I've long held the conviction that tourism is a toxic sector. If it grows too large a share of GDP, so much talent, money, and effort is sucked into tourism and away from society which otherwise would have found better use for it.
Who builds the next startup, starts a franchise chain or scouts investors to build a new machine, if you can always double your salary by serving rich foreigners?
> I've long held the conviction that tourism is a toxic sector.
It's sort of a Dutch disease [1]. I've seen it happening from afar to Barcelona, which was on route to become what Berlin now is in terms of IT/programming back in ~2005-2006 but the ever increasing rent prices caused by tourism put an end to that (plus the 2008-2010 crisis, of course, which hit Spain especially hard). I had expected the same thing to happen to Amsterdam, but it looks like it managed to hold up better.
Barcelona: Particulary sad. As a tourist one could sense the unworthiness of this proud city going thorugh this transformation. From something that stood on its own feet (rich, industrious history) and aimed at creating its own future (there are still some tech-giants left - although it feels like remnants of a once brighter outlook) into something dependent on wealthy foreigners, whether it is domestically unbearable rents or a battered public life because of agressive hawkers at day and aggressive thieves at night (which eye the tourists, but pollute the place for the citizens as well). I remember somewhere in the 2000s Barcelonians put out a map for visitors (domestic and foreign) of what kinds of robberies/con games to expect in what area. And then there was of course this guy: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-fro...
> I had expected the same thing to happen to Amsterdam, but it looks like it managed to hold up better.
Well... many of the German tourists only come to Amsterdam for smoking pot on a day or weekend trip, and the French additionally for a night in the brothels since sex work is banned in France, so all you need is a lot of cheap hotels with beds, no stuff like beach resorts or other... more high-class venues to deal with these people.
Additionally, over the last years many of the "coffee shops" (weed shops) have closed down - in the early 2000s there were 280+ in Amsterdam, now there are 166. The government wants to introduce a "weed pass" that's only for Dutch citizens to further crack down on weed tourism: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/corona-coffeeshops-101.htm...
Who builds the next startup, starts a franchise chain or scouts investors to build a new machine, if you can always double your salary by serving rich foreigners?