I'm gearing up for the last two weeks of the quarter here with lots of final projects, presentations, papers, and exams so that's been taking up lots of my free time! I'm still making time to go and visit various places around Kyoto though. One of my classes here is Cultural Tourism where we've been taking a special look at how Kyoto has been managing its rising number of tourists, so I thought this would be something interesting to talk about for this post.
In 2014, Kyoto was named the "Best City in the World" by Travel & Leisure Magazine, and in 2015, it again gained the #1 position. In 2016 it dropped to #2 behind Charleston, South Carolina, but it's obvious to see why Kyoto held onto that top spot for two years (and in the top 10 for years prior). This has led to a surge in tourists traveling to Japan and Kyoto to see the temples and shop and eat. Kyoto is a very small city and is not exactly equipped to deal with this many people. Hence, the major tourist attractions are incredibly overcrowded, there are fewer hotel rooms than tourists, and locals are developing a poor attitude towards tourists.
Something that's very sad to me is seeing these temples and shrines that are thousands of years old crowded by tourists trying to get the same photo for a popular Instagram post. And I am not without fault, I have participated strongly in this and I haven't felt more like a tourist at any point in these few months here than at one of these temples, elbowing my way through a crowd. I often think about the architects and builders of these places and what they would think of their masterpiece sectioned off with tape with tourists crowding around to take photos. Below are a few expectation v. reality (all photos are mine)
Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion
Arashiyama Bamboo Forest
Fushimi Inari Shrine
And let's not even start on the Kurama Fire Festival where I was shoved up against the side of someone's home with a group of people I didn't know for 20 minutes to watch this festival walk by
These honestly aren't even very close to the actual crowds, I honestly would rather not take photos than take photos with hundreds of people in them. Kyoto is currently working to advertise itself only to the luxury tourist markets. Personally, I think that's a wonderful idea. Kyoto is this beautiful, but very small, city with this amazing blend of history and culture and modernity and it's a shame it's fallen into this tourist trap. Especially for the luxury tourists who already come to Japan and want to see Kyoto, they're not going to want to pay these luxury prices to push through crowds. This was actually part of the reason why Kyoto fell from the top of Travel & Leisure's list was due to the complaints of crowds.
Currently, tourism is only expected to increase, especially with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics coming up. Kyoto is estimated to need 10,000 more hotel rooms to deal with this trend by 2020. There needs to be more diversity in what it offers to tourists so that they don't come to Kyoto only for Kinkakuji and Fushimi Inari, but come for onsen or the food or hiking, just to spread these tourists out more.
What's interesting to me is that, while Kyoto isn't managing its booming tourism well, can you think of a city that has managed tourism well? This is a problem around the world, and we need a lot of people in order to solve it. I definitely don't want to discourage you from coming to Kyoto, it is truly an amazing place, but just be prepared for your expectations to not exactly meet the reality.
Thanks!
Kim
No comments:
Post a Comment