||| FROM THE NEW YORKER.COM ||| AT REQUEST OF ORCASONIAN READER
Congratulations! Our magazine has just declared your beloved city the most livable in America, and we cannot wait to tell our millions of readers about it. You must be thrilled that your previously under-the-radar, midsize, relatively traffic-free haven is finally getting the recognition it deserves! It’s our unique joy to bring this fine municipality to the attention of so many unhappy New Yorkers with remote jobs and salaries that seem insane to you.
There’s so much to rave about. First, we want to highlight your favorite bagel place, whose whitefish salad rivals that of any Brooklyn deli. Better enjoy it now, before you have to eat it on a cinnamon-raisin bagel, since they’ll start selling out of everything else by 9:15 a.m. One of the great charms of your city is that you hardly ever need a restaurant reservation. We think our seven million Twitter followers will absolutely love that. And look! Bon Appétit just retweeted this article, along with a companion piece that specifically names your favorite diner, Thai place, and ice-cream shop.
Who knew that there were so many lovely public parks in your city? Of course you did, but we’re willing to bet that plenty of thirty-somethings with inherited wealth and toddlers on years-long day-care waiting lists didn’t know.
We also heard that there’s a quiet, dog-friendly beach in your neighborhood. Aren’t you excited to watch its parking lot fill up with Teslas?
Your city ranked pretty highly in affordability. Housing costs are so reasonable, it’ll be a breeze for young Manhattanites to buy their first homes for sixty thousand dollars over asking price, in cash. And all the adorable, small houses in the area will soon benefit from the cool shade of dozens of identical luxury-condo buildings. You haven’t even finished reading this article, and already you can hear the faint sound of bamboo floors being installed.
We also love how walkable your city is! You’ll get to take advantage of those spacious sidewalks even more once you get priced out of your current residence and have to move farther from downtown.
We’d be remiss not to mention your city’s quaint and quirky coffee shops, whose menus will soon contain at least four different types of sixteen-dollar açaí bowls. Your bars and breweries have such a wonderful homey feel—we’re sure that homey vibe will be preserved, even after the tech bros move in. You probably don’t even know what the phrase “brews cruise” means yet, you sweet, innocent soul.
There’s such an abundance of available parking, a landlord would laugh in your face if you asked how much it would increase the rent to add a parking space. Let’s take a moment to marvel at this small miracle, which is actually just a normal fact of life for you. Well, at least for now it is!
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Quick! Pull up the drawbridge! Behind ME, of course…
Welcome to Disney-Eastsound.
Walk around with mouse ears on.
Explore the lack of parking.
Enjoy Covid Corner for the doughnuts.
Hello Tourists,
Good-bye Locals.
Start heavily taxing these out-of-state intruders, especially the long-term rentals that are bundled in offshore companies.
Make things right.
Er.. “Short-term”
Need an edit button
John Tiitus, like many others, is barking up the wrong tree, blaming short-term rentals for over-tourism. The last few years have seen two new hotels built on Main Street. There will no doubt be more to meet the demand to accommodate tourists.
The solution is to stop encouraging tourism (SJC Visitors Bureau) and actively discourage visitors by raising single ride ferry tickets and instituting an annual islands use tax.
“Pull up the drawbridge!”??? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Though there are some who still walk around feigning ignorance and dodging reality, this third-grade meme went out the door decades ago. The worst thing that the leadership of a small community can do is to (continue) turning their heads the other way, ignoring the problems that are coming their way.
“Call on God, but row away from the rocks. Hope without action is just a wish.”
Yes, “Short-term rentals” DC wrote:
“blaming short-term rentals for over-tourism. The last few years have seen two new hotels built on Main Street.”
Agreed about the SJC tourist Bureau. No Tax dollars to that hive, please.
The popularity of short term vacation rentals (VRs) has made them stressors of the long-term rental market for a long time. They’ve been eroding that sector of the housing market for years, (to the point to where there’s now hardly any long-term rentals left). As a part of the tourism lodging industry, VRs are also a part of the over-tourism issue. An overabundance of VRs, and a lack of housing for locals in a tourist dominated economy IS a symptom of over-tourism.
Part of any “solution” to over-tourism would indeed be to stop over-promoting the island’s. And, also limiting tourist lodging… all tourist lodging (including glamping, camping, and, as we’re already doing, the number of VRs). Defining tourism capacity (limits) based upon the health of our environment, and our quality of life, and not just the economy, would be a good baseline from which to operate.
M.J. wrote: “Limit all tourist lodging.” What about all the $200,000 Mercedes Sprinter van conversions coming onto the island? They lodge themselves. Shall we make the deputies work overtime to stop their illegal camping? What about the daytime tourists? Plenty of them! Maybe the vehicle traffic overload could be lessened if more of them rode bikes. But for that, we would need bike lanes and paths, something that M.J. has always decried.
“What about all the $200,000 Mercedes Sprinter van conversions coming onto the island?” I must admit, I don’t know. Is their being here illegal? I don’t know. If their being here is illegal would the deputies have to work overtime? I don’t know. If their being here is illegal would we have to “make” the deputies do their jobs? I don’t know.
“What about the daytime tourists?” Yes, what about them? Daytrippers, as they are known in the industry, are considered to be the low-end of the tourism market in terms of cash flow, and are at the high-end of both social and environmental impacts. In order for this business model to be profitable it depends on mass numbers of tourists. Hence the industry term, “low value, high volume.”
“Maybe the vehicle traffic overload could be lessened if more of them rode bikes. But for that, we would need bike lanes and paths, something that M.J. has always decried.” Well, the bicyclists have to come from somewhere. Unless the new bicycle tourists that more bike lanes and paths will produce are from Anacortes, my guess is that they drove, boated, or flew to Anacortes from somewhere else, and by doing so will be both avoiding the ferry hassle/wait time/fee while furthering parking congestion at the Anacortes terminal. This, not withstanding the fact that there would be some, say the visitors bureau, and those not unlike yourself, who profit from this sort of tourism model, who would take advantage of more bike lanes and paths, eventually being able to begin promoting the island as the NW’s premier biking destination. Though becoming a biking mecca might at first appear a green venture, adding more bicycle lanes and paths to a tourist marketed destination does not necessarily equate to fewer cars, or fewer tourists, (not anymore than more highways reduce congestion, see attachment “Induced Demand” below)… only more bicycle tourists. I’ve never decried more bike lanes, or paths. I decry the influx of tourists that I know more bicycle lanes and paths will bring.
City Lab University– (Benjamin Schneider) 9/06/18– Induced Demand. When traffic-clogged highways are expanded, new drivers quickly materialize to fill them. What gives? Here’s how “induced demand” works.
“Economists call this phenomenon induced demand: When you provide more of something, or provide it for a cheaper price, people are more likely to use it. Rather than thinking of traffic as a liquid, which requires a certain volume of space to pass through at a given rate, induced demand demonstrates that traffic is more like a gas, expanding to fill up all the space it is allowed.”
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/09/citylab-university-induced-demand/569455/
M.J. : Hard to convince someone with logic when their only responses are “I don’t know”.
And as far as the induced demand myth: https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-induced-demand-myth
Unfortunately, the place to start correcting the excess of tourism is the agencies related to tourism.
De-fund them. Tax them.
Give the island back to locals.
Shopping on Sunday afternoons is pleasant now, because there are very few people. I gave up shopping during the week due to tourists with hoards of kids.
“Hard to convince someone with logic when their only responses are “I don’t know”. I’m not trying to convince you of anything Dan.
This was a great article. Thanks for posting it. Having lived thru all this before in SW Colorado many years ago, and now witnessing it happen here play-by-play, many of the points made within the article really hit home to me.
Dan, my assumption is that your comment regarding the ability of our local deputies to uphold the laws of the land (regarding tourism), if ever called to do so, without being forced to work overtime, could very well be an accurate assessment of SJC’s current state of affairs, (I really don’t know). I do know that passing laws that are popular with the people, and then defunding them later, proclaiming that the new laws never worked in the first place… is one of the oldest tricks in politics.
What I also know, is that the laws regarding tourism grossly favor the tourism industry at every level (national, state, and county). Hence the term, “It’s not a level playing field.” There’s enough preemptive legislation that’s been lobbied into the books over time that it’s nearly impossible for the citizenry to change the status quo. We’ve been forewarned about this for many years, and even so, we (still) didn’t get here by accident… we got here by design. If it were to turn out, that by design, there wasn’t enough funds in the budget to enforce the very laws that were designed to protect the people from overtourism (IN A COUNTY THAT TAKES IN MILLIONS OF TOURISM DOLLARS PER YEAR AND PUTS MILLIONS BACK INTO IT), this would be an example of both long-term policy failure, and poor governance.
Interesting link… I guess. I suppose it’s a matter of which think-tank one subscribes to–
“Cato Institute–The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute states that it favors policies “that are consistent with the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, and peace.” Cato scholars conduct policy research on a broad range of public policy issues and produce books, studies, op-eds, and blog posts. They are also frequent guests in the media.”
“The Cato Institute is an “associate” member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country. They are also part of the international Atlas Group network with links to the Institute for Humane Studies. The Independent Institute seems to operate as a Cato subsidiary.”
“Where ideology and science part company, Cato favors ideology, as shown by an advertisement published in newspapers in 2009 disputing the state of the science on climate change.”
The Skift Report
The trendline is crystal clear: Destinations that are to remain competitive and attractive to visitors for years to come will have to start protecting their communities and cultural capital now. This shift in approach requires reimagining the way that destination marketing and management intersect — as well as incorporating the concerns of local stakeholders into the tourism boards’ strategic planning.
MAXIMUM CAPACITY
A decade on, what today feels something of a taboo in the tourism world — openly admitting that there is actually an upper limit to the amount of tourists who can visit a destination — will likely be a baseline assumption of a sustainable destination. As Vranken said, that will depend on having the appropriate data and metrics.
“The answer is absolutely yes, there is a carrying capacity, but in order to measure it we have to establish a body with the authority and funding to measure it,” he said.
This future will also likely depend on governments prioritizing sustainable tourism management as a policy priority. In the U.S., destination marketing organizations like Visit Florida are still more likely to be fighting for their lives than planning how residents might feel about tourists 10 years out. It’s difficult for these organizations to come up with nuanced plans if their concerns can hardly go past the next funding cycle.
In order to truly invest in protecting a destination’s future — for the enjoyment of tourists and residents alike — tourism officials and governments are starting to work in cohesion, rather than at odds.
The time to start doing this was yesterday.
https://skift.com/2020/02/03/travel-megatrends-2020-tourisms-new-competitive-advantage-is-protecting-destinations/
“It doesn’t matter that the San Juans are getting over a million socially educated, environmentally oriented, sustainably minded tourists per year… it matters that the San Juans are getting over a million tourists per year.”
If a road is widened, flattened, straightened and clearcut on both sides to enhance sight distances, then people drive faster; witness the road project recently completed south of the Exchange. But did the road project actually increase the number of automobile trips? Maybe. A little. On the rare occasions I go to Eastsound from Deer Harbor, I cut across Nordstrom Ln to that new section of road to avoid getting stuck behind bicycle groups on the north section of Crow Valley Rd. Would I do that if the road project hadn’t been done? Yes, probably.
Similarly, does an increased number of vacation rentals and hotel rooms increase the number of tourists? Again, maybe a little. Or is it actually the other way around? Increased demands by tourists generate increased numbers of places to stay, because it becomes economically viable to build those spaces?
30 years ago you could feel the change in the ratio of tourists to locals dramatically alter after Labor Day. We used to have parties celebrating getting “our” island back! BUT nearly all the retail stores and restaurants struggled to survive every winter. ‘Summer rentals’ would became available as ‘winter rentals’; 8 months max and then come June, you had to move out. And there still was a chronic housing shortage and what was available was often incredibly substandard. Unless you have struggled through every winter just hoping that spring tourists would bring some economic activity in time to save your business or job, you don’t really appreciate that too few tourists is a serious economic problem, just as too many is a serious ecological/social problem.
History and experience shows that this tourism predicament is far from new, we are just on the other side of the too many/too few divide right now. Although that might be changing; everyone I know with Airbnb rentals is saying the same thing, bookings came to a screeching halt in October and haven’t really come back at anything close to the levels of the early Covid years. I suggest that the fluctuating levels of tourism in SJC is subject to a vast array of forces, very few of which we have any capacity to influence.
I support the suggestions that the county conduct a scientific study of the ecological carrying capacity of the islands and use actual facts to make collective decisions about population and tourism rather than anecdotal and fear-based reactions to perceived changes. As far as I know, no place on Earth limits their population deliberately through legislation. That does not mean that it can’t or shouldn’t be done! Just that it will not be simple nor easy. And yet, it seems obvious that it is going to be necessary, if not now, then in the near future. So, how do you propose to limit the human population in SJC equitably and legally?
Joe Symons? You’ve been talking about this issue for decades, what are your current thoughts?
“… does an increased number of vacation rentals and hotel rooms increase the number of tourists?” “Or is it actually the other way around?” It doesn’t matter what the answers are as long as you ask the right questions. What difference does it make… we have too many tourists as it is.
You’d think that for as long as this issue has been around that we could have avoided this moment–
“Once you identify a place, the people will come.” South Burn
History link–
“A Waldron Island resident, South Burn (1924-1994), undertook a detailed study of tourism not only in the county but also as experienced in other rural communities. Completed in 1983, his study was heavily documented and included many quotes from experts and well-known writers. Burn concluded that tourism in the San Juans was a strong local business not in need of any further publicity or promotion. Planning is needed, he said, because tourism “is an extremely corrosive [force] … acting to destroy our one priceless, non-renewable source — our beautiful, natural environs,” and “the economic benefits of tourism go only to those in the tourist industry” (Burn, 41). The Journal of the San Juan Islands took up the conversation and that August published a special section on the pluses and minuses of tourism and the difficulty of finding any hard data on its local impact. More information was needed.”
“A San Juan County tourism planning committee was formed to investigate the current status and report to the county commissioners; among the report’s findings in 1985 was that San Juan County was almost three times more dependent on tourism revenue than the second-ranked county in the state. Two of the summary statements in the conclusion were that “the primary tourist resource of San Juan County is its beautiful natural environment, and … that environment is fragile and must be protected to the benefit of all including tourists and the tourist industry,” and that “business entities have the right to profit from the tourist industry, but they do not have the right to do so at the expense of the natural or social environment or the deterioration of the quality of life of the community” (Tourism in San Juan …, 12.2, 12.3). A community survey taken in 1990 found that residents were quite negative in their views about tourism and generally opposed further promotion and advertising.”
“In 1993 another county tourism planning advisory committee was formed with representatives from San Juan, Orcas, and Lopez. Town meetings were held on each island, input was solicited from residents, agency data was collected, and the previous study reviewed. In its findings the committee concurred with its predecessors that residents had the right to live in a stable community in which tourists could participate but not to the detriment of the community. The committee urged, moreover, that tourists should be required to pay (through taxes, fees, or other appropriate revenues) for the costs of public facilities and services provided primarily for visitors. Within a few years the county created a special excise tax on lodging establishments, the funds to be used for tourism-related facilities and programs and to help pay for promotional efforts.”
Are you not listening? This is what Joe says– http://www.doebay.net/appeal.html
From the SJC tourist bureau (Did I mention that it “wasn’t a level playing field”)? Your tax dollars at work–
Fwd: Help Increase State of WA Tourism Funding Before Tues. AM
January 13th, 2023
The 2023 Legislative Session is underway, and your support of House Bill 1258 will help continue the important statewide work of State of Washington Tourism (SWT), including:
· Implement direct industry/business recovery programs, development and grants
· Expand tour product to rural and underserved regions · Balance the beneficial flow of visitation across the state
· Optimize reach of destination marketing campaigns to drive more overnight visits
A hearing for this bill is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17, in the House Innovation, Community Development, Economic Development and Veterans Affairs Committee. By simply signing in “pro,” you can support this effort. Please do this before the start of the meeting.
About HB 1258Increasing tourism to Washington State through enhancement of the statewide tourism marketing account and changing necessary match requirements. The state tourism program has been rebuilt with public and private investment. Now it needs a funding stream to operate so it can improve and maintain statewide economic impact, resiliency, and equity. This bill would raise the current cap on state general funds to $13 million per fiscal year and adjust the industry matching requirement from 2:1 to 1:1 (industry to state).
Sponsors: Ryu, Volz, Steele, Walen, Reeves, Waters, Chambers, Reed, Christian, Cortes, Callan, Schmidt, Barkis, Fosse Please take a minute to sign in PRO today. SWT thanks you for your ongoing support! Visitors Bureau Contact Information (360) 378-9551 ext. 1 or info@visitsanjuans.com San Juan Islands Visitors Bureau | P.O. Box 1330, Friday Harbor, WA 98250