Apparently we should be vacationing in Barcelona

Sick of drunken, naked visitors cavorting in the streets, residents of one seaside neighborhood in Barcelona are fighting back, complaining that the Spanish city has fallen victim to its own tourism success.

Long popular with foreign merrymakers, the beachside district of La Barceloneta surged to notoriety last month when newspapers published photographs of smirking tourists shopping stark naked in a supermarket there.



Here's the interesting part, for me:

Saida Palou, author of a doctoral thesis on tourism in Barcelona, said: “The problem is not the number of tourists, but the fact they are concentrated in the same few places.

“Barcelona cannot do without tourism because 10 to 12 per cent of the city’s economic output depends on it,” she added.

I’ve seen this move before. You beg tourists to come and they do. Jackpot?! Then you don’t like the tourists and tell them to leave and they do. Then you ask them to come back. We’ll see.

I remember Myrtle Beach got sick of the bikers a few years back and said they didn’t want them back anymore. So people didn’t go where they weren’t wanted. The local shops and restaurant’s lost a lot of money and Myrtle Beach back peddled on and invited bikers back.

Source: Themalayonline.
Photo: AFP