I don't think this is the problem at all. The world is huge. There are millions of tourist destinations and plenty of room for people in all of them.

The problem is with distribution. Social media creates power law distributions of attention. There are a few pieces of writing I wish every human on Earth had read and this is one of them:

http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

Instagram has caused these power law distributions to escape media onto the real world. While there are millions of delightful vacation destinations, most people never hear about most of them. Instead, a tiny minority of the most photogenic one (like Trolltunga, mentioned in the article), consume almost all of the attention and then net a huge, unmanageable number of visitors. For every Everest, there are a hundred mountains that are 90% as beautiful but only get 10% of the visitors.

I believe this is one of the fundamental, structural problems of the modern age. Most of the information we consume — literally the knowledge we base our worldview on — is now brought to our attention based on social media sharing and aggregation. The nature of those systems takes a linear range of "relevance" and distorts it into power law that no longer matches reality. But because this is our window into reality, we then take the result of that distortion at face value.

I would love to see more systems engineered to try to balance that. Perhaps a Twitter-like system that capped the number of followers you had. A recommendation engine that subtracted out the effect of popularity when ranking. But so far I don't see many. I'm not sure if it's because it's not what people want, not what advertisers want, or what.

(The great thing about knowing that this effect happens is that you can often easily acquire a better-than-average experience by deliberately stepping a little farther towards the long tail. The third best restaurant in a city is usually almost as good as #1 but noticeably cheaper. The second-most popular hike will give you 80% of the view with 20% of the crowds.)

OK, the redwood trees in them might be only 80% as old and tall, the United Nations might not have been founded inside them, and some of them might have only 6 km of trails through the forest rather than 10 km. But many of these places are often nearly deserted, have no entrance fee, are a quicker and less twisty drive from San Francisco, and are incredibly majestic, peaceful, and spectacular.

Meanwhile, Muir Woods had to introduce a rationing and permit system to visit by private car or public bus (https://gomuirwoods.com/), and along the main trail on the valley floor you are basically never out of sight of other visitors during a weekend or holiday.

I've reserved a picnic area inside an ancient redwood grove for an upcoming birthday picnic.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/lake-lagunitas-fairfax

OK, it's definitely no Muir Woods, but it's just 6 km north of Muir Woods and you can reserve the area for a small fee on a weekend during the summertime.

I think the power-law effects you describe have been true of tourism forever. Muir Woods has attracted dramatically more tourists than the MMWD or EBMUD redwood groves for decades. But I also think you're right that the Internet is accelerating them, because you can hear about where to go via discovery mechanisms that so drastically and rapidly reward pre-existing popularity.

(If you live in or visit the Bay Area, check out https://www.marinwater.org/175/Directions-Maps-to-Watershed-... and https://www.ebmud.com/recreation/east-bay/east-bay-trails/ for information about hiking in -- often -- redwood forests owned by municipal water districts in reservoir watersheds, or https://www.marinwater.org/DocumentCenter/View/156/Map_Marin... for a map of all public lands in Marin County.)

Yes, they are an emergent property any time you have a communication network where people rebroadcast information based on their preference, but restricted to the set of choices they are aware of.

But I believe the exponent of the power curve increases as the amount of resharing goes up. Before social media, you were still limited by what travel books you saw in a store, or where your friends went on vacation, but there was less reverberation and resonance in the network and a relatively flatter power curve.

The interesting observation is that choosing one of these parks consists of just going through a boring large list of parks in a boring old gov website and picking one at random. Whereas going to, say, Yosemite and finding sightseeing places largely involves going to google and/or local tourism guides and funnel the same way as everyone else (resulting in, as one might expect, arriving at spots crowded w/ tourists)

> http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

I really hope this post was self aware.

Is that really better? I think I like the current system. Sure, Everest is ruined, but there are a dozen places nearly as amazing that can be enjoyed with much less crowds. If you want bragging rights, then go to Everest. If you want serenity and beauty, go to the other mountains.

Given the number of people on earth, trying to distribute the people will just lead to everything being destroyed, albeit a little bit slower.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Cover-Story/Japan-gets-mor...

There's just too many tourists.

That's a pretty interesting idea. Get the stuff that's really particular to your interests, undiluted by what's just generally popular.

It's only for scarce things like "place-to-visit" that we'd be better served with pushing the 2nd tier. 1st tier things should be a bit more crowded though: the equilibrium state is where less crowded 2nd tier is equally pleasant as more crowded 1st tier.

I was fortunate enough to spend a gap year traveling around the world, and one of the lessons I learned quickly was that I have little interest in "iconic" destinations. I can distinctly remember when I made this realization: I was in Oia Santorini at sunset, which I had decided to go to because I had seen amazing photos of this secluded town on a cliffside overlooking the sun go down over the Aegean. But while the view was beautiful, the reality of that moment was a thousand other tourists elbowing their way to a good vantage point to take the same picture which had been taken a million times before. There was even a newly married couple who was standing there dejected: they had apparently gone to that point to take wedding photos, but discovered it would obviously be impossible.

I still like to travel, but please keep me miles away from anything famous.

Even on Santorini, which is tiny, I was able to find nice places that weren't completely crowded.

I went in late October when weather in other parts of Europe was bad anyways, and there were many tourists, but still an OK amount, not what you’re describing.

It was amazing so actually I want to go back some time to show it to my parents.

Everyone who wants to climb Everest pays in 100 bucks to register. Winner has to pony up another 900 for the permit, and fines for leaving material on the mountain. Spend the net profit on cleaning up after the people who already left shit on the mountain.

But here's another alternative that also fixes it:

To get a permit to climb Everest, you have to have spent some hundreds of hours volunteering for the crew doing cleanup. You'd see the lower 70% of the route multiple times before it was ever your turn. You'll get a hint of how you respond to altitude + cold. You'll understand what a flying pain in the ass it is to clean up after asshole climbers. You will also go farther up Everest than most people ever will, and you'll be reducing the human footprint in the process.

http://www.alanarnette.com/blog/2018/12/17/how-much-does-it-...

https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-services/... has a required number of hours per year to get - and retain - an allotment. It's meant to reduce entropy and keep the waiting list a bit shorter. A couple of things on this list https://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/programs-and-services/... can get you your hours in faster, which bumps you up a little bit in the queue. I'd like to see that ramp more aggressively but that would discriminate against blue collar workers.

Everest doesn't have that problem, though. Climbing it is, in many ways, a statement of privilege already. If you issued permits to the 100 people with the most volunteer hours in that year, you'd solve a whole host of problems.

Maybe 400-500 people packed just to say they were there, or maybe wait in hopes of getting a clear shot. All of this just to brag in social media.

I think the problem would be better if people didn't brag on social media about every single place they go to.

The USSR tried to build the New Soviet Man for only what, 70 years...

Those 400-500 people were just staying there, with many blocking the street – you know, the thing people walk on?

Reminds me of that scene from Into The Wild where our protagonist tries to kayak down the Colorado River and is told by a ranger that the next permit is available in 12 years.

Of course it feels absurd, but what do we do?

Edit: the clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4mWt2D_d6s

Or as in this case, a cabal of people for the travel industry managing to capture public funds to direct massive subsidies towards their goals, either directly or indirectly though avoid pricing in massive externalities and even get massive tax benefits.

Ultimately, let's be honest: we want the most number of people to be able to experience these things (I fortunately went to most of these places before the recent boom and I think they're wonderful) while ensuring that the cost to the environment isn't catastrophic. That means some people can't go. We can pick some mechanism but it will necessarily exclude some people. The money is the best selection mechanism because we can use it at pretty high granularity on preserving the thing that is bearing the cost, but any substitute that serves the purpose does just as well.

The key magic is that with money we can undo some damage. That's what makes it a useful thing to auction on.

Less wealthy travelers go at odd times, they live in hostels and have "worse" experiences.

The only difference in this case is that the country is also directly profiting from this demand.

Banning photos might be an unconventional but effective way to have people actually experience more of the place they visit and for places to be less overrun.

All the while transport to the edge of the world is a real problem in terms of emissions - both for flight and by boat.