isisdave
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Several of the recent threads on cruise ships and their impact on ports, as well as personal experiences at just about any national park in the summer, lead me to wonder "Why are there so many more people in these places?"
I first cruised in 1974, and there were lots of places where my 1500-passenger ship was the only one in port. Nowadays, any old port has 3 or 4 ships disgorging about 10,000 people onto the streets. We were in Alaska recently, really early in the season, and Skagway and Ketchikan were in fact like Disneyland on the first day of summer vacation.
Machu Picchu is about to get more limited, Mt Everest is having fatalities partly because of the traffic, you need to book months ahead online for the Vatican and the Louvre and Uffizi and Accademia. Flights are full even though there are more, and if anything goes wrong weather-wise, flights are disrupted for days. There are lines for everything.
So why is that? Why are so many more people traveling now? Is it cheaper than 25 years ago? Is it because it's easier to organize on the Internet? Are people retiring earlier? Is there more gig economy, so folks of working years can take several weeks between assignments to go to Europe or Australia?
I know there is lots more travel beginning in Asia, and in fact we met a lot of these people throughout Europe and in the National Parks last summer. This is a huge market that hasn't traveled much until now, so there's a lot of demand. They weren't overrunning Alaska in May, though.
What's your take on this?
I first cruised in 1974, and there were lots of places where my 1500-passenger ship was the only one in port. Nowadays, any old port has 3 or 4 ships disgorging about 10,000 people onto the streets. We were in Alaska recently, really early in the season, and Skagway and Ketchikan were in fact like Disneyland on the first day of summer vacation.
Machu Picchu is about to get more limited, Mt Everest is having fatalities partly because of the traffic, you need to book months ahead online for the Vatican and the Louvre and Uffizi and Accademia. Flights are full even though there are more, and if anything goes wrong weather-wise, flights are disrupted for days. There are lines for everything.
So why is that? Why are so many more people traveling now? Is it cheaper than 25 years ago? Is it because it's easier to organize on the Internet? Are people retiring earlier? Is there more gig economy, so folks of working years can take several weeks between assignments to go to Europe or Australia?
I know there is lots more travel beginning in Asia, and in fact we met a lot of these people throughout Europe and in the National Parks last summer. This is a huge market that hasn't traveled much until now, so there's a lot of demand. They weren't overrunning Alaska in May, though.
What's your take on this?