the tourist boom

Is Netflix’s The Tourist Based on a True Story or a Book?

In Netflix’s ‘ The Tourist ,’ a man has to face the consequences of his actions, but the problem is that he remembers nothing about his past and his actions. A car accident in the desolation of the Australian Outback leaves Jamie Dornan’s character with absolutely no memory of who he is and where he comes from. He soon realizes that he doesn’t have the luxury of time and must figure out his origins as soon as possible because whatever he did in the past has put him on the bad side of some really bad people who want to kill him. Created by Harry Williams and Jack Williams, the show weaves an entertaining tale of mystery, action, and humor and makes one wonder if such a thing has really happened to someone.

The Tourist is a Fictional Tale With Existential Questions at Its Heart

‘The Tourist’ is a completely fictional show developed by Harry and Jack Williams, the duo known for their work on shows like ‘ Fleabag ’ and ‘Call the Midwife.’ They have also created shows like ‘ The Missing ’ and ‘Baptiste,’ the crime thrillers that have been immensely popular. However, after working on a lot of dark thrillers, the duo wanted to do something that would be less grim than their previous works and be more fun, not just for the audience but also for them. They wanted to explore the genre and deliver something with a completely different tone than what they are known for.

The idea for ‘The Tourist’ developed from a scene they had in mind. The scene, which eventually became the first scene of the TV show, was about a guy being chased by someone and then having an accident, following which he forgets everything about himself. Who is he, where did he come from, and how did the accident happen? All these questions are just the tip of the iceberg. The premise opened the door for them to delve into deeper existential questions. The protagonist not only has to dodge the attempts on his life and fight killers who are after him for unknown reasons, but he also has to figure out whether he himself is one of them. And if so, then can he accept his reality?

The first scene was compelling enough, and when the duo presented the idea to others, people would prod them for “what happens next.” The writers had no idea, and that, in a way, made the writing process even more fun for them. They hadn’t created any backstory for the protagonist prior to the first scene. He was just as much of an enigma to them as he was to himself and the audience at the beginning of the show.

Another thing that decided the look and the vibe of the show was its setting. The creators wanted something to echo the “vast expansive emptiness” inside the protagonist after the accident and loss of his memories, and the Australian Outback proved to be a perfect setting. The idea had started with an Australian setting, but they also briefly considered other places, including America. In the end, however, they came back to the original setting.

Jack Williams revealed that the idea for Australia came from his own experience while visiting the country. He’d been there a very long time ago, and the sheer scale of the place, especially the Outback, stuck with him. On the roads in the Outback, he considered the possibility of being stranded and how no one would know that he was stranded and there would be no one around to help him. When the idea for ‘The Tourist’ was being explored, he realized that putting the protagonist in the same situation in the same place opened up a lot of avenues for the story. It was an extremely remote and terrifying place to be stranded for a person of a different nationality with no memory of who he was and where he came from.

When it came to the characters, the writers focused on writing them realistically, giving them their own detailed backstories that feed into their present actions and dictate the kind of person they turn out to be. The actors brought their own personal experiences to the parts, and with the general humor mixed with the vulnerability their characters required, it was easier to slip into their skin and become those people. All of this, combined, makes ‘The Tourist’ an excellent story, delivered with such an eye for detail that it makes the audience relate to the characters, giving a realistic touch to an otherwise unbelievable series of events.

Read More:  Where Is The Tourist Filmed?

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The Tourist

When a man wakes up in the Australian outback with no memory, he must use the few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him. When a man wakes up in the Australian outback with no memory, he must use the few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him. When a man wakes up in the Australian outback with no memory, he must use the few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him.

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How antarctica’s tourist boom could affect earth’s ‘last great wilderness’.

William Brangham William Brangham

Emily Carpeaux Emily Carpeaux

Mike Fritz Mike Fritz

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-antarcticas-tourist-boom-could-affect-earths-last-great-wilderness

Watch Part 4

Can Antarctica remain a refuge for science and peace?

Antarctica was the last of the seven continents to be discovered, and it wasn’t until the late 1950s that commercial tourism began there. But now, Antarctica has become a popular travel destination, amid growing concerns about the effect that increasing numbers of people could have on its pristine environment. William Brangham reports from Antarctica.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Judy Woodruff:

Now to our continuing series Warnings From Antarctica.

It was the last of the seven continents to be discovered, and it wasn't until the late 1950s that commercial tourism to the region began. But now it's becoming a popular destination.

William Brangham and producers Mike Fritz and Emily Carpeaux traveled there and have this report on how tourism has thus far shown little impact on Antarctica's pristine environment, but why there is growing concern about the influx of more and more people.

William Brangham:

Welcome to the tourist boom at the bottom of the world. It's a front-row seat to a remarkable show, majestic humpback whales, frolicking fur seals, an army of curious, charming penguins.

All that framed by a backdrop that defies description, nothing but miles of mountains, glaciers and icebergs as far a the eye can see. The icy continent of Antarctica is hot. A record 50,000 people came last year. "GQ" magazine recently said now is the time to go. The New York Times said, forget Times Square. Ring in the new year right here.

David McGonigal:

The main attraction of the area is just, it's a place where people are irrelevant. People just don't count. You're coming here purely as a visitor. You have no other impact.

David McGonigal has led over 120 trips to Antarctica for One Ocean Expeditions, a Canadian tour company promoting environmentally conscious travel.

These are trips where the scenery comes with equal helpings of science and history. This is definitely not budget travel. It's about $12,000 to $20,000 per person for this two-week cruise. That includes kayaking, hiking, and motorboat excursions by day, white tablecloth meals, and lectures from scientists and naturalists by night.

McGonigal's job is to keep the roughly 140 passengers, who have come from around the world, safe and satisfied.

Some people are just down here for the history, and so you have got to find some historical elements to deliver. Some people just want wildlife. Some people are really just down here for the ice. And it's a matter of juggling that all around and then trying to pull together a plan.

The journey starts at the southern tip of South America, and through the infamous Drake Passage, home to some of the roughest seas known to man.

Two days later, the ship finally crosses the Antarctic Circle, one of the southernmost latitudes on Earth.

Hermione Roff:

This sort of place, it deepens your understanding of the world, but also of yourself.

Hermione and Jon Roff made the trip from Northern England. She's a child and family therapist. He's an Anglican priest.

We wanted to come and see it before either it disappeared or we disappeared.

We are probably spending more on this holiday than we have spent on our holidays in our entire lives.

Is that right?

Yes, I think so.

Yusuf Hashim retired almost 20 years ago. He was a marketing director for Shell Oil in Malaysia. He convinced nearly 50 of his friends and family to join him on this trip.

So, what are you doing here on the bottom of the Earth?

Yusuf Hashim:

Spending my children's inheritance.

Do they know that this is what is happening?

Yes, that's one of them over there. So it's bonding time. I have been here four times now, and I will never tire of looking at icebergs and penguins and the scenery. It makes it all worth living.

In addition to all the wildlife, the ship visits historic sites, like this abandoned British scientific base from the 1950s, as well as active bases. Eleven scientists from Ukraine work and live here year-round.

And the tourists can sample the homemade whisky made with glacial ice at one of the southernmost drinking holes in the world. But visiting Antarctica until relatively recently was a trip no human had ever made.

Katie Murray:

It's absolutely incredible that our seventh continent, our newest continent, was discovered less than 200 years ago, changing what we understand about the globe today.

Katie Murray is a polar historian who works for One Ocean, teaching visitors about the earliest Antarctic explorers, like Britain's James Cook, or the ill-fated race to the South Pole in 1911 between Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen, or perhaps the most famous Antarctic adventure story, Ernest Shackleton's dramatic endurance voyage several years later.

We talked with Murray in the ship's movie theater.

It's quite incredible, actually, that 100 years after the Heroic Age, just over 100 years since Scott and the polar party died on their return from the South Pole, and you have got these great stories of endurance and suffering, we can now come to Antarctica effectively for fun.

This record number of tourists coming here has been growing steadily since the 1980s, when just a few thousand made the trip every year.

And when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Soviet fleet of ice-strengthened vessels became available, and people realized they could actually charter those and bring those down. That was what started the whole rush in the 1990s.

Today, more and more tour companies are rolling out new fleets of luxury ice-strengthened ships capable of navigating the icy waters here. But the arrival of more and more visitors to Antarctica is also leading to concerns about their impact on this pristine ecosystem.

Claire Christian:

Antarctica is really the world's last great wilderness. There's no permanent human population there.

It's a continent that is for nature, and I think that's a really important symbol, because so many other places where human civilization has spread to, we have destroyed the environment.

Claire Christian is the executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. She believes tourism has so far been a force for good, galvanizing people to care about a continent that is thousands of miles from their homes.

Right now, tourists only visit the Antarctic Peninsula, because it's the most accessible and most scenic part of the continent, but Christian notes this is also a region stressed by climate change. So, how many more visitors can the region handle?

Right now, there may not — it may not be able to — we may not be able to see a lot of effects. But, if you suddenly have a sharp increase in the number of people who are visiting a small colony every day, that might start to have an impact.

Remember, Antarctica has no government. No nation runs this place. And, currently, all tour groups are governed by a strict, but voluntary set of regulations.

For example, only one ship at a time is allowed at designated sites. There are rules about how many people can go ashore and how close they can get to wildlife. One Ocean Expeditions mandates all tourists vacuum and clean their gear before going ashore, so that no foreign seeds or dirt end up on land. All returning gear gets a similar scrub every day.

But invasive species have already taken hold. This moss is from the Arctic. A trace amount somehow made the 12,000-mile trip. And there are also concerns about wildlife. Two of the three penguin species on the peninsula are in decline. Researchers believe it's being driven in part by a warming environment.

Given that, are all these humans an added stress? You see all that reddish brown material on the ground behind me? That's all penguin guano, or penguin poop. And not only does it make this whole area have a very unique aroma, but scientists have been measuring the stress hormones that are released into guano at places where tourists show up and at places where tourists never go.

And for the penguins so far, at least, it doesn't seem that the presence of tourism is causing them any problems.

Andrea Raya Rey is a conservation biologist based in Ushuaia, Argentina, a city where the bulk of all Antarctic tourism begins.

Raya Rey says that, while tourism is showing little impact thus far, she worries about the estimated 40 percent growth in the industry.

Andrea Raya Rey:

The tourism puts an extra pressure on the ecosystem. One ship, it's OK, two, OK, three. But 10 at the same time pointing at them, it's stressful.

It's also a concern shared by those within the tourism industry.

It's going to be more a matter of just, how do you manage the numbers when there's just nowhere left to go and you have got more ships coming down?

As for visitors like Jon and Hermione Roff, they feel incredibly lucky to have seen the wonders of Antarctica up close. But they admit that they are worried about their own impact.

There is a growth of tourism that does leave a mark. However careful we are, it leaves a mark. And so it's a very difficult balance. I mean, I'm really thrilled that we have come, but I hope not too many more people will come.

For now, though, there is no sign that this tourist boom is slowing.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham on the Antarctic Peninsula.

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New York City is still waiting for its high-spending tourists to come back

• NYC tourism is on the rebound, expecting a 70% increase in tourists this year.
• New hotels, a busy Broadway, and a casino-to-come in Times Square are bringing tourism back to life.
• But tourism likely won't reach pre-pandemic levels for several years, remaining a pain point in the city's recovery.

New York City wants its tourists back. 

The city has come a long way since its days in spring 2020 as the epicenter of the coronavirus, when local businesses shuttered their doors and the lights in Time Square dimmed. Two years later, real estate is booming , the city's most iconic cocktail bars have lines of people waiting to get in , and young professionals are flocking back to the city .

Tourists are also frequenting Central Park and the Empire State building again, but the city still has a long way to go before it reaches pre-pandemic tourism levels.

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The city is expected to see a 70% increase in tourists this year compared to 2021 to 56.4 million visitors, per a recent forecast by the city tourism agency NYC & Company . That's still lower than the 66.6 million visitors the tourism agency estimated in 2019, but more than double the 22.3 million tourists who visited the city in 2020. 

NYC & Company projects 8 million international tourists this year, well above the 2.4 million during the height of the pandemic in 2020 but still far below the 13.5 million visitors from abroad in 2019.

That might be partly because the city will be missing a key part of its tourism sector, as The New York Times reported : China's elite, who drove foreign visits to NYC in 2019, stayed longer and spent more than tourists from most other countries. They're still under the country's international travel ban. 

Even domestic tourism is still suffering. Hotel business travel is down nationwide, but the industry in New York is the second-hardest hit after San Francisco, according to a new report by the American Hotel & Lodging Association Kalibri Labs. NYC's hotel business travel revenue is expected to be down by 55% this year compared to 2019. 

The tourist downturn may delight New Yorkers on the streets who often bemoaned the masses of visitors wandering through the city before the pandemic, but it hasn't been good for the Big Apple's economy. Tourism generated $ 72 billion in economic impact annually pre-pandemic and provided more than 400,000 local jobs. 

To get the wheels turning again, the city launched a $30 million tourism campaign last year. More recently, Mayor Eric Adams gave NYC & Company an additional $10 million in funding as a key part of his economic recovery blueprint to rebuild tourism , with the goal of surpassing pre-pandemic tourism levels by 2024.

There are already signs of a revival. New hotels are popping up across the city. It's going to be the busiest April for Broadway openings in 10-plus years. And, as The Wall Street Journal reported , Times Square — the tourist-favorite destination that New Yorkers love to hate — is rebounding faster than other Midtown areas after being the hardest-hit neighborhood during the pandemic. It's taking on a Las Vegas-like vibe, per WSJ, with several new developments in the works: a hotel with an outdoor pool, a second hotel with a concert stage, and the city's first casino.

But NYC is in need of a full tourism boom, which could prove challenging now that there are two new coronavirus variants running around the city. While the Big Apple is well into its economic recovery, tourism remains a pain point waiting to bounce back. 

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Example sentences tourist boom

Inland there are hills and medieval towns, and the coast remains largely untouched by the tourist boom of the 1990s.

The event always prompts a tourist boom but this year it has reached new heights.

In the 1980s the big tourist boom started.

Since the start of the big tourist boom in the 1970s, the whole region has been captured by tourism.

Although the city has a year-round population of about 9,280, the summer tourist boom adds to this a very large number of non-residents.

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The Tourist season 2 ending explained: Who is Jamie Dornan's character really?

Forget everything you thought you knew about Jamie Dornan's character from season 1... *WARNING – CONTAINS FULL SPOILERS FOR ALL SIX EPISODES OF THE TOURIST SEASON 2*

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Two months after The Tourist season 2 debuted on BBC iPlayer, the new season is now arriving on Netflix in the US, meaning fans stateside will be able to find out all the new information we just learnt about Jamie Dornan's Elliot Stanley.

In season 2, Elliot and his girlfriend Helen (Danielle Macdonald) went travelling, before ending up in Ireland , looking for answers regarding amnesiac Elliot's past.

Throughout the season they got more than they bargained for, as more and more secrets came to light – culminating in another jaw-dropping twist ending, setting up a potential third outing.

Jack Williams, who along with his brother and co-writer Harry participated in a RadioTimes.com debate over The Best Ever TV thriller earlier this year, revealed that this ending could well get followed up on .

He said: "There is a little nod at the very end of this season that does suggest some interesting avenues for exploration, I would say.

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"It depends on us finding the right thing, but we love the world and we love the characters and we love working with Jamie and Danielle, so that's always going to be interesting to us."

So, what did we uncover about Jamie Dornan 's character in The Tourist season 2? And how did things come to an end for Elliot and Helen this time around? Read on for everything you need to know about the ending of The Tourist season 2 .

*WARNING: CONTAINS FULL SPOILERS FOR ALL SIX EPISODES OF THE TOURIST SEASON 2 - NOW AVAILABLE ON BBC iPLAYER*

The Tourist season 2 ending explained: What is the twist?

One of the most crucial pieces of information we learned this season about Jamie Dornan's character, Elliot Stanley, is that he was not, in fact, Elliot Stanley .

Instead, he was Eugene Cassidy , the son of Niamh, matriarch of the Cassidy family, who had been locked in a brutal feud with the McDonnell family for decades. He also seemingly had a penchant and talent for ballet. Go figure.

When Eugene was younger, he had had an affair with Donal McDonnell's wife, Claire, and the two had had a son, Fergal. Donal had tried to kill Eugene, but had instead killed his brother by mistake.

Feeling guilty for his brother's death, this is why Eugene left Ireland in the first place, with Donal left raising Fergal and keeping his ancestry a secret.

When leaving the country, he had taken the name Elliot Stanley... but why?

Who was the real Elliot Stanley?

The real Elliot Stanley was a diver, who Frank McDonnell hired to find a downed plane which his father had been on. His father had called him telling him he had important information to share, but had died on the plane before he could show him.

Hoping to find what was inside, Frank hired Elliot. However, Elliot had also become acquainted with Niamh Cassidy, and had travelled down to the plane with her.

While there, she handcuffed him to the plane and sliced his breathing apparatus with a knife, killing him so he couldn't reveal the truth of what had been found there.

Helen, Ruairi and Ethan discovered this when they met with Elliot's widow Deirdre, who also hinted that Elliot was in fact Eugene's father.

This would explain the resemblance between Eugene and Elliot, as well as, perhaps, why he took his name.

How did the family feud come to an end?

The feud ramped up to new levels when Niamh killed Donal, and everyone assumed it had been Eugene that had done so. The two families met at the Cassidy pub, ready for an all-out war.

However, Helen got there just in the nick of time, having located the files that Frank's father had wanted to show him. Niamh had buried them near the coast years ago, hoping to stop anyone from finding out what she had once she read them.

It turned out that the files were, in fact, love letters between Frank's father and Niamh's mother. They had had an affair, which they kept quiet because of the family feud, but this meant that Frank and Niamh were, in reality, brother and sister.

Niamh had tried to bury the secret because she couldn't forget the past and all that had happened between the two families. Frank seemed willing to forget the past and move on as one joined family, but Niamh stormed out of the pub, unable to do so. Where the two families went from here is unclear.

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Did Helen and Elliot get together in The Tourist season 2?

Yes, Helen and Eugene managed to put his past actions and the mystery surrounding him behind them, and moved into a flat together in Amsterdam.

However, there was one last twist in the tale. After Eugene was arrested for Donal's murder earlier in the finale, an article had been published in the local newspaper. Someone had seemingly seen this, tracked Eugene down, and sent him a file on his past.

What was in the file in The Tourist season 2?

Neither Eugene or Helen read it, with both saying they didn't care about his past. Eugene put it in the fire and burned it, and the pair went off to test whether he had retained any of his dancing skills post-amnesia.

However, while they never saw what was in the files, we got a glimpse as the cover burned away. It turns out Eugene was a special agent, at least as far back as 2005.

Exactly what this means for Eugene's past, or indeed the future of The Tourist, remains to be seen...

The Tourist season 2 is available in full now on BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

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Opinion: Asheville's tourism boom, advertising, excludes Black arts, culture and history

A sheville, North Carolina. Breathtaking Blue Ridge Mountains, historic charm and a booming craft beer scene — it's no wonder tourism is exploding here. But beneath the glossy brochures lies a hidden truth: for Asheville's Black community, the tourist boom can feel like a double-edged sword.

While tourism brings $3 billion per year in revenue, a disparity exists. What if tourism could be used to bring people together instead of apart? Imagine the vibrant tapestry Asheville could be if Black entrepreneurship thrived alongside its booming tourism industry.

Gentrification's grip: Displacement threatens Black roots

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The rise in tourism fuels gentrification, pushing long-time Black residents out of historically Black neighborhoods. Rising property values and rents force families from their communities, severing their cultural ties and erasing the rich history embedded in these neighborhoods.

A whitewashed cityscape: Where's the Black story in tourism?

Flip through any Asheville tourism brochure and you'll likely see a sanitized version of the city. The Biltmore Estate and trendy breweries dominate the narrative, while the vibrant Black arts scene, soul food havens on The Block and the legacy of Black Asheville remain largely invisible. Tourists deserve an authentic Asheville experience, one that embraces the full spectrum of its cultural tapestry.

Beyond the tourist trail: Black businesses getting left behind

Tourist dollars often flow freely in areas frequented by visitors, bypassing Black-owned businesses located outside those hotspots. This creates an economic divide, leaving Black businesses struggling despite the city's tourism boom.

Breaking down barriers: Why GRINDFest matters

This is where GRINDFest steps in. It's more than a carnival with cotton candy and Ferris wheels (although those will be there too!). GRINDFest is a three-day movement aimed at reshaping tourism in Asheville. It's a celebration of Black-owned businesses, a platform for Black entrepreneurs to showcase their talent, and an invitation for the entire community to embrace the richness of Black culture.

Asheville's celebration of Black culture extends beyond GRINDFest. The annual Juneteenth festival partners with Downtown After 5 and commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. The Goombay Festival, established in 1982 by the YMI, is a vibrant tribute to Asheville's African American and Caribbean heritage. The Shiloh Festival and the East End/Valley Street Festival delve into the rich history of Asheville's historically Black neighborhoods. The Hood Hugger’s tour and Peace Garden along with the newly funded Blue Note Junction hold space for the history and the future. These diverse celebrations paint a multifaceted picture of Black Asheville, a testament to the enduring spirit and cultural richness of the community. By supporting these events alongside GRINDFest, tourists and residents can contribute to a more equitable and inclusive tourism landscape in Asheville.

GRINDFest's Growing Impact

GRINDFest does not only help increase revenue, which creates jobs in Black-owned companies, but it is also a platform for organizations to collaborate. This year, the sponsors make it possible for EVERYONE to have candy, EVERY Housing Authority resident to have a wristband for the carnival rides and EVERY child to play for free.

Asheville's tourism boom can be a force for good, but it requires a conscious effort to ensure equitable participation. Here's what you can do:

●     Support Black-owned businesses: From restaurants and coffee shops to art galleries and clothing stores, Asheville boasts a wealth of Black-owned businesses waiting to connect. Seek them out, patronize them and spread the word.

●     Explore beyond the tourist hotspots: Venture beyond the Biltmore. Explore historically Black neighborhoods and be captivated by what they offer.

●     Demand an authentic Asheville experience: Let tourism boards know you want to see Asheville's full story reflected in marketing materials.

●     Join the GRINDFest Movement: Whether you're a Black entrepreneur ready to showcase your work, a community leader with a story to tell, or simply someone who wants to experience the magic of a diverse Asheville, GRINDFest has a place for you.

Asheville's future depends on embracing its full identity. Let's celebrate what makes Asheville truly unique. Let's GRIND together for a more equitable and inclusive tourism industry that benefits all.

Don't miss your chance to be part of this memorable occasion — Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick, Slutty Vegan, local BIPOC bands and Storytime with the Elders. Mark your calendars for May 24-26 and have good old fashioned fun at GRINDFest 2024.

For more information and to stay updated on the latest news and announcements, visit  www.grindfestavl.com .

More: What to know about Grindfest 2023, a 3-day festival in River Arts District

More: Opinion: Asheville has underlying problems with racism that must be addressed

J. Hackett is Board Chair of Black Wall Street AVL

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Asheville's tourism boom, advertising, excludes Black arts, culture and history

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Reykjavik Journal

Secret to Iceland’s Tourism Boom? A Financial Crash and a Volcanic Eruption

By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura

• Nov. 16, 2016

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Iceland has discovered the secret to a booming tourist industry: First have a mammoth financial implosion, then an enormous volcanic explosion.

The collapse of the Icelandic krona after the 2008 financial crisis transformed this Arctic island packed with 35 active volcanoes into a top destination by making it cheap for visitors.

Two years later, Eyjafjallajokull erupted , spewing thick ash clouds into European skies. Millions of passengers were grounded for days and airlines suffered financial losses. But the explosion put Iceland on the map. The foreign news media descended on the island, beaming images around the world of spectacular landscapes, even as journalists struggled to pronounce the volcano’s name.

“Iceland has been saved by the crash and the eruption,” said Fridrik Palsson, who owns Hotel Ranga, a luxury resort just 19 miles from the slopes of Eyjafjallajokull, the 16-letter volcano that is often shortened to E-16 by foreigners. “I have never seen anything take off so fast,” he said.

The combined effect of the catastrophes has been an invasion on a scale possibly unseen since Vikings raided the island hundreds of years ago. Tourists are expected to outnumber the local population of 330,000 by seven to one next year, according to official data. By comparison, last year visitors to France outnumbered the French by two to one

Tourism is now the island’s biggest industry, taking over from fishing and aluminum smelting, much as the financial sector did in the years before the crash.

The influx could be even higher following the rise of the Pirate Party. With its black pirate flag and anarchist leanings, it recently gained more seats in Parliament and even more attention, helping to burnish Iceland’s image as cool and alternative.

The number of tourists has risen by as much as 30 percent every year for the last four years, according to Iceland’s Tourist Board. They brought in revenues of $3.2 billion in 2015, a third of the country’s export earnings. Tourism is the single biggest employer, and many Icelanders are pouring money into services and new construction.

Mr. Palsson, who used to sell Iceland as a place to see the Northern Lights, employs an astronomer in his hotel. He has also invested in three expensive telescopes that are powerful enough for guests to see the rings on Saturn or the fuzzy glow of a distant dying star.

Landsbref, a fund management company that was spun off from one of three failed Icelandic banks, set up a $37 million tourism fund.

Reykjavik looks like a Scandinavian version of Singapore: compact, clean, orderly, and rich. Streets are lined with Crayola-color houses and Mercedes cars. Chic coffeehouses sell kale-and-date sandwiches, and play Ethiopian jazz. Restaurants offer inventive Nordic cuisine using local ingredients like puffin and shark. (One chef also proudly announced that Iceland now grows cucumbers, albeit in a greenhouse.)

The 101, a boutique hotel that was once an exclusive hangout for bankers (101 is also the city’s richest postal code), is now filled with tourists. In a possible dig at the hotel’s former denizens, a sculpture of what looked like a gray-suited banker hung on one wall, with a cryptic instruction, “Disconnect the battery, remove the rear hood and hinge brackets,” inscribed beneath it.

Tourists come from as far as Hong Kong. They chase the Northern Lights. They scale glaciers. They dive in the Arctic Circle with puffins, go horseback riding or take helicopter tours listening to ethereal, whale-like sounds by the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. Fans of “Game of Thrones” flock to filming locations around the island, some, apparently, genuinely in search of Wildlings.

Outside the capital, thick white plumes of steam, which are harnessed for Iceland’s energy needs, rise in the sky, as if the earth were vaping. Hot springs are everywhere, even in people’s backyards.

But there is growing concern that uncontrolled tourism is placing too large a burden on this small island. Housing prices and rents are rising quickly, forcing young people to live with their parents. Car rentals have tripled, clogging traffic. Littering and light pollution are spoiling parts of the landscape, many Icelanders say.

“It’s like the city is not my city anymore,” Birgitta Jonsdottir, the leader of the Pirate Party, complained last month. “It’s like Disneyland downtown.”

A poll in October conducted by the national broadcaster RUV reported that 87 percent of Icelanders want the government to raise fees or taxes on tourists.

The tourist boom is making some Icelanders uneasy. Another crash like the one that hit the banks is just a matter of time, and many said they are saving money or investing in hard assets.

Pessimists say all it takes to prick the tourism bubble is a sudden drop in visitors, triggered by something like a financial crisis overseas or the adverse effects of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

“It’s happening all over again,” said Kristjan Asjaersson, 51, a cabdriver. During Iceland’s short-lived heyday, he recalled having to crisscross the island just to deliver fish caught by Icelandic billionaires — they had forgotten to pack their catch before flying off in their private jets.

“Too many people rely on tourism,” he said. “When tourist numbers fall, the economy will collapse again. I know it will happen. But I will be prepared.”

Diddi Bardarson, a tall man with russet locks that reveal his Viking roots, also predicted another crash. Instead of relying so heavily on tourism, he is putting his financial security into a living asset: Iceland’s famous horses.

Mr. Bardarson breeds hundreds of Icelandic horses on a 900-acre ranch in Hella, a small town 55 miles southeast of Reykjavik that straddles the salmon-rich Ranga River. Iceland exports nearly 4,000 horses a year, many of them to the United States and Canada. A fine stallion can fetch more than $2 million.

“Horses are deep in our soul,” Mr. Bardarson said, feeding a 21-year-old black stallion named Markus, eyes hidden under luxuriously thick bangs, who has sired more than 150 horses. “Horses were, and still are, our lifeline.”

Mr. Bardarson has also benefited from the tourism boom. Demand for his horses has grown sevenfold over the past few years, he said, partly because some rich tourists become so enamored of the animals that they just have to have one or two.

Icelandic horses are purebred; because of contamination fears, once a horse leaves the island it is prohibited from returning. Unlike other breeds, Icelandic horses have five gaits and can travel up to 74 miles a day on rough terrain, breeders say.

Most important, Mr. Bardarson said, the hardy animals are reliable currency during times of financial instability. When the krona’s value evaporated during the crash, they came to his rescue — he bartered horses for cars and tractors.

Mr. Bardarson said he and his horses were preparing for leaner times. “Horses start slowing down their heartbeat. They try to get fatter and grow a thicker coat for the coming hard winter,” he said. “So should humans.”

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What does the tourist boom mean for Greece?

The Belgian city of Bruges, with a population of 20,000 residents, welcomes 8 million visitors every year. Here’s how a resident of the city described the current state of affairs to the Financial Times: “Twice this year alone, tourists have asked me where they could buy tickets to go inside the city center. They see it as a theme park. It’s always been touristic, but the scale is dangerously tipping toward ‘too much.’”

Are European cities becoming theme parks? The seemingly unstoppable rise of tourism is transforming host countries in ways that until recently belonged to the realm of the imagination. Greece is among the places most affected by this trend, as the global demand for it appears to know no limits. Most Greeks are appropriately concerned. A public discussion began two years ago about access to the “Greek summer,” a term describing the many ways in which Greeks and non-Greeks alike have been experiencing the joys of the summer season in Greece. The key question is whether the current tourist boom is something unquestionably positive and desirable for the country and its inhabitants.

Two issues tend to dominate the conversation. The first is overtourism, related to the sustainability of tourism. Is Greece, by attracting more visitors, ultimately “cannibalizing” its product, while also destroying itself in the process? The second points to how tourism limits access to the most desirable locations for locals; are Greeks in the process of being excluded from their own country? What are this year’s trends suggesting?

Tourism in Greece continued its upward trajectory, surpassing both 2022 and the record pre-pandemic 2019. Data from the Bank of Greece show that travel receipts between January and September 2023 period have reached 18 billion euros, compared to 15.6 billion euros for the same period last year and 16.1 billion euros for the same period in 2019. Air passenger data confirms that 2023 will be the best year for Greek tourism, besting the 31 million arrivals from 2019. In turn, these numbers underscore five key trends.

The first one is that tourism in Greece (but, also, globally) has so far proven particularly resilient to external shocks like climate change, regional geopolitical instability and inflation. In other words, demand for the “Greek summer” seems to be so great that it is offsetting the effects of negative developments. Clearly, this trend is driven by deeper, structural causes rather than being a conjectural, post-pandemic reaction.

Secondly, overtourism does not seem to produce, not yet at least, a decline in the most popular destinations. Places that initially appeared to be losing ground, such as Mykonos and Santorini, did regain their momentum following the end of August. Demand for, say, Santorini seems to outweigh the drawbacks of a poor experience caused by overcrowding. Some tourists may turn away from this island, but they are immediately replaced by many other willing visitors. The solutions proposed to tackle the problem of overcrowding, like the implementation of a national “destination management” strategy, seem rather unrealistic for a country like Greece. Investments in infrastructure might perversely worsen the problem by attracting even bigger crowds. So, while there is room for more people, the real question is at what cost.

Paros is now the new Mykonos, Sifnos the new Paros, Amorgos the new Sifnos, and so on. Places that were unspoiled until very recently are now being pushed into this meat grinder

Thirdly, the spread of tourist arrivals beyond the summer season is gradually turning into a reality, one likely to be further encouraged by climate change. Greek air passenger data show increased tourist flows in October and November, a phenomenon clearly visible in Athens, where an ever-rising number of hotels and Airbnb venues exhibit unprecedented occupancy rates, including during the winter months. Extending the tourist season has been a long-standing goal for the Greek tourist industry; however, this does not necessarily mean that the same numbers of visitors will be spread over more months; rather, it means that the numbers will increase even further. Fourth, this rise is driven primarily by the traditional tourist markets of Western Europe and North America; indeed, all this growth is taking place while the Chinese are still hunkering down at home. The coming tsunami from new, vast Asian markets has yet to begin, although all the signs are there; once this gets going, the numbers will explode.

Finally, tourism is boosting real estate development, as the demand for views, land, and vacation homes is becoming explosive. On top of it, this demand is taking place in a legal context characterized by very lax enforcement of land zoning rules. Essentially, this demand is transforming several of the most beautiful islands of the Aegean and Ionian seas, along with their formerly vibrant communities, into (primarily foreign) investment-driven suburban developments, dressed with a fake vernacular style. Santorini is leading the way, showing us what the future holds in store: A once beautiful volcanic island with a vibrant local culture, it has now effectively turned into a garish, overbuilt theme park for Instagram-obsessed sunset seekers. And the process is accelerating: Paros is now the new Mykonos, Sifnos the new Paros, Amorgos the new Sifnos, and so on. Places that were unspoiled until very recently are now being pushed into this meat grinder.

In short, tourist growth has been consistently upward trending over the last 60 years. This suggests that the rise of tourism is unlikely to abate; instead it will probably intensify over the course of the next decade. As a result, tourism-related income will also rise, which is what Greece mostly cares about now. At the same time, however, a rising proportion of this income will accrue to foreign investors, with the domestic side having to satisfy a rising demand for, mainly imported, low-skilled labor.

Tourism will shape the texture of daily lives in Greece in ways that are difficult to fathom today. It is easy to predict, though, that the Greek summer will fade into the sunset for most Greeks who will be unable to afford it. Despite growing citizen activism calling for free access to the sea, the pressure for commercial exploitation is such that it is likely to overwhelm it. Hence the need to shift away from merely worrying about what is happening now and toward generating innovative ideas about how to manage tourism. One thing is clear, though: If we fail to tame tourism, it will control us and the future will be all the bleaker for it.

Stathis Kalyvas is the chairman of the Board of Directors at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) and Gladstone Professor of Government at the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations.

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Wish you weren't here: how the tourist boom – and selfies – are threatening Britain's beauty spots

Poldark, Instagram and the heatwave have led to a 20% spike in tourists to Cornwall this year. While crucial to the local economy, the crowds are proving overwhelming. Can a balance be found?

O n the narrow footpath down to Porthcurno beach, I am conscious of adding to the gridlock. Overcrowding on the Cornish coast has been making the news this week , and as I stop to talk to husband and wife Aiden Fisher, 59, and Lesley Whatley, 60, holidaymakers troop past, laden with backpacks, bodyboards and tote bags stuffed with towels and plastic spades.

“I’ve been coming here since I was a child,” says Fisher, his feet sinking into the sand as he holds his walking boots. “It does seem busier now – and more international, too.”

Down on the sand, I speak to a French couple “on a tour of Cornwall”, who survey the cliff path up to the Minack amphitheatre, while a Spanish family play football nearby. Making her way down the rocks, Michelle Wu, 42, from Surrey, is visiting with her sister’s family who have come all the way from Beijing. “Cornwall was one of the places they really wanted to go,” she says.

The number of visitors to Cornwall – and the cars and motorhomes they travel in – have been swelling for some time, fuelled in part by the hit BBC show Poldark, which is filmed on location at Porthcurno beach and Kynance Cove, as well as social media posts depicting the beauty of Cornwall’s elegant bays. Instagram, in particular, has been responsible for driving contemporary travel trends; this summer, Pedn Vounder, a small beach neighbouring Porthcurno, was overrun with visitors after photographs of its crystal blue water and white sand went viral, prompting comments such as “Cornwall’s Caribbean” .

Poldark alone, according to the tourist board, is responsible for a 10% increase in visitors to the region this summer. But the heatwave has created a perfect storm, causing an estimated 20% spike in tourists on top of the 4.5 million who already visit each year. Cue road blocks, parking issues, campsites unable to receive deliveries – and even the regional ambulance service saying at times it has “struggled” to reach patients. From websites directing people to fake Cornish beaches to the banning of second home owners for new properties in St Ives, it is an issue of growing concern for residents. To top it all, this week the local tourist board said it had stopped promoting the two Poldark beaches in brochures and campaigns due to overcrowding.

“Nobody wants to see this sort of mass tourism affecting the area, affecting the tourist experience and clogging the roads,” Malcolm Bell, Visit Cornwall’s chief executive, told the BBC, adding that he wants to see a “redistribution” of tourism across the county. Cornwall has 400 beaches along its coastline, he pointed out, many of which would benefit from an increase in visitors. “This is a sustainability issue,” he said.

Outside Porthcurno’s beach cafe, I find Katy Bevan, 54, eager for a tea break after walking the coastal path. She has seen the reports about overcrowding on the news. “It’s to do with that Poldark show, isn’t it?” she says, quick to point out that Poldark was not why she and her husband decided to visit. “It must be really hard for the villagers. Mousehole, where we’re staying, is all rental cottages. I hope the locals are able to capitalise on it – it must be hard to maintain a community with all the strangers in your town.”

In the village pub, The Cable Station Inn, the landlord, Mick Wilby, 67, warily dismisses the issue. “It’s a load of hype,” he says. “Obviously it needs something done, perhaps another park-and-ride car park, but we’re only talking six to eight weeks a year tops – come September, it’s a better pace.”

The issue might evaporate come winter, but, with the UK tourism industry growing significantly, it will be only a matter of months before it returns. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, the UK travel and tourism sector grew more than four times faster than the UK economy in 2017, with domestic travel growing by 5.8% year on year . As one tourism expert put it to me: “It’s a recession-proof industry.”

We have become used to debating the fallout of tourism in destinations such as Venice, which this spring tested segregation measures for tourists and locals at locations such as the Rialto and San Marco, and the visibly simmering tensions in Barcelona, where Airbnb apartments have been blamed for a rise in rent prices and stag and hen dos have been testing the patience of residents (in both these destinations, locals have taken to the streets to protest about how tourism is being managed). But it is also becoming harder to ignore locations closer to home. Beyond Cornwall, Edinburgh , Bath, Oxford and Cambridge are all grappling with the challenge of booming visitor numbers to their historic centres.

At the opposite end of the country to Cornwall, the Isle of Skye is facing a similar predicament: a rural destination with limited infrastructure that in a short space of time has seen a huge surge in visitors. Last summer residents called for “urgent help” after Skye became a must-visit spot following its use as a location for a number of films and music videos, along with a raised profile on social media.

“In Cornwall, it’s social media driving people to two beaches in Poldark,” says Alistair Danter, project manager at destination management organisation Skye Connect. “In Skye, it’s social media driving people to five iconic destinations to take a selfie.”

Again, it’s an issue of tourist distribution. According to Danter, visitor numbers in Skye increased by 13-14% between 2014-17, but the number of visitors going to the Fairy Pools – one of the island’s iconic spots – did so by 54%. “For the people living in these locations, life in the past two years has become challenging,” he says, pointing to a frustrating problem with tourist behaviour, in which visitors want to tick off “must-see” spots. “In the corresponding period, other scenic locations actually saw a drop in numbers.”

He adds: “The frustration on Skye is that people think that’s all there is to see. Talk to your B&B host and they’ll tell you some off-the-beaten-track locations where you’ll be on your own except for, if you’re lucky, an eagle.”

Skye, like Cornwall, mainly consists of single-track roads and limited parking spaces. Danter admits the island will take a few years to resolve its infrastructure pressures, although it is working hard to do so. Also, similar to the west country region, it is economically dependent on tourism. Visitors to Skye generate £110m each year and 25% of the population is directly employed by tourism. In Cornwall, overnight visits from UK travellers contribute more than £1bn to its economy each year, with an extra £128m from international visits. According to the ONS, tourism contributes more to the economy of the region than any other part of the country.

“We need people to move on from the tick-box culture we live in,” says Danter. “Visitors should pause a moment, plan their visit, and they’ll have a much better experience.”

For Patricia Yates, the director of strategy and communications at VisitBritain, it is about finding a balance: “I would see the rise of social and digital media as an opportunity that we could be harnessing,” she says, explaining that VisitBritain uses Instagram photographers to help promote destinations, something that is now common in the travel industry. (Iceland is a good example of a destination whose popularity has exploded due to the photo-sharing app.) “But I think there is work to be done on telling the narrative about places. Of course there’s an opportunity for social media to suddenly take off, which can be incredibly positive – for example, one fish restaurant in Brighton became hugely popular after a Chinese celebrity did a post about it – but sometimes the popularity can be overwhelming.”

In the university towns of Oxford and Cambridge there have been reports of local disdain for the surge in tourism. Oxford had around 7 million visitors in 2016, while Cambridge saw visitor numbers jump by 2 million between 2013 and 2016. “Short-stay tourism numbers are on a trajectory that threatens to overwhelm the city within a very few years,” councillor John Hipkin told Cambridgeshire Live last December. “This is a matter of the utmost urgency and trotting out official statements about the ‘value to the city of tourism’ is not good enough. We need firm and decisive action to deal with the imminent threat.” As with Skye, strategies in these cities involve encouraging visitors to stay longer (meaning they will actually spend some money during their trip) and visit further afield.

Edinburgh, the top UK tourist destination after London, is also facing up to the challenges tourism can bring, particularly during its intense summer festival season. A report released in January by the city council – Managing Our Festival City – described how problems of overcrowding were affecting daily life for residents, and suggested the need for a complete overhaul of the city centre. The city council has also been campaigning to introduce a “tourist tax” of around £1-2 per night per bedroom on hotels and home rentals such as Airbnb. This is a model already used in European cities such as Barcelona, Berlin and Venice and, although it is pending approval from the Scottish government, it seems likely to be introduced. This year, Bath, which has around a million overnight visitors each year, also renewed lobbying of the government to introduce a similar tax.

Justin Francis, the CEO of Responsible Travel , a company that strives to encourage tourism that benefits local communities, says this is an issue the UK could have seen coming for decades. He believes what has changed in the past two years is that residents have finally been saying “enough”. Francis is supportive of a tourist tax, and argues that more should be done to manage growth, something that has become more of a challenge with the advent of home-sharing sites such as Airbnb. Previously, to extend a hotel, or build a new one, permission would need to be granted; Airbnb has caused accommodation to rocket in unregulated destinations.

“This hasn’t just happened,” he says. “Broadly speaking, tourism globally has been unmanaged and never been taken seriously by government. It’s fun, everybody’s happy, right? But really, tourism is one of the biggest and in some cases most aggressive industries on earth and it is taking governments a very long time to recognise that it needs managing.”

He adds: “It’s not just big destinations with millions of tourists – in a small village, it can just take 50 tourists to be too much. We really need to use our imagination a bit more. We’re all obsessed with the top 10 list on Tripadvisor, we’re obsessed with Instagram and getting the photo everyone else is sharing, and we’re losing the spirit of adventure of discovering places on our own.”

In the case of Cornwall, however, he says it’s important to recognise the economic need. “It’s one of the poorest counties in England,” he says. “And the second-poorest region in northern Europe. One quarter of children live in poverty. So Cornwall desperately needs tourists. It’s also the county that’s most dependent on tourism in England as a part of its total revenue.”

Back in Porthcurno, where open-top buses ferry in snap-happy visitors and a black-and-white flag of Cornwall flutters on the roadside as you enter the village, this seems to be the bottom line. The owner of my B&B points out that her house is one of only 25 residences in the village: “Without the tourists, there wouldn’t be anyone here,” she explains.

Publican Wilby has a similar position. “Every year you pray for a good summer,” he says. “You gotta generate enough money in the summer to pay the bills in winter. Sun’s out means a good season, and this has been a fantastic season.”

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Japan gets more than it bargained for with tourist boom

Can the country welcome 60 million visitors a year without losing its culture -- and its mind?

TOKYO/KYOTO -- Yuko Kato, a 50-year-old housewife, was raised in Kyoto and has lived there all her life. Going to the 1,300-year-old Nishiki Market, known as "Kyoto's Kitchen," to buy fish, pickles and seasonings used to be a weekly habit for her, but that has changed over the past five years.

These days, the traditional retail market, which covers five blocks of narrow laneways lined with shops, is overrun by foreign tourists, many of them eating skewered shrimp and other local delicacies as they stroll, making it difficult for daily shoppers to go about their business. Posters saying "No Eating While Walking" are pasted everywhere, but are largely ignored.

Airbnb begins to recover in Japan, a year after crackdown

Japan experienced 5.8% increase in foreign visitors in march, foreigners' unpaid bills give japanese hospitals a headache, rural japan counts on anime 'holy sites' to lure foreign tourists, japan's booking-site clampdown exposes industry's arm-twisting, flood of inbound tourism must not swamp japan, latest on the big story, india's instagrab: modi's re-election bid weaponizes social media influencers, europe faces up to china's ev dominance as carbon-zero targets loom, how china's ad-hoc tech pipeline fuels russia's ukraine war efforts, sponsored content, about sponsored content this content was commissioned by nikkei's global business bureau..

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With snow, ice, hospitality, Harbin becomes the brightest star of tourism in China

Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, December 31, 2023. /CFP

A view of the Harbin Ice-Snow World, December 31, 2023. /CFP

This winter, the city of Harbin has spared no effort to show sincerity and creativity in entertaining, if not spoiling, tourists from all over the world.

Currently, Chinese netizens have portrayed the city as a generous big brother who is doing everything possible to entertain guests coming from afar with its unique charms and creative ideas.

Harbin has long been a major tourist attraction in winter, and it has garnered more attention this winter. It ranked fifth among the most popular cities for the 2024 New Year holiday, following Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu. Among the top 10 cities, Harbin is the only one located in northeast China.

During the recent three-day New Year holiday, Harbin received over 3 million tourists, creating a revenue of 5.9 billion yuan ($826 million), according to the latest data from the Harbin municipal bureau of culture, radio, television and tourism. Both numbers surpassed historic highs.

Tourists take part in a New Year event at the Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, December 31, 2023. /Xinhua

A winter wonderland

Wearing puffer jackets, hats and gloves, tens of thousands of tourists would dance to the music in the Harbin Ice-Snow World, an ice and snow theme park, when the temperature was as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Launched in 1999, the park has been a star of the city's winter tourism. This winter, it has built nearly 1,000 ice and snow sculptures and artistic installations, and a diverse range of activities are on offer to entertain tourists.

The giant ice slide is the most popular item among park-goers. In order to meet the rising demand of tourists, the number of slides has increased from eight in previous years to 14, with the longest one extending 521 meters.

"I waited about five hours before trying the slide, but it's totally worth it," He Xiaoyu, who just got off a slide, told China Media Group (CMG) with excitement.

Tourists try the giant ice slide at the Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, December 18, 2023. /CFP

In addition to the allure of icy adventures, Harbin's tourism boom is also a testament to China's burgeoning enthusiasm for winter sports, with the city set to host the 2025 Asian Winter Games.

As the hub of rail traffic in northeast China, Harbin connects the world-famous Yabuli ski resort and other famous ice and snow tourist attractions, which can all be reached in two or three hours. While Harbin witnesses an unprecedented surge in winter tourism, cities like Mohe and Yichun also see growing numbers of tourists.

Yang Xiaoliang, a ski instructor, told CMG that he goes to the ski resort almost every day and that high-speed trains are very convenient. Located about 220 kilometers southeast of Harbin, the Yabuli ski resort can be reached by high-speed train in about an hour.

The skiing culture in China is still in the making, with the number of skiers in China expected to reach 35 million by 2027, according to data from Sullivan Consulting.

Tourists pose for a photo in costumes against the backdrop of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Harbin, January 1, 2024. /CFP

Hospitality, creativity and more

The boom cannot be attributed to pure luck since Harbin has been preparing for it for a year, said He Jing, director of the Department of Culture and Tourism of Heilongjiang Province.

She said the city has been rolling out plans since the beginning of 2023 to boost its tourism sector, attracting attention on various social media platforms.

"We stand in the shoes of tourists. We pay special attention to their comments under our videos published on social media platforms. Whatever tourists complain about, we move and improve immediately," she told CMG.

To "rescue" tourists who are not used to the cold weather, the city built many temporary heated rest rooms for them, providing warm drinks for free. Frozen pears, a local specialty, were cut into the shapes of flowers so that tourists could enjoy them conveniently. The city even flies a big artificial moon over the Saint Sophia Cathedral so that tourists can take stylish pictures.

"We want to impress tourists with all the small details, letting them feel comfortable and respected," said He.

Touched by the city's "small details," tourists share their heart-warming moments online, which in turn draws more curious tourists to the city, pushing the city to the top of trending topics on the internet.

A staff member of a shopping mall (R) provides free warm water for a tourist on the Central Street of Daoli District, Harbin, January 3, 2024. /CFP

In an open letter to tourists, Heilongjiang Province extended their thanks to those who made suggestions and praised their services, saying that their ideas inspired the locals to improve and upgrade their tourism sector. 

Dai Bin, president of China Tourism Academy, said the whole tourism market in China was better than expected during the New Year holiday.

During this period, over 135 million domestic trips were made in China, up 155 percent from last year and 9.4 percent from 2019, data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed.

"Both supply and demand are booming," said Dai. "Such a good start will boost confidence in China's tourism economy in 2024."

(Cover designed by Yin Yating)

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• Nation & World

Summer travel boom: 82% of Americans plan to get away in 2024

Get ready for a summer filled with adventure and exploration. As Memorial Day weekend approaches, signaling the official start of summer travel season, Americans are buzzing with plans to explore, relax and make lasting memories.

The Vacationer’s yearly summer travel and trends survey has dug up some insights into what vacationers have in store for the upcoming season.

An impressive 82% of adults in the United States — more than 212 million people — are planning to travel this summer. While this number is slightly lower than last year, it still demonstrates a strong desire to get away. Among these travelers, 42% plan to embark on multiple trips.

Despite a slight decrease in intention to travel by plane from last year, with 52% planning to fly at least once this summer, international travel is gaining popularity. Nearly 25% of Americans are ready to stamp their passports, with adults between 18 and 29 being the most likely to embrace this trend. In contrast, only about 10% of Americans over 60 have similar plans.

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Domestic travel continues to be the top choice, with 57% of respondents opting to explore the beauty and diversity within the United States.

More than 75% of adults surveyed are revving up to hit the road this summer, with folks aged 45 to 60 leading the pack — nearly 85% in this age bracket intend to take a road trip. Although many Americans will take shorter drives — less than 100 miles or less than 250 miles — more than 33% will take a road trip more than 250 miles from home. Approximately 5.82% will journey more than 1,000 miles.

When it comes to the busiest weekends for travel, the Fourth of July takes the lead at 30%, followed by Memorial Day at nearly 22% and Labor Day at 19%, with 54% opting for none of those times. Respondents could choose all dates that applied, so percentages did not add up to 100.

So whether you’re dreaming of sandy shores, bustling city streets or quiet countryside getaways, just know you won’t be alone whether you’re on the road or in the air.

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Across China: Tourist trains gather steam amid China's tourism boom

Source: Xinhua

Editor: huaxia

2024-05-20 22:13:00

GUIYANG, May 20 (Xinhua) -- At 69, Zhu Guichu loves sightseeing but is not fond of air travel. So in planning his recent eight-day trip to Laos, the retiree from China's Guizhou Province opted for a tourist train.

On March 8, Zhu joined a 200-member tour group to visit the Southeast Asian nation. A "panda train" took them to the border area of Yunnan Province, where they transferred to the China-Laos Railway to continue their tour through Laos.

"I like traveling by train as it is safe and reliable, and you won't feel too tired because all the destinations are near the rail stations," said Zhu.

The panda-themed train Zhu boarded is converted from a "green train," the slower predecessor of high-speed bullet trains. Apart from decorating carriages with panda images, the train features hotel-style compartments, bars for drinking, karaoke rooms and other entertainment facilities to compensate for its slower speed.

"The trains have been turned into moving starred hotels," said Chen Xuan, a manager of the "panda train's" operating company. "Instead of merely being a transportation method, the train is the highlight of the travel experience."

Since being launched in 2021, a total of 79 "panda trains" have carried over 20,000 people to scenic hotspots in Chinese provinces and autonomous regions including Xinjiang, Gansu and Sichuan.

China boasts a sprawling railway network, with an operating mileage of 159,000 km at the end of 2023, paving the way for the rise of tourist trains as a fashionable new way of traveling across the country.

A tourist train acts as both a coach and a hotel, transporting tourists between scenic spots along the rail route while offering accommodation, catering and entertainment. It is one of the new travel modes that have gained prominence as the country's tourism market picks up momentum.

Earlier this month, Xinjiang in northwest China restarted a popular tourist train called the "Tianshan Express," which travels along a scenic rail route dotted with snowy mountains, deserts and lakes. Similar trains have also been launched to cross prairies in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and to travel along a historic rail route in east China's Shandong Province.

As such trains are often converted from green trains to utilizes their nostalgic flavor, they have been credited for giving the idle trains a second life during the era of high-speed railways. Experts also praise this travel mode for channeling more tourists to remote areas without airports.

"Tourist trains are also turning remote areas along rail lines into tourist boomtowns, thus boosting rural revitalization in their own way," said Cheng Tonglin, associate professor at Guizhou University's college of economics. ■

• Across China: Tourist trains gather steam amid China's tourism boom

GUIYANG, May 20 (Xinhua) -- At 69, Zhu Guichu loves sightseeing but is not fond of air travel. So in planning his recent eight-day trip to Laos, the retiree from China's Guizhou Province opted for a tourist train.

On March 8, Zhu joined a 200-member tour group to visit the Southeast Asian nation. A "panda train" took them to the border area of Yunnan Province, where they transferred to the China-Laos Railway to continue their tour through Laos.

"I like traveling by train as it is safe and reliable, and you won't feel too tired because all the destinations are near the rail stations," said Zhu.

The panda-themed train Zhu boarded is converted from a "green train," the slower predecessor of high-speed bullet trains. Apart from decorating carriages with panda images, the train features hotel-style compartments, bars for drinking, karaoke rooms and other entertainment facilities to compensate for its slower speed.

"The trains have been turned into moving starred hotels," said Chen Xuan, a manager of the "panda train's" operating company. "Instead of merely being a transportation method, the train is the highlight of the travel experience."

Since being launched in 2021, a total of 79 "panda trains" have carried over 20,000 people to scenic hotspots in Chinese provinces and autonomous regions including Xinjiang, Gansu and Sichuan.

China boasts a sprawling railway network, with an operating mileage of 159,000 km at the end of 2023, paving the way for the rise of tourist trains as a fashionable new way of traveling across the country.

A tourist train acts as both a coach and a hotel, transporting tourists between scenic spots along the rail route while offering accommodation, catering and entertainment. It is one of the new travel modes that have gained prominence as the country's tourism market picks up momentum.

Earlier this month, Xinjiang in northwest China restarted a popular tourist train called the "Tianshan Express," which travels along a scenic rail route dotted with snowy mountains, deserts and lakes. Similar trains have also been launched to cross prairies in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and to travel along a historic rail route in east China's Shandong Province.

As such trains are often converted from green trains to utilizes their nostalgic flavor, they have been credited for giving the idle trains a second life during the era of high-speed railways. Experts also praise this travel mode for channeling more tourists to remote areas without airports.

"Tourist trains are also turning remote areas along rail lines into tourist boomtowns, thus boosting rural revitalization in their own way," said Cheng Tonglin, associate professor at Guizhou University's college of economics. Enditem

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Iran's president killed in helicopter crash, Oregon's secession push | The Excerpt

On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi  is dead after a helicopter crash. USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes discusses a  seccession push  in Oregon. A Biden rule will let states cover  adult dental care  under the Affordable Care Act. Americans are getting  more therapy than ever  - and spending more. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise looks into  storm chasing tourism .

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.  This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Podcasts:  True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, May 20th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, Iran's president is dead. Plus we take a closer look at a secession push in Eastern Oregon and tourists are paying big bucks to storm chase.

The president of Iran is dead after a helicopter crash in mountainous terrain near the Azerbaijan border, officials and state media said earlier today. President Ebrahim Raisi and other officials were killed in the crash. The death of Iran's president is not expected to upend the country's domestic or foreign politics, but it comes during raised international tensions and will likely increase speculation over who will eventually replace Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi was viewed as a possible successor to the 85-year-old cleric. The helicopter went down yesterday and it's not immediately clear what caused the crash. The officials have been missing for over 12 hours and search operations were hindered by fog, blizzards and difficult terrain throughout the night. Raisi's death comes amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and recent direct military exchanges between Iran and Israel that risked sparking a wider regional war. Domestically, Iran's theocratic government has been facing anger over corruption, its sanctions hit economy and calls for an end to clerical rule.

A ballot initiative in Oregon is the latest secession effort around the country. I spoke with USA Today, national correspondent Trevor Hughes to learn more. Trevor, thanks for hopping on.

Trevor Hughes:

So Trevor, what is this so-called Greater Idaho Movement?

Well, really what you've got is a group of folks in eastern Oregon who are philosophically, politically, culturally, agriculturally aligned with their neighbors across the state line in Idaho far more than they are with the people who share their same state or the zip code of Oregon. And so the Greater Idaho Movement would essentially move the Oregon border 200 miles to the west and keep all of these Eastern Oregon counties together, everyone would stay in their own town, but suddenly they'd be part of Idaho.

So Trevor, why do some in this part of Eastern Oregon feel this might be necessary? And what do opponents say on this?

Oregon is one of those states where you've got quite a significant divide between the eastern side of Oregon on the east side of the Cascades, which is rural, you've got farms and ranches. It's a very traditional way of life out there. And then on the western side of Oregon, you've got big cities like Portland and Salem and Eugene, big university towns. And those towns tend to be much more tech heavy and they also tend to be much more liberal. And so the frustration that many folks feel in Eastern Oregon is that the legislators in Western Oregon keep making decisions that are not in their best interest.

Do we hear any kind of pushback from opponents on this?

Well, there's sort of this idea that, well, the states are the states and we should probably not take them apart simply because we disagree with each other sometimes. I mean, this is a big country and lots of states have disagreements all of the time.

And is this move actually realistic, Trevor?

Well, it depends on who you talk to. It's important to remember that this vote that's happening right now is a non-binding referendum. And so in order for this to actually happen, you'd have to have the state government in Oregon, the state government in Idaho both agree. And then you'd have to get Congress to agree. And these days, getting Congress to agree on anything is a challenge. But of course that is exactly what this measure seeks to address, which is people are unable to find compromises. And maybe we should just live separately.

How have we seen similar efforts play out previously in other parts of the country?

There have been secession efforts in California with the state of Jefferson, the Texas Republic is something that comes up every so often. Here in Colorado where I live, there was a move a few years ago to saw off a chunk of Northern Colorado and attach it to Wyoming. And where I'm from in Vermont, there was a long-running and sometimes joking effort to turn Vermont into its own country.

What does polling Trevor tell us about how Americans on the whole feel about state secession efforts like these?

Depending on the poll, 20 to 25% of Americans say maybe it would be better if we split apart like this. Now I'm from Vermont and we have a saying up there which is good fences make good neighbors. And so maybe there is something to this idea that we should separate ourselves. On the other hand, I suppose it really comes down to a question of do we live in a country that is a melting pot of ideas and beliefs, or is it a mixing bowl, or maybe it is not a mixing bowl and it is much more of a buffet and people keep everything separate?

Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent with USA Today. Thank you Trevor.

Americans experience dental emergencies every year and advocates say that the US health care system is ill-equipped to help them. The Affordable Care Act extended health insurance to tens of millions of Americans through federal and state marketplaces that sell subsidized health insurance and Medicaid expansion adopted by all but 10 states. But President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare law excluded dental coverage for adults. The law did require states to offer pediatric dental care as an essential health benefit for ACA plans. In a move last month, the Biden administration finalized a rule that would give states the option of adding adult dental insurance coverage as part of their Affordable Care Act plans.

And in another attempt to bolster dental coverage, Senator Bernie Sanders on Friday introduced the comprehensive Dental Care Reform Act of 2024, a bill that would expand dental coverage through Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration and increase the number of dentists, dental hygienists, and dental therapists nationwide. Nearly 69 million US adults did not have dental insurance or access to routine oral healthcare last year, according to a survey by the nonprofit CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. Millions more lost dental insurance last year when states began to unwind Medicaid coverage for people who signed up during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Americans are getting more therapy than ever and spending more. Together, the pandemic and Zoom have seeded an online therapy boom. The share of young adults aged 18 to 34 who sought counseling rose in the pandemic years from 12% in 2019 to 18.4% in 2022, the most recent figure available from federal researchers. The share of all adults seeking counseling rose from 9.5% to 12.6% and spending on mental health services also rose climbing by more than half, 53% from March in 2020 to August in 2022 according to RAND Corporation research on millions of workers insured by their employers. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.

Tourists are paying big money for the chance to see dangerous storms. I caught up with USA Today national correspondent Elizabeth Weise for more. Hello Beth, great having you back on the show.

Elizabeth Weise:

As always a pleasure.

So how has storm chasing really become this tourist business in the US?

Storm chasing is huge. I mean, we're talking thousands upon thousands of people desperately driving towards tornadoes. You'd think they'd be driving away, but they're driving towards them. Storm chasing tours and tourism where you actually go in a van with people who've got some meteorological training. There's maybe 15 companies that provide that service. It's not cheap. They're usually run like 7 to 11 days and 2,500 to $4,000. But what you're paying for is people who know what they're doing, can find the storms, can get you there and can keep you safe. But that said, it has been increasing. And I talked to a professor at University of Central Florida ,tourism professor who said this kind of, he called it "extreme or adventure travel" is definitely on the increase and he thinks it's because of social media.

And so can you just set the scene for us? What does a typical storm chasing tour look like? And what have some of the tourists said about their experiences here?

They start the first night with a really long safety lecture. They will figure out where there's going to be big storms and you just start driving and you actually spend a ton of time in the van. Like you drive for hours and hours and hours and then you get someplace and they basically set you up, they try and get high up so you can see around you and you wait for the storm to come because they're looking at the National Weather Service and the radar. And then you wait for it to come and then hopefully you see it at a distance. They're always aiming to be a few miles away so that if the storm starts to change direction, you can get out of dodge and you always know what your escape route is. What's our plan B?

I am curious how these companies really balance the thrill and experience here versus the potential dangers not just for folks in those vans, but are they also putting local residents at risk with any of this?

Well, it depends on who you talk to. So it's interesting, the National Weather Service actually has a page up about storm chasing, which has become a huge thing. They basically say, "Don't do it, stay at home, be safe." But they know that people do, and I was surprised they actually on their website say, "If you're going to do it, go with a tour where people actually have some safety training." So there was this movie that came out in '96 called Twister, and it was about storm chasers. And it kind of sparked a lot of interest, not just in the tour groups, but just regular people.

There is another movie coming out in July called Twisters. People are a little worried that it's going to pull even more people out onto the roads because everyone that I talked to said the danger is not so much the storms, it's the traffic. Because you get tour groups and they're pretty small. I mean, if there's 15 of them and they each have 2 vans on the road, I mean that's 30 vans, but they're not all in the same area. There's the weather reporters who are out, there's the first responders and the police and folks who are out. Then there's the storm chasers, and then there's the locals because when there's a big storm, they're like, "Oh, let me go out and look at it." And so you can get these little back country roads where suddenly there's 100 cars.

It's fascinating. You would not think of traffic as being one of the big factors here. So what is the future Beth of this type of thrill-filled tourism look like, especially as climate change is altering and at times strengthening these storms going forward?

Warmer temperatures cause more fluctuations in the air. Storms are about warm and cold air coming together, and they're also about ocean temperatures heating up and then warm air coming off of the oceans. And so we are already seeing increases in storms. And this year especially because it looks like we're going into La Niña and the transition between El Niño and La Niña tends to be a time of intense storms. And we're also going to see perhaps more, but likely also more intense storms. And everybody that I talk to, they are concerned when this movie comes out in July, there will be even more people out on the roads wanting to have that experience that they saw in the movie.

And if you don't know what you're doing and if you don't keep your distance, like in the movies, they drive right up through the storms, which they're afraid that folks are going to do that. They're like, "Oh, I got to get that shot." It's not worth dying for. The people that I spoke with, including the tourism professor said, social media is kind of egging people on to do things that maybe are not as safe as they might be.

Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with USA Today. Thank you, Beth.

You're so welcome.

And today is National Rescue Dog Day, a time to celebrate our canine friends that have been saved from cruelty.

Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.