As a share of the total number of people employed in New Zealand, direct tourism employment was 6.7 percent.
I think the main problem with tourism is that it is a luxury service and tourism income shrinks when the world economy stinks. The other issue is that many tourists are rude and unthankful, so it can be unpleasant working in a service industry, being a servant to well-off tourists.
New Zealand needs export income. Some of our product exports are worse for New Zealand than tourism (some farming particularly has negative effects and can have poor profits).
I wonder if part of the reason why Barcelona has population growth is because it has tourism income and jobs? Remove tourism and what happens next?
And it sucks in New Zealand that some of the most beautiful places are crowded and almost owned by tourists. Literally owned by tourists when we let foreigners buy property here and our current government wants to allow that again.
The pay in tourism is terrible, usually minimum wage, except for the owners of capital, who gain enormous returns on investing in hotels / airbnbs / tourist aimed businesses.
That means it has an awful return for the ones most in need which are the poor. It’s not a distributive industry.
On top of that, it can cause a “resource curse” type phenomenon where great beaches or some other attraction causes enormous amounts of investment in tourist infrastructure leading to a lack of opportunity for other businesses which could thrive with investment. Tourist gives you such great returns on investment it doesn’t make sense to do anything else if you have capital
Tourist gives you such great returns on investment it doesn’t make sense to do anything else if you have capital
Yep, I'm considering buying a vacation home to Airbnb for this reason. I have mixed feelings about it though, because I don't want to be part of the problem. But I live in NYC and I can't move (shared custody), nor can I buy a suitable home in the city, meanwhile the national housing market is exploding. I need some way to hedge for real estate inflation, and vacation rentals have better ROI.
As a share of the total number of people employed in New Zealand, direct tourism employment was 6.7 percent.
I think the main problem with tourism is that it is a luxury service and tourism income shrinks when the world economy stinks. The other issue is that many tourists are rude and unthankful, so it can be unpleasant working in a service industry, being a servant to well-off tourists.
New Zealand needs export income. Some of our product exports are worse for New Zealand than tourism (some farming particularly has negative effects and can have poor profits).
I wonder if part of the reason why Barcelona has population growth is because it has tourism income and jobs? Remove tourism and what happens next?
And it sucks in New Zealand that some of the most beautiful places are crowded and almost owned by tourists. Literally owned by tourists when we let foreigners buy property here and our current government wants to allow that again.