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KiekCie
#Overtourism The story behind that one perfect Instagram post. We always try to capture the memories that we create from our beautiful holiday destinations. Toby from the KiekCie shares his tips to get the perfect vacation picture. Text and Pictures: Toby Serier, KiekCie member
mountain to take photos in all different poses. I guess that in the same morning thousands of almost identical photos were posted on all kinds of social media. Probably in all of these, only the photographer and maybe some of its friends and family were visible. All of their followers, probably almost a million, will see their friend standing at this idyllic place and of course, some of them will want to visit that same place. These followers are not realizing that they are actually misled by that photo, and the poster is often not realizing what the impact of the photo is. Their post is actually causing an exponential growth in the number of visitors. Not only tourists are disappointed by the crowd they encounter at touristic places, but also locals will face problems because of it and preserving the authenticity of these places is getting harder, and harder. I think we could call the way this is spreading a social media pandemic. For this pandemic, I have a more Responsible tourism educated solution than a lockdown. When I was in Thailand, we got offered a visit There is something you should take into to an elephant sanctuary. We would probably account when planning your vacation. have had a great experience in the sanctuary, I think you should be consciously
Have you ever visited popular touristic places like the Eiffel Tower or Venice? Maybe you traveled even further and visited the Great Wall of China or the Machu Picchu? There is one thing that these places have in common. That is, the reality is different from the expectations. These places are way too crowded and tourism is out of proportion. By telling about my own experiences I would like to show one of the causes of this problem and I will give some travel tips to avoid this. When I visited mount Bromo in Indonesia, the guides promised me the most beautiful sunrise of Indonesia. At that moment, in which I might have been a bit naïve, I expected the location on the cover of the Lonely Planet of Indonesia. I didn’t expect a traffic jam of Jeeps filled with tourists who all wanted to catch the same photo at sunrise. Thousands of people were traveling up that
but we decided not to go there since we heard about the terrible stories about training these elephants, and we were not sure if the owners of this sanctuary had good intentions. I think in this case the elephants’ well-being was more important than our joy (and photos) and we had a great day anyway. If you want to know more about the negative sides of elephant tourism, check out the QR-code.
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Intermania
