Tourism in Dubrovnik, Croatia

BLUF:

As the general wealth and prosperity of mankind increases, a growing middle class has the opportunity to travel. This is causing massive growth in the tourism industry and some locations are taking action to actually reduce the amount of tourism they receive due to harm caused by tourists.

Sometimes it's sad.

Tourism, I mean.

It can bring an immense amount of wealth and prosperity to a city, but at what cost?

Maggie and I are wrapping up our time in Croatia by spending a week in Dubrovnik - probably the most well known city in Croatia because large portions of the famous HBO show "Game of Thrones" were filmed throughout the city and surrounding areas.

It is an absolutely breathtaking city, with a charming romantic medieval feeling that we've not seen anywhere else around the world. If they'd only built a castle similar to Neuschwanstein right in the middle of the city you'd have a picture perfect fantasy setting. Not that the city needs a castle to be attractive, in fact, just walking and winding your way through the alleys, forts, main streets, and plazas will have you feeling like you are an "extra" in Game of Thrones and the action is taking place somewhere else within the city walls; you are just a cog in the grand design of a fantasy world that may or may not end up interacting with dragons, depending on how your day goes.

This, in our opinion, is what makes Croatia amazing. We are visiting in the middle of November, so it's definitely the off season, but we have had perfect weather on our touring days, with minimal crowds in and around the main attractions (yes, we consider ourselves very lucky).

Tourism will continue to increase in this country, and it wouldn't be surprising if it went from being an up and coming travel destination in Europe to *the* travel destination of Europe. On top of everything being described, it is an insanely affordable country as well. We have an apartment with a balcony view of sunset over King's Landing (Dubrovnik) for only $38 a night, which includes everything we could possibly need to live long term.

Now, let's circle around to what makes the whole situation a bit sad. As tourism has continued to increase (and I can't even imagine the crowds in the summer - I'm sure the charm and romanticism we are experiencing is reduced to near zero) the city has had to consider taking action to curb the influx of people. There are massive cruise ships (of which we've only seen a couple) that dock up and flood the city with tourists looking for the best bang for their buck and cheap thrills.

The old city isn't small, but it isn't large either. When it was built, the alleyways and passages that are only a couple feet wide were perfectly adequate for the population at the time. Today, however, it's obvious why these passageways can be a problem, and thus they've implemented 'one way traffic flow' designs at some of the attractions. Simply put, massive crowds being bused over from the port flood the city, overwhelm it, and collectively reduce the charm and enjoyment for everyone (themselves included).

Yesterday morning, Maggie was having coffee and reading local articles about Dubrovnik. She came across some info that the mayor is considering setting a daily limit to the number of buses that will be permitted to come from the port and dump tourists into the old city. That seems sad, right? That the tour price from the cruises will now become limited, first come first serve, or have an outrageous price to balance the supply vs demand curve. We understand, of course, and support such actions to retain the attractiveness of a city, but it's nonetheless...sad.

But yesterday, as we were casually strolling around seeing all of my favorite Game of Thrones filming locations we saw something unequivocally more sad than being forced to limit tourism to one of the greatest tourism locations we've visited.

A bus full of tourists emptied out right in front of us as we were standing, doing research on our phones of the next location to take photos. Within the span of ten seconds, I saw why the mayor of Dubrovnik is reluctantly facing these hard decisions on limiting tourism.

A woman stepped off the bus and started digging through her purse. I have no clue what she was digging for, but I'd speculate a pack of cigarettes or something similar by the frantic nature she displayed, like a squirrel digging in the dirt where it was sure it'd left a nut if it could just find it. While rummaging, a folded/used tissue was jostled from the purse and fell to the ground. I was about five feet away just watching her out of amusement of her purse searching methodology. It reminded me of a chef manually mixing ingredients of some batter that was needed for a cake that was already hours late and needed to be whipped up immediately. Sometimes, if you're mixing batter fast, a little blob might reach escape velocity from the mixing bowl. That's fine, you'll clean it up later.

But this wasn't cake batter that fell to the cobblestone. It was her folded, disgusting used tissue. She stopped rummaging, looked down at it, and considered picking it up for about half a second, before she started walking forward, continuing with her frantic searching in the purse. My eyes followed her, and caught on to another woman she passed that was smoking a cigarette as the tour group made it's way toward King's Landing. This woman, desperately taking a few more puffs before the tour group got too far ahead, dropped her cigarette, stamped it out, and left it there on the cobblestone, only twenty feet from the used tissue.

All of this occurred within ten seconds, and it's only two people that I observed getting off of the tourism bus. Who knows what evidence of this zombie horde could be recorded if I'd had time to watch from multiple angles.

And it's sad.

We try to be good tourists. In fact, we try to be "travelers" more than tourists, in that we avoid booking with tour groups when we can, we try to support local economies, talk to locals about their culture, and generally just blend in. We aren't loud, we don't litter, and we don't argue or show frustrations with local policy. Basically, we feel gratitude to have the opportunity to travel and see the world, and there's no room for entitlement on our journey. We just move along, observing and learning about the people of the planet as best we can. It's more expensive for us, the way we're traveling. Cruise ships, tour groups on buses, and large all-inclusive packages are more affordable. But at what cost to the localities they "visit" (or descend upon as a group of locusts)?

No real point to this post, other than that as we travel the world, almost a full year now, we can literally feel how the tourism industry is changing. Many cities are seeking to lower the amount of tourism they receive, or change the *type* of tourists they want to visit. Unending profits in the tourism industry are now being viewed as less important than saving the sanctity and identity of a popular historical city, less it turn into a cheap version of Disney World.

What's not sad, though, is that there is simple action to be taken in response...and that is to simply be a good tourist. Maybe I'll write more later on what we think it means to be a "good" tourist, but that's it...just be a good tourist.

By the way, being a "good tourist" pretty much means being a good person. Not so hard, right?