Comments by "looseycanon" (@looseycanon) on "Is Tourism an Economic Disease? - VisualEconomik EN" video.

  1. That wouldn't work. I visited Romania last year. There's huge delta in prices between inland and coast, to the point of even Romanians going abroad to go to the sea. Even Croatia has this year finally reached it's price ceiling, by becoming too expensive even for Germans
    14
  2. Not really, islands have higher costs of living due to higher costs to move goods to and from the island, meaning they are less competitive for vast majority of industries than mainland.
    3
  3. Switzerland is built on banking, not tourism. Dubai was literally built on Emirates Airlines, because of it's strategic position between Europe, India and Africa and range of aircraft at the time of inception, since, they pivoted to trade. This is not repeatable
    3
  4. Yeah, this doesn't hold water. Few observations: 1. Which of the countries, was the poorest, when we saw the map? Bulgaria, which is not your typical tourist destination. Sure, it has two major ones plus its capitol, but other than that? Bulgaria is not best known for it's beaches, but for it's rose oil, economically speaking. If there is strong correlation between how poor a country is and prevalence of tourism, why is not Bulgaria as well known for tourism as Italy or Spain? Why, also fairly poor country, is not Romania listed? They too have a touristy area between ports of Constanta and Mangalia, as well as Danube delta. A prime candidate for tourist heavy economy, if this correlation were so strong, yet they are probably best known for Dacia car company and gypsies. 2. Why would tourism take away people from jobs? People always go for those jobs, that earn them more money and financial security. How was tourism described in this video? Basically as a low paying seasonal job! The very antithesis of in demand job, like the ones in stem fields. You don't need a computer science degree to become a network admin or even a coder. It takes grit, willingness and experiment, but it doesn't need formal education. I spot a different problem. Among the regions mentioned were mostly islands. Meaning, there are very few mine-able resources in these areas (at least economically viable in comparison to other places) as well as lower population in comparison to a larger mainland, which in turn permits only for lower level of specialization an consumption. Why would you build a factory on Mallorca, if vast majority of your potential customers were on the mainland (even assuming strictly domestic trade)? Why would you build a material processing facility or even final goods assembly on Mallorca, unless source of said material was also on Mallorca and there were few other sources of said material? Everything would have to go by plane or ship. To transport something by plane, it needs to be of high enough value (say microchips), to justify the price for transporting a tun of cargo by air. You might be thinking, that building a processing plant could be a good idea, because you have a port, but wrong again. In order to get to the really efficient and therefore per tun cheap ships, you need aggregate production and consumption on the island to be on particular scale, which comparatively small island will never reach due to lack of population. You would also need storage facilities, because ships don't come as often as trucks, which also increase your expenses, further making you less competitive, than someone, who has their operation strictly on mainland and only export finished product to the island in necessary quantities. It seems to me, that geographic factors preclude creation of more innovative industries in places like these, because everything is more expensive to source from or procure for the island, than for equivalent operation on mainland. Even service jobs, which could be done over the Internet, would be more expensive due to relatively higher cost of living caused by these higher expenses. Meaning tourism is the only industry, which can be developed in areas like these, given the capital requirements to bridge this gap for other industries (I'm talking logistics hubs, better Internet connection, self sustaining agriculture using high tech solutions, harbor enlargement...) It is too big of an investment for a return, that will always be lower than equivalent operation on the mainland, due to better economies of scale, thanks to better access to customers as well as production factors (material, labor...) To sum up, higher cost of operating a business, which in part are caused by higher costs of living due to higher costs of logistics support for these places, are precluding other industries from operating in these areas, even though they may scale better than tourism (say accounting or IT services). Leaving tourism for these places as the only industry, which will develop part of its value chain, because there is some kind of attraction in the area, which draws people in, such as beaches or mountains (I'm looking at you ski resorts, I'm looking at you). The only way to turn this around, would be to find a mine-able resource, which would be refined on the island to the point, where value of the product would permit competitive edge over other producers.
    2
  5. Economic activity is not the problem. Take a note, most if not all of the areas of Spain, which showed this problem were islands. Islands, which have everything more expensive to procure for the living and limited resources to export, including labor. It's more of, what can be developed in such areas.
    1
  6. and yet, Dubai was built on strategic position and an airline...
    1