Tourism taxes inevitable to fend off the traveller crush
In 1953, mountaineers Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first confirmed summiting of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak. Recently, Everest has grown so popular that photos are surfacing showing huge lines of climbers waiting to surmount that same peak. On the rarefied ground where once only Mr Norgay and Mr Hillary tread, now climbers are dying because of overcrowding.
A less dramatic version of this scene is being played out around the world — for both good and ill. The number of international tourist arrivals has been increasing more or less exponentially since the mid-20th century and totalled about 1.4bn in 2018. Europe has seen the biggest share, but the Asia-Pacific region is growing fast. This growth has been driven by a confluence of factors.
