"Every summer, the most popular European destinations get stuffed to the gills with tourists, who outnumber locals by many multiples, turning hot spots into..."

"... sweaty, selfie-stick-clogged, 'Disneyfied' towns... Advocates of curbing tourism say too many visitors are altering the character of historic cities, and making travel terrible, too. 'It’s a level of tourism which is degrading the enjoyment that residents have, but it’s also degrading the tourist experience, because the tourist who is endlessly queuing behind backpacks of hundreds of other tourists is not discovering the real or the authentic place,' said Justin Francis, the chief executive of Responsible Travel, a company that arranges 'sustainable' travel for customers....You can’t talk about overtourism without mentioning Instagram and Facebook — I think they’re big drivers of this trend... Seventy-five years ago, tourism was about experience-seeking. Now it’s about using photography and social media to build a personal brand. In a sense, for a lot of people, the photos you take on a trip become more important than the experience.'"

From "‘Overtourism’ Worries Europe. How Much Did Technology Help Get Us There?" by Farhad Majoo (NYT).

The wrong kind of people are traveling, for the wrong reasons. How can they be pushed back? Is the microaggression of that NYT piece enough or is more heavy handed environmentalism and "cultural appropriation" talk needed? Who are the right people to travel? The NYT doesn't want to say the elite... but I bet it's what they think.

Personally, I'm reinforced in my travel aversion, and I confess to my elitism. I don't want to go to a Disneyfied European destination that has its gills stuffed with "sweaty" selfie-takers who are "degrading" themselves and "degrading" the lives of the actual Europeans, who might otherwise be available for encounters with those who travel for the right reasons.