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I recently had the realization that traveling is going to get more competitive over time.

There is a relatively finite number of places that people want to travel to. Places like Venice and Yosemite evolved over long time scales to be world-famous destinations. People are getting the economic opportunity to travel faster than top-tier destinations can accommodate them. New destinations may emerge over time, but tourism supply simply can't keep up with demand: you can't just go make a new Venice or a new Yosemite.

As supply outstrips demand, constraints emerge. Financial constraints are unpopular: they're perceived as classist, and its inappropriate to charge high rates to access public resources like parks. Therefore, temporal constraints like reservation systems become commonplace.

I'm concerned that the planners are going to take over travel: that if you're not the kind of person who commits to things ahead of time, there simply won't be space for you in the travel marketplace. As someone who tends to wing things, this makes me sad for myself. It also makes me sad for the human experience more generally that there will be one more nudge into order and away from freedom.

I spent a little over a month on the road last year just winging it. It's the best.

While I agree that the big destinations are harder and harder to visit due to the crowds, there's a lot to see out there that isn't "on the map", and some of my favorite stops were the unexpected trailheads, lesser known national parks without as many facilities, and smaller state parks I encountered along the way.

With a different kind of planning (i.e. vehicle/supplies/camping gear), winging it will still be possible, but "book a trip to X major park on a whim", not so much.

You’re just older. We all are, everyone gets older.

My parents generation could like work half a summer buy a used station wagon and drive out to California and live in a shack by the beach.

My generation could graduate college and easily find a crappy downtown apartment in the middle of basically any major city we wanted.

Or since we’re talking about travel I remember flying down to Tulum for New Years Eve without a hotel reservation or anything and just driving down the strip until I found an ocean front cabana for $25 a night. It’s the “Riviera Maya” now.

And I’m not even that old.

And so on. The world is just getting more filled up. You don’t have to go that many generations back before people would go off and claim whole countries just by showing up with a flag.

Time is directional. It’ll just progress like this forever.

> As someone who tends to wing things

I’ve found that just starting off in any great city and rambling about to be very rewarding.

I mean if you want to see the Sistine Chapel, you need to plan. But Rome is full of amazing architecture and not many people want to climb every Spanish Step.

That and you can always go very early in the morning before the first tour bus.

can't wait for space billboards on the Solar Highway advertising

"Visit Historic Earth!"

The Sistine Chapel is lovely. I don't discount checking a box to say that you've been there. But while you are there, explore more of the vatican museum. There are countless artifacts there that would be the centerpieces of less important museums, but in the context of that museum, they might go unnoticed in a corner. I find this true of tourism in general. 80-95% of the crowds go to 5-20% of the things to do. In the Louvre, it's the Mona Lisa. In the Vatican it's the sistine chapel. Meanwhile there are museums filled with pieces that would probably auction for 8-9 digits, but for whatever reasons, are not well known to the general public and therefore don't get the attention. No one is taking selfies of themselves next to the 17th most valuable painting in the Louvre (much more so the 100th most valuable piece, which is still extremely valuable), but I assure you that the quality of the work is every bit as fantastic as the most famous ones.
Oh man, I love the Louvre. You could spend days there and not see everything.

I spent most of a day there and there were very few people in most of the exhibits, which was really nice. I got to take my time to enjoy the pieces I got to see.

I did stop by the Mona Lisa just to say I'd been there, and the crowd around it was really stupid. There are dozens, if not hundreds of much more interesting paintings in the same room and the hallway beyond.

I didn't note the name of the painting, but hanging directly opposite the Mona Lisa was a gigantic painting, probably ten feet high and twenty across. Absolutely full of exquisite details. Not a single person paid it any attention.

I genuinely don't get it.

The large painting opposite the Mona Lisa is The Wedding Feast at Cana[0]. And I totally agree, I had the same experience there. Also loved Napoleon’s quarters.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_at_Cana

Napoleon's quarters? I must have missed that exhibit! I spent too much time in the ancient Rome and Egypt wing, I didn't get to see half the museum
> I did stop by the Mona Lisa just to say I'd been there.

> I genuinely don't get it.

Being snobbish about the behaviour or the masses is less tenable when you are doing the same thing as them.

It's okay, the internet comment can't actually hurt you
What if the prestige from going places and posting selfies from there, now outweighs the actual value of any of those paintings for many people?

I read an interesting article a few days ago about how, due to the smartphone and social media, ordinary people today are basically living like they are performers on TV. When everything they do is focused on performance, there’s less time or interest in contemplatively examining art. The quality of those lesser-known works might matter to you, me, or some others here on HN. But does it matter to enough people now to put any dent in overtourism of the über-famous works?

On the other hand: https://xkcd.com/1314/

(:

A couple of tourist experiences left me feeling that I am the problem when I visit a popular destination nowadays. It puts a damper on the enjoyment. That and air travel.

I've found some alternatives. My family attends a week of playing folk music in a small town in the North Woods every summer. The people are the destination. I'm pretty sure we're outnumbered by the seasonal workers (lumber, construction, etc).

I'm perfectly contented to take some days off from work and knock around the countryside on my bike. Activities that require physical effort are still somewhat insulated from overcrowding. Anywhere that's more than 1/4 hour walk from the tour buses becomes a different world.

> I'm perfectly contented to take some days off from work and knock around the countryside on my bike.

For the last decade-plus, I have spent about half of every year traveling around the world on my bike. A lot of routes are starting to feel very crowded, and seemingly every cyclist is posting on social media, which in turn attracts more people to cycle there. Even some grueling bikepacking routes that are feasible only for those who are fit, can afford quality gear, and can be on the road for weeks at a time, now draw so many cyclists that local people’s attitudes to foreigners are changing.

I've seen that while hiking. It's better when you get 1/4 hour away from buses, but is definitely getting more crowded. I hiked to the top of some "fourteeners" in the Rockies, and you had to wait your turn to stand at the summit.

The earth has too many people.

I'm willing to do my part by not being fit enough for those grueling routes. ;-)

At this point I don't understand why anybody would even bother trying to visit any of the popular spots.

For example we were in Madrid in 2019. The queue to the Prado was round the block. It was hundreds of metres long.

I don't care what's in the Prado, but it's not that good. The Mona Lisa can't be that good. The Sistine isn't that good.

Find another chapel. Find a smaller gallery. Find a lesser-known work. And actually enjoy it, rather than just seeing it so you can take your photo and tick the box.

> The Sistine isn't that good.

Say, rather, that the poor experience of seeing it so hastily with so many other tourists is not that good. But the Sistine itself is that good. The popularity is warranted by the quality of the work.

It's a classic prisoners' dilemma.

it's not really a prisoners dilemma, as there's no opportunity for mutual reward through cooperation. there aren't enough hours in the year for everyone to get the chance to properly appreciate it. you can either set it up as a speedrun where everyone gets a five minute peek, or a lottery where most people don't see it at all.
But then tourists go and ruin the lesser known places. Tourists by and large suck, and while they may bump the economy, their "this is MY vacation" attitude drives everyone nuts. Not to mention the ecological aspect.

Best form of tourism you can do is with a VR headset.

Tourism is fine. There are plenty of paintings in the world, most of which rarely even see the light of day, and more being made every day. I recently went to a couple of local galleries in a place we were visiting (the Fukuhara Memorial Museum and the Hokkaido Landscape Museum) - absolutely stunning, and almost completely empty; they would absolutely have welcomed 10x the visitors they had. It's only the name brand places that have a problem.
But... They are that good. The David was the one for me. First time I waited in line for well over an hour. That was two decades ago. And it is still one of the best works of art I've seen. Made it back once more. Last time the line was still long so I decided to skip it. But I'd go again. There are some things that aren't really worth the long wait, but there are some things that are. And get there is still a ton of things out there to see
I visited the Vatican just a few months ago and it was wonderful.
The Mona Lisa maybe not, but Sainte-Chapelle? Yes, it's that good.
The Sistine Chapel can’t be understood outside the context of the Tridentine Mass.

The motions and words made by the priest correspond to the murals. It wasn’t intended to be viewed, it was intended to assist in the liturgy.

“We’d like you to recite this mass from memory, but we’ll let you bring ‘one’ fresco of notes”
He never said what size fresco!
Then it should be viewed in precisely one hour.
The article is exactly right. The tour is a river if people flowing through the prescribed route until you're vomited into St Peter's.

Fortunately, you can go out a small door on the other side and walk through the entire Vatican at your leisure. There are miles upon miles of museum that most people never get to see because they follow the river.

The Sistine itself is hopeless though because it's always crowded.

Still magnificent and not to be missed.

A self guided wander at your own pace is something much more up my alley.

I've spent the better part of a week going through the Hermitage, same with the Lourve. A guided tour whisking you through the high visibility points in a few hours leaves way too much to be seen, imo.

Where is this small door?
This appears to be the map, and the standard procession takes you through quite a lot of works: https://maps-rome.com/maps-rome-attractions/vatican-museum-m...

There are a few spots marked by a red dot where you can choose between the short itinerary and the complete itinerary.

If I recall correctly...

It is directly across from the exit to St Peters, so on the same wall that you enter in but at the other Edge.

It takes you back to the beginning of the tour and then you can wander with the river folk and take a side route which I don't remember to get to the rest of the grounds

I’m a skeptic of VR in general but this is one area I hope it’ll make a difference some day. I’ve been to a lot of historical sites and they’ve mostly been… fine. But I really do think I’d get more out of a truly immersive VR exploration than of a walk through with a packed crowd.
I've read that when visiting the Vatican, you can pay extra to be allowed to walk through before regular admission starts. Which seems totally worth the cost, but a) keeps it out of reach of most people, and b) kicks the can down the street until there are enough people willing to pay the higher cost.

But overall the system seems like the best we can get... one portion of the day with limited admission (maybe a cap at a very small number of visitors), auctioned so that those who are willing to pay the most get in. Then that money is used for upkeep & supporting general admission, where anyone can pay a low price to come in with ~no cap.

I die a little inside to discuss limiting a full experience of some of the world's best-known works of art to the wealthy, but I genuinely don't know of a better way to allocate a scarce good.

> but I genuinely don't know of a better way to allocate a scarce good.

A lottery system is an alternative. Still need to generate enough money to cover costs, but could be done as a partial thing.

For instance, some national park areas in the US have lotteries to be allowed to camp in them. The fee is low, so it's not biased towards rich people.

A bit like how Billy Joel got tired of bored rich people in the front row seats, so he reserved them to be given to random real fans.

The lotteries for the national parks are abused by automated bots reserving in microseconds - at least in the PNW. Heck, I've even stumbled upon a secondary marketplace reselling them for thousands since they are transferable (fatal flaw). So the argument about equal access is moot.

I'm sure there's a reader here that is aware.

You could always make them… not transferable.

There will always be some people that find a way to slip through but it is possible to make it a significant difficulty to do so. It’s just that most places don’t care to.

I know bots abuse the campground and permitted hike system but I don't how or why they'd try and manipulate the lottery. The cost is so high and odds so low of winning things like the the wave or the Enchantments.

What we really need is what my university had where if you grab a spot and no one shows up, you can't get a spot for a certain amount of time.

One that I've done is the Enchantments (also PNW, but WA state, not national).

For that, it is not transferable; you can register for multiple people (eg: 5 campers for dates XYZ), but whoever's name is on the lotto ticket must be present in the group when you register at the ranger station.

You have to put some limits in to prevent selling the lotteries, as if you’re going to have money change hands it might as well go to the source.
https://thevaticanmuseums.com/vatican-tours/vip-early-entran...

Almost everywhere in the world you can pay extra to get into places earlier than the general public. Just depends on how much money you are willing to spend

> I genuinely don't know of a better way to allocate a scarce good.

We need another Michelangelo.

I'd love a stroke-for-stroke reproduction, with spectrally-matched pigments.
People aren’t entitled to experiences. Back in the day, most people barely left their own towns. You might be lucky if you saw one great work of art in your lifetime. That’s what we must return to in order to keep places from getting over saturated with tourism.
If people don't get to have experiences, then why should they care whether or not places get over saturated with tourism?
Lottery is the only alternative that comes to mind.
Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.

-Yogi

Cloning tech may help.

II could stand to wait a century or so if it means a slow, reflective tour of the Sistine Chapel.

If group rates apply, maybe III and IV will tag along. :)