cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/19371857
I’m curious to learn about places around the globe that have a significant amount of underutilized tourism infrastructure. In many cases, I suspect that governments are propping up unsustainable tourism operators or investing in tourism with a “build it and they will come” mentality.
Here are a few examples that I’m aware of:
Qatar - The country has an oversupply of hotels relative to the number of visitors, and its tourism economy heavily relies on layover tours due to the strength of Qatar Airways’ network.
Saudi Arabia - In an effort to diversify its economy away from oil, the country is pushing a massive tourism development agenda, despite having many factors that make it less appealing to visitors. Religious tourism seems to be a primary focus.
North Korea - For obvious reasons… For example, only a few floors of the Ryugyong Hotel are ever occupied.
Northern Japan (Aomori, Akita, Sendai) - These places are heavily fueled by domestic tourism, and are basically deserted for half of the year (despite attractions and so on still functioning).
To clarify, I’m not looking for hidden gems or places that are simply underrated travel destinations. Instead, I’m interested in learning about locations where there is a clear mismatch between the available tourism infrastructure and the actual number of visitors.
I want to find places where I might end up being the only visitor to a museum or one of few tourists on an airport bus. The fact that these museums and airport limo buses even exist is where the question stems from.
Bhutan as there are limits on tourism imposed, and a mandatory $250 a day fee. There’s a mismatch in that lots would love to visit but cannot, not because of infrastructure that I know.
Kampong Saom/Sihanoukville in Cambodia, the Chinese took over the city then abandoned a lot of the projects when the money dried up (COVID); it’s like a weird ghost town/city with a skyline of half finished buildings.
Appreciate the thoughts. I’m not disagreeing with you I’ve heard Bhutan is debatable from a handful that have been there, simply because there’s a sizable amount of tourism from India and Bangladesh. The infrastructure for getting around and staying overnight is definitely there, but the diversity of attractions is very limited as well (heavily focused around temples), so I feel like it’s a bit of an edge case.
Since I heard this though, as I understand it, it appears that the freedom of movement for Indian citizens in Bhutan has been limited and the Sustainable Development Fee tax got reduced from 200 USD to 100 USD, because of how dramatically it impacted the amount of “high value tourism” they were getting.
I liked Solana Cain’s new photo essay in the Globe and Mail today about Bhutan. I probably ought to put it on my radar.