Hahahaha - I would rather eat lint than look at FB posts too! Yes, I was feeling the same way in Porto, which felt like Disneyland instead of a city. Way too many people, and I was one of them! Couple thoughts - one is to keep encouraging people to see places that are not as popular. This will help those regions that need tourists and tourist dollars and maybe give people a different photo for their IG feed. But, ultimately, I think there needs to be a ticket system, and something special for locals to get into see places that they live by and support. The National Park System has implemented this pretty effectively in Utah and now in Montana. Glacier was getting way too crowded during Covid and the parking was out of hand so they put in place a low cost reservation system online and it worked wonders. But, in addition to this, they had a lot of locals upset who wanted to go every weekend, so I think there needs to be a balanced system. Hiking, in particular, is terrible when it's just a line of people going up a mountain. More pictures need to be shared of Madeira like the ones you put in your article. Thanks for writing about this!
Hahahaha - I would rather eat lint than look at FB posts too! Yes, I was feeling the same way in Porto, which felt like Disneyland instead of a city. Way too many people, and I was one of them! Couple thoughts - one is to keep encouraging people to see places that are not as popular. This will help those regions that need tourists and tourist dollars and maybe give people a different photo for their IG feed. But, ultimately, I think there needs to be a ticket system, and something special for locals to get into see places that they live by and support. The National Park System has implemented this pretty effectively in Utah and now in Montana. Glacier was getting way too crowded during Covid and the parking was out of hand so they put in place a low cost reservation system online and it worked wonders. But, in addition to this, they had a lot of locals upset who wanted to go every weekend, so I think there needs to be a balanced system. Hiking, in particular, is terrible when it's just a line of people going up a mountain. More pictures need to be shared of Madeira like the ones you put in your article. Thanks for writing about this!
Great ideas. Thanks for sharing. This island is just a little bit larger than 1/2 Kauai! 800 km2 / 309 mile2. It needs something to save itself.
Cue the slight pang of guilt for adding to the overcrowding.
This.
Great article. I heard there was a suggestion to limit tourism. That doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'm sure even then the limit world be very high.