[lmm]

> They are blocking perfect vistas of the sea.

Counterpoint: they absorb a lot of tourist demand for visiting particular places, while taking up a minimum of space. Building the equivalent hotel capacity in the same places would be far more intrusive.

[joshvm]

No, it's the opposite. Places which are already at capacity (like Venice, Mallorca, Santorini, etc) then receive multiple cruise ships a day which dump thousands more people into the system.

There are cruises which are "just looking" but the ones which visit heavily touristic areas tend to stop and let passengers off. Also these ships are enormous, loud and polluting. I think most locals would prefer hotels which at least contribute to the economy.

[manigandham]

How much tourism would there be contributing to the economy without those cruise ships bringing the tourists in the first place?

[joshvm]

If you ever get the chance to visit Venice - a city which is relatively well designed for tourists (you walk in a one way loop) - they're not struggling for customers. On a hot day even in spring it's absolutely heaving and full of places to rip you off. Also plenty of places to eat reasonably, I should add.

Most tourists are not coming by cruise. They're Italians (train to Rome is cheap and takes three hours), Europeans (dirt cheap flights) and other airborne visitors. Since it's easy to get to, lots of people go to Rome and then do a day or a night in Venice.

Santorini is tiny. It's set up as a luxury island for couples (and it's beautiful, so you see why). I guess cruising there is cheaper than ferry and hotel.

Mallorca is somewhere in the middle. Relatively cheap to fly there, cheap to stay and cheap to eat. But again, not designed for a thousand person instantaneous load who thunder through, buy trinkets and leave.

Remember you get a bed, breakfast and dinner onboard so why waste money on land if you only have say six hours to visit? (unless the ship docks overnight)

[TomMarius]

Still too much

[onetimemanytime]

>> No, it's the opposite. Places which are already at capacity (like Venice, Mallorca, Santorini, etc) then receive multiple cruise ships a day which dump thousands more people into the system.

I'm sure the host country has a say in this...they can receive cruises or not so the "dumping" might be a different thing for them. Like tourism cash. At least they decide for themselves, not us.

[Der_Einzige]

You shouldn't be downvoted for high quality posts like this.

You're absolutely right that most locals would prefer hotels - the economic contributions alone answer for the externalities that the OP was concerned about.

[CaptArmchair]

As a local living in such a hotspot: this exactly is a concern our municipal council is trying to balance.

Cruise ships unload hordes of tourists who are then shepherded through the commercial center of town for a couple of hours. You'd think that's a good thing. It's not.

They don't go to restaurants for a full meal, they don't visit venues or do any activities. It's literally drop 'n shop. Meanwhile, they crowd the streets, not to mention the surplus of garbage. Commercial activity changes to low quality souvenir shops and fast food.

Local economy earns very little, but the costs of having them are very much for the locals.

[dsfyu404ed]

As someone who spent a great deal of my life living and working in a tourism economy I am not shedding a single tear over cruise ships undercutting local providers of food/shelter.

With traditional brick'n'mortar tourism the people who fleece the tourists make bank. Then the people who fleece the people who fleece the tourists take their cut. The landlord, the plumber, the garbage collection company, everything including even the municipal government basically charges what the market will bear in order to get their slice of the pie.

Cruise ships piss off everyone who isn't running a tourist trap, T-shirt shop or cafe because they handle all the supporting industry so the people who normally fleece the people who fleece the tourists don't get their cut because the tourists don't have to stay in a hotel, visit a liquor store, etc, etc. in order to visit the beaches, the cafe's the shops, etc. because the cruise ship handles that.

[jddj]

If we take that the liquor store that tourists shop in is the same liquor store/cafe/plumber that the locals use, then aren't those several layers of "fleecing" just..the regular economic activity for the area?

I can't imagine anyone ever thinking, "gee, good thing the cruise ships dock in Barcelona, otherwise the prices at Carrefour and the supermercados would go back to being astronomical and the garbage collection services would be able to take full advantage of us again"

[dsfyu404ed]

>If we take that the liquor store that tourists shop in is the same liquor store/cafe/plumber that the locals use,

You can't make that assumption. There are a minority of businesses that are open in the off season that are used by locals. The majority of businesses are targeted at tourists only and any use by locals is incidental and immaterial to their balance sheets. Many of the business owners actually have other locations that they'll run in the off season (e.g. florida for the winter, nantucket for the summer).

Depending on the location (i.e. less true on an island where you have to incur a $100 ferry ticket to leave) many locals spend huge amounts of time traveling in order to buy goods at reasonable prices. Ecommerce (which doesn't generally change prices by location) and big box stores (which have rules about prices that franchise owners must follow) tend to be the places locals shop for goods in where possible. The further you get from pure tourism (e.g restaurant = 0 steps, restaurant's landlord = 1 step, landlords plumber = 2 steps) the more likely a business is to be open year round.

>I can't imagine anyone ever thinking, "gee, good thing the cruise ships dock in Barcelona,

Barcelona (or Miami for that matter) is lucky that it's a big enough city with enough other industry that normal economic competition keeps prices reasonable. Pretty much any city tourism destination will have reasonable prices there's other industry going on even if tourism is the big one. The quaint little towns with nothing but tourism are what I'm talking about. Sure, the locals who make their money close to the tourists would be angry if you parked a cruise ship there but there's also be a huge number hoping that the hotels and rentals lower their prices to compete with the cruises causing the restaurants to lower their prices, etc, etc so that they can actually justify the cost of going out to eat once in awhile.

>supermercados would go back to being astronomical and the garbage collection services would be able to take full advantage of us again"

The supermarkets where my parents live (they still live in the tourist town I left) fought tooth and nail to keep the chain known for low prices from setting up shop just barely within a reasonable driving distance. Many, dare I say most locals love outside competition because they can get more for their dollar.

I could tell you similar stories about damn near every type of business up to and including a scrap metal recycler.

[lmm]

> No, it's the opposite. Places which are already at capacity (like Venice, Mallorca, Santorini, etc) then receive multiple cruise ships a day which dump thousands more people into the system.

Right, so if the cruises weren't there they would look to increase that "capacity" to accommodate that demand - which would likely mean building giant hotels.

> I think most locals would prefer hotels which at least contribute to the economy.

The kind of person who wants a cruise would probably favour a resort-style hotel, so it would be the same thing in terms of not eating at local restaurants, crowding into the same places, and the like. Hotels provide some employment but not particularly high quality employment (it's mostly precarious minimum wage jobs, no?), and meanwhile their existence pushes up land/building prices. Hotels might pay direct taxes, but cruise ships can be made to do the same.

[joshvm]

In some places there's literally no space - Venice for example, land is expensive and it's such a historic city that you can't just build a skyscraper (nobody would give you permission). This is the point about them being at capacity. In summer everywhere is booked. The argument is that lack of beds stifles demand, but then you can barely walk round Venice in high season. It's not about hotel capacity, it's the capacity of the city infrastructure itself. Venice has no land for hotels, or anything else!

Resort style hotels tend to be sited elsewhere with space for pools and recreation, and people don't leave (or they do so on a couple of tour coaches a day). Though look at Oxford or Cambridge in summer to understand how busy "the odd coach" can make a city centre.

Cruise ships are also full of mostly low-paid, high-turnover jobs (often seasonal). Hotels confine people which means they then go and spend time (and money) in the city. They might go for an early breakfast, eat out, see some museums.

[lmm]

> In some places there's literally no space - Venice for example, land is expensive and it's such a historic city that you can't just build a skyscraper (nobody would give you permission). This is the point about them being at capacity. In summer everywhere is booked. The argument is that lack of beds stifles demand, but then you can barely walk round Venice in high season. It's not about hotel capacity, it's the capacity of the city infrastructure itself. Venice has no land for hotels, or anything else!

In an efficient market everything operates at capacity. That doesn't mean there's no ability to adjust. In the absence of the cruise ships there'd be more demand for hotels, driving up prices; land values would go up, pricing more of the locals out. Restaurants and homes would be converted into tourist accommodation. Pressure would mount to relax the building regulations - not around the unique tourist attractions, but in the backstreets where it could be argued that there wasn't such unique architectural merit. And most important of all, fewer people would get to see Venice.

[amelius]

That's only a net positive if you think that more tourism (which is a form of consumerism) is always a good thing.