Cruise ships visit many destinations around the world, but they aren’t popular everywhere. Residents in Norway took to Reddit to share their anger about cruise passengers.
One person who said they lived in a popular destination wrote: “The ships sometimes have more people than the town.
“They swarm the streets and it’s totally unsafe, our sidewalks are not wide enough to accommodate the amount of people so they walk in the street in the traffic,not paying attention at all.
“Don’t get me started when they all start asking if they can pay with euros either.”
Cruise ships can sometimes carry thousands of passengers and tourists may outnumber the residents in the towns they visit.
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Bar Harbor, a popular cruise destination in Maine in the USA, recently voted to limit the number of cruise tourists allowed to disembark each day.
Cruise passengers regularly outnumbered the town’s residents during the peak holiday season.
Another Norwegian resident said: “Cruise tourists are not well received. They live and eat on the cruise and rarely shop as it’s quite expensive here.
“They just clog up the streets and are a nuisance without any value added. Many of them don’t seem to understand the Old Town is a residential area.
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“They walk right up to people’s kitchen windows to look inside, open gates and enter private gardens and even try to enter homes if they aren’t locked.”
A tourist added: “I can see this being a big issue. I did see a lot of cruise tourists when I was there and it did seem invasive.”
Cruise tourists will get the majority of their meals on the ship so are unlikely to spend a lot of money in the towns they visit.
They may also join cruise line excursions which may upset residents as it won’t help the town’s tourism industry.
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A regular cruise tourist added: “This is ridiculous. If you don’t want cruises ask your local Government to not allow them to park in the first place.”
Several top destinations have introduced limits on cruise ships, including a total ban on ships in the Venice lagoon.
Barcelona has announced plans to increase taxes for cruise tourists but the exact amount has yet to be shared.
However, as the industry remains popular with tourists, many destinations may struggle to control it.
