Over Tourism and what to do about it

On this episode of the Travel Fun and Adventure Podcast, we will talk about one of the hot-button issues in many places right now, and that is over tourism.  We will discuss some of the places facing the problem and what you, as a traveler, can do to make the situation a little better. However, there is no way it will be fixed completely without banning tourism completely, which will only hurt the people who depend on tourism to make a living. 

One way to solve the over-tourism situation is to try to travel to places facing the problem on the shoulder, especially in the off-season. While this can work in many places, some places pack up and close up shop in the off-season, leading to problems for you trying to find places to stay or eat while you are there. One place that this is especially true is some of the Greek Islands. 

Another way to help the locals in busy places is to stay at locally owned lodging facilities instead of the big chains. While some people are nervous about locally owned lodging places, in my experience, the worst hotels have been franchised, and the great ones have been locally owned. 

Then there is the Airbnb/VRBO option. The problem with this option is that it has become the "get rich quick" scheme of the 2020s. People are being told the best way to get rich is to buy places on the cheap and then rent them out as short-term rentals and make a killing. However, the bad side is that it takes places to live out of the market, making it harder for the locals to find a place to live, whether to buy or rent. 

If a short-term rental is your best alternative (and it might be if you're in Europe with a couple of kids or the US with a big group or pet), check to see if the owner is actually local. Recently, while looking for a place to stay for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday, which is coming up, we found that several of the places we were looking at are owned by people thousands of miles away. This means there is no one local to take care of the place (they hire a cleaning crew to come in, which may or may not do a good job since the owners have no idea), and if there is a problem with the unit, you may have a hard time getting anything taken care of.

Another way to help the local people is to shop and dine locally. Too many people will stay at a resort or major hotel and never leave the property or only eat at nearby chains, which does not benefit the local economy to the degree that a locally owned business does. 

When we travel, we try to find locally-owned restaurants to eat in. When we stayed in Hawaii, we found several locally-owned places within easy walking distance of our resort that served great quality food at better prices than most of the chains. One example in Waikiki was the Rock Island Cafe were we got a great meal for less money than my daughter spent of McDonalds.  

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