In the DC area, we’ve started holding our breaths around Jan 6 and it’s very special sort of “tourist” season.
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And then they ask the locals why we have zero empathy for these guys.
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had to leave the house today, only to meet gridlock on the overseas hiway (US1) heading south. every other truck pulling a boat. the “mini season” tourons are here, getting an early start on the early start to spiny lobster season.
lobster mini season happens only in the Keys on the last wednesday and thursday of july and we get tens of thousands of people here. hotels are at full capacity on the upper keys and boat ramps will be bonkers!
ok. great for the hospitality and service sector of the local economy. yay! 
but locals absolutely hate this TDC (tourist development commision) creation. the servers that i know and talk to hate it also.
hope those visitors have a great time and spend lots and lots of money, but this week will be miserable for so many who live here. this is a small island.
i know, i know… b*tch and moan some more… i’ll spare this forum of that, but will report back with the all the arrests of the real tourons who will get busted with over limit, undersize bugs. because it will happen. it always does.
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No word of tourons attempting to breach security at White Sands Missile Range yet, but at least the Army is anticipating a crush of visitors on the scheduled open house.
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Man, Hallstatt is known for its incredibly well preserved remains of salt mining and the associated rich cemeteries, the finds of which have given a whole period of European history at the turn of the Bronze Age to the Iron Age its name. And people only visit because of a children’s movie?
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When tourists disappeared during the pandemic, places such as Florence and Barcelona realised uneasily how few alternatives they had.
IDK about Florence but I feel with my city, more than realising how few alternatives we had, is more that we realised how much we gutted to make room for them. That sobering realization lead to neigborhood movements to promote local business and for having more services oriented to the locals. It helps a lot that for the past decade we had a goverment that invested heavily on startup power (improving internet infrastructure so everyone can have their own 1GB line for 20€, creating specific tech neighborhoods, promoting tech conferences like the MWC, etc) so it’'s not we did not have alternatives…
Even still, every night for the past two weeks I have to deal with drunken people screaming their guts off below the window of my flat. Tourist season in Barcelona starts early June, peaks at late July and slowly tapers off towards the beginning of September.
I just hope our new mayor continues with the trend of curbing hotel and airbnb development, though signs point to “unlikely” 
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I was in Barcelona in December 2017, and at the time I thought I could easily move there. I loved how liveable and enjoyable the city was.
I’m glad you’ve given me a view of tourist season, just to keep my mind realistic.
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My mom and sister were in Barcelona some years ago and loved the city. But they Said that the most obvious tourist spots were overcrowded.
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You’ll find most non-obvious tourist spots overcrowded too, at least in peak season. I used to do tours of “secret” and obscure places of Barcelona 15 years ago (things like touring the ruins of shanty towns, or roman pathways, or the places that existed before the big city expansion in the 20th c.); most of these nowadays can be found in blogs nowadays - which I personally think is a good thing, I did the tours more to divulge and preserve history than for the money (if a place becomes popular, it may be preserved instead of thorn down and replaced) - so unless you like really really obscure places (that are not that interesting to begin with) you will be hard-pressed not to find someone posing or taking a photo.
Not everything is super terrible, mind you. Usually high season is the worst, because is when younger people (the ones who have more chances to drunk rave in the middle of the street) have more free time, as school season is over. For most of the year visitors usually concentrate in the “spots”. My only usual complain is that the city transforms to cater them: a clothing store that used to be a theater/cinema; a fast food chain that used to be a library; a money exchange store that used to be the place to find obscure partitures. I will spare you translating the links, as the story is basically a template: rent hikes prevent this kind of “barely staying afloat” niche business to compete, so they are evicted and replaced.
Things may get worse if the pressure to expand the airport succeeds. There has been a broad opposition as there is a lot of concerns about the loss of protected farmland and the swamp ecosystem of the Llobregat Delta, but of course there is a big tourism lobby (and the big construction companies) pressuring for it to go forward.
And yet, if you have the chance, I won’t say don’t come… just please, unless you’re planning to serenade me, don’t scream below my balcony 
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That is so wrong at so many levels… especially when you realize that the graffiti was made on a historical facade (14th century building there, if is the building I think it is) that requires special care to clean.
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All this is to say that a document issued based on the arbitrary geography or ancestry of a human being’s birth still determines some of the most decisive aspects of their quality of life and the opportunities available to them. While this has always been true to some extent, the current moment is one when such a status quo is increasingly seen as unjust and yet also blatantly promoted by those who believe borders are not to be violated. Passports became common for residency and travel in the years after World War I. After World War II’s atrocities, a set of liberal precepts were accepted by most Western countries, and new protections for human dignity, like the ability to claim asylum based on the fear of persecution, were put in place.
Now in 2023 the commitment to those liberal principles of equality and human dignity are weaker than they were when they were instituted.
Source:
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This week I had a woman complain to the front desk that there was a mosquito in her room, and wanted to know what we were going to do about it.
Another couple complained about noise from the wedding on site. They mentioned that this was particularly bothersome because they were there to celebrate their anniversary… of the wedding they had in the same location a few years ago.
And finally a guest who comes to Maine from NYC a couple times a year complained about how tourists were ruining their favorite vacation spot. On a positive note, they did bring me bagels.
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ok, as promised i bring preliminary reports of some of the tourons getting busted or killed during the two-day lobster mini season:
first day was almost a washout. thunderstorms and marine warnings kept boats off the open water much of the day, but two unfortunate gentlemen tragically lost their lives diving for bugs without deploying any dive flag! they were struck by boats in separate incidents. that is truly sad.
the ones that just burn me right up are stories like two gentlemen being busted with 102 lobsters over the limit!!! 
limit is 6 per person per day. they had 126 in their possession. fuck me! that is beyond being greedy. WTAF?!
these are just getting published and i am certain that there will be many more stories of our scofflaw “guests” in the islands who just want to take it all. fuck those guys!
/rant (for now)
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