbqs and mountains of rubbish. They caused mayhem in the town but when people complain we're told to shut our mouths because they're spending money in our town. Nobody wants them.

I wish my town was busy all year. It is utterly desolate in the winter months.

Everyone's different. I now live in a popular tourist city but I originally come from a small town largely without tourism, so I've seen both sides of it. I much prefer living in the city. Tourists bring investment. The small town has little going for it in terms of amenities and opportunities for younger people.

We go to Cambridge often to visit a child there. We are quite boring ‘tourists’. We just go out for dinner and do multiple circuits of John Lewis trying to convince ourselves we need some new candle holder or a Jane Austin jigsaw.

There are loads of conventional tourists ofc, but I find them pretty inoffensive. They just seem to be excited to be somewhere so beautiful. Yes, it makes walking through Market Square a nightmare, but it is pretty benign.

The biggest menace we witness is on a Saturday night, approx between six and seven pm, the feral local young people come out. Honestly, the shouting, drunkenness, antisocial behaviour is just embarrassing. Give me tourists over watching a drunken fight on Petty Cury any day.

But I live in London and I’m used to tourists and I actually love helping them. I will always go up to somebody looking lost or trying to work out a tube map, and offer my help.