[derefr]

Iceland should make up its mind. Flights to Iceland (from pretty much anywhere) are extremely cheap, presumably due to some sort of Icelandic tourism-board subsidy. This attracts people who choose vacation destination based on price... who might not be the most motivated to nurture (or even pay attention to) the local character of the place they visit.

[esoterica]

That’s a pretty classist thing to say. Rich people aren’t more respectful of nature than people on a budget.

[derefr]

There are two algorithms for choosing a vacation destination:

1. sort vacation destinations based on actually wanting to go there, and then filter based on ability-to-go;

2. sort vacation destinations based on ability-to-go, and then pick the top one.

AFAIK, there’s no correlation between wealth/class and which algorithm people use. Rich people are sometimes rich because they’re thrifty, and so are no less likely to employ algorithm #2; poor people are sometimes poor because they tend to splurge on the things they want whenever they come into money, and so are no less likely to employ algorithm #1.

My point is rather that people who employ algorithm #2—regardless of who they are—tend to not actually care about the place they’re going to (since they never had it in mind to go there at all, never did any research or looked forward to visiting, etc.); and that, by making tourism as cheap as possible, Iceland is encouraging people who employ algorithm #2 to visit, without really increasing the number of people who visit due to employing algorithm #1 (who, presumably, are the ones they’d actually like to have as tourists.)

[esoterica]

Iceland is not going to be near the top of any affordability list, cheap flights or not.

[darkpuma]

They certainly litter less. And yes, there are socioeconomic factors in play of course.

Or, another take on it: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/david-sedaris-was-right-...

[Geimfari]

Flights to Iceland are cheap because the airlines' business model is being a hub for cross-Atlantic flights. Later on, advertisers started marketing towards those who were already crossing the Atlantic, encouraging them to spend time in the country since they were already there.

It would be possible to tax tourists more for their stay, limiting low-value tourists. It would also be possible to just put a hard limit on the number of visitors, which to me sounds like a reasonable solution, as no country can handle this growth in visitors in such a short time.