[lentil_soup]

in reality is the opposite, the footprint is huge in terms of environmental impact, the cruises pollute the air of the city. Also, cruise visitors use the city's facilities (roads, trash collection, beaches, etc) but don't leave much money behind to compensate. Sure we maximize the amount of people that get to visit the place, but they leave locals worse off as they have to foot the bill

[lmm]

> the cruises pollute the air of the city

Per-person? Surely anyone arriving by car, aeroplane or even bus is causing a lot more pollution, just on the sheer physics of how much more efficient sea transport is.

> Also, cruise visitors use the city's facilities (roads, trash collection, beaches, etc) but don't leave much money behind to compensate.

Surely that can be balanced with appropriate taxation - I believe a lot of places already levy a per-passenger tax for cruise ships berthing there.

[c22]

Are you sure about that? A quick search for carbon per passenger cruise ship vs airplane returned several results[0][1][2] suggesting that the airplane is in fact a more eco-friendly way to travel.

[0] https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ask-mr-green/which-better-...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2006/dec/20/cruises.green

[2] https://grist.org/living/you-thought-planes-burned-a-lot-of-...

[lmm]

I can believe those numbers saying that a transatlantic cruise would be 3-4x the emissions of a transatlantic flight. But the per-passenger-km figure isn't a realistic basis for comparison; tourists aren't trying to travel x kilometres, they're trying to see places x, y and z. The substitute for taking a 1000km cruise 5000km away from where you live is not 11000km of flying, it's more likely making two or three 10000km round-trips. And if you did replicate a cruise by flying between successive ports of call then the efficiency figures for those short-haul flights are going to be an order of magnitude worse than for a transatlantic flight.