I live in a (relatively) small seaside town about 140km away from a major capital city. And every year, at this time, the town is plagued with the Dreaded Holidayers, escaping the city for a bit of sun and surf.
Whilst they provide a much appreciated boost to the local economy, we locals whinge and whine about how OUR lifestyles have been hampered with the invasion…can’t get a carpark at the shops, can’t get anywhere near the main beach for swimming, and for those like me who walk doggies @6am, suddenly there’s all these new dogs with no manners whatsoever. Oh, and the doggie-owners don’t pick up the shit either, despite bag-dispensers at the entrances to all the beaches…
Do you live in a place that is attractive to tourists? How do you deal?
Me? I’m leaving town on Boxing Day to annoy some other campers in ANOTHER (very) small town about four hours west.
I live in southern Arizona. It’s winter here, but the winter is very mild. Temperatures run from about 4° to 24°C (or 40 to 70°F) and we get a lot of winter visitors, or “snowbirds” from the northern states. We do depend on them to stimulate our economy. We have year-round golfing, an NCAA bowl game (college football), a rodeo in February, and many other attractions. The weather is usually excellent for outdoor activities, and despite being in the middle of the desert, we even have a ski resort in the mountains about 30 miles north of Tucson. It receives about 180 inches of snow a year. We do have to put up with a bit of added traffic, but we console ourselves thinking of all the money that the snowbirds are spending here.
The whole state is a tourist attraction in the winter. There’s the Grand Canyon in the northern part of the state and there’s MLB spring training baseball centered around the Phoenix area.
I’m from San Diego, and when I was a kid, everyone (including the local news) was constantly griping about the “Zonies” who’d come out to the coast in summertime.
Now I live in the greater Seattle area, and public enemy #1 is Californians who move up here and don’t “get” the local culture.
Once every two years my town gets invaded for the Farnborough Airshow. I live/work about a mile from the airport directly under the landing path. Trying to hear people on a conference call when there is an F-35 outside my window setting off car alarms was a challenge.
I live on the island of Grand Cayman which is a major cruise ship destination in addition being a Caribbean beach destination for vacationers. I live in a remote part of the island, but only a mile away from two major resorts. And I work very close to the port where the cruise ships disgorge their passengers.
Even in peak season (November through March) there is not much traffic out near my home. I can always stake out a spot on a beach if I want to leave home. But in town and along Seven Mile Beach the traffic can get a bit crazy, especially on peak cruise ship days.
Since most cruises that visit Cayman begin their journeys in Florida on the weekends we get peak ship visits mid-week. So I avoid downtown Tuesday through Thursday and may check the ship schedules for other days of the week. Since the only thing I normally do downtown is grab lunch or get a haircut it really is not much of a burden. Those bad cruise ship days I can just choose a different lunch destination and avoid the creeping traffic returning tot he port in the afternoons.
I used to work at an office located on the National Mall in Washington DC. During the summer it was always an adventure if you had to get somewhere in a hurry, weaving among the vast herds of tourists wandering slowly and aimlessly between all the museums. It was like working at Disneyland.
I’ve worked a block north of Natural History and in Crystal City. You think the mall is bad? Try being in the Crystal City Underground with all those schoolkids at lunchtime* or anywhere near Metro when they’re on their way to or from their hotels.
*I quickly learned to time my lunch hour to not be in the food court whey they are.
I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa and this was definitely a thing. South Africa has a pretty well defined school and Christmas holiday season in the summer. I think its even more codified into the broader culture than usual, perhaps due to the influence of a lot of migrant labor that visits family at this time.
So there would be lots of complaints about Johannesburg / Pretoria folks clogging up the roads and making a big mess of things, and that influx would be pretty concentrated and obvious. It seems a silly complaint in the broader context. I’m sure it was great for the economy. And nothing comes for free. Living in a spectacular place that everyone likes just has a cost (high cost of living and crowds) that you can avoid by moving somewhere that sucks.
South Florida must have had this too, although I don’t remember it. I may not have been paying attention, or was far away enough from the beach. The other places I’ve lived (Atlanta, Sacramento, Berkeley and Bellevue) didn’t really have this, at least related to holidaymakers. Berkeley waxed and waned a bit due to the university schedule but it wasn’t really a big deal on our quiet street.
For a few years I lived in the town of Long Beach, NY, on the south shore of Long Island. My apartment was right on the beach; my back door opened up on the boardwalk. During the week it was fine. The beach and the boardwalk were huge, and there was enough room for the locals to spread out and enjoy the amenities. But the town was connected to NYC by the Long Island Railroad, and on summer weekends hordes of people descended on the town like locusts. The beach became wall-to-wall blankets, and the noise was deafening. After the first summer, I pretty much ignored the beach, except at night or in winter.
Toronto isn’t super-touristy, but there are some festivals in the summer like the Caribbean Carnival or the Pride Parade that attracts a few tourists. I remember when I first moved here, I used to get flummoxed when people would randomly stop me on the street to ask me where their hotel was or to recommend a restaurant. Luckily that didn’t last too many years before Google Maps and Yelp kicked into high gear.
One thing that used to annoy me would be if I were walking home from work on Yonge Street and some tourists walking in front of me would come to a complete halt in order to take a picture of themselves.
“Hey, remember that time we were walking on a sidewalk? I’m glad we took a picture so that we’ll never forget that unusual experience.”
Of the five properties closest to my house (rural hobby farms mainly), only one is a permanent resident. The rest are all weekenders / holiday homes.
So, like your place, it suddenly gets a lot noisier and more crowded. They all come up here, seeking peace and quiet. Spoiling ours. I may escape to the beach and pay it forward
Summit County Colorado here. Four major ski resorts. The population of our county quadruples around Christmas.
And then there are the mountain bikers in the summer. We have about one quiet month now. End of April and early May. Mud season.
It helps that I work 7am-3:30. And not in any tourist capacity. The tourist really don’t bug me too much. You get used to lost people, people that can’t drive in snow, people generally just wandering around.
I don’t live in Byron but I’ve visited a few times and I can totally see where that person was coming from.
I have lived in a tourist destination for several years and one of the deciding factors in moving away - not a major factor by any stretch, but certainly one of the things taken into consideration - was the feeling that pretty much everyone’s quest to have a good time on holiday there was getting in the way of people living there just going about their daily lives.
