What destinations are experiencing "undertourism"?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/19371857
I'm curious to learn about places around the globe that have a significant amount of underutilized tourism infrastructure. In many cases, I suspect that governments are propping up unsustainable tourism operators or investing in tourism with a "build it and they will come" mentality.
Here are a few examples that I'm aware of:
Qatar - The country has an oversupply of hotels relative to the number of visitors, and its tourism economy heavily relies on layover tours due to the strength of Qatar Airways' network.
Saudi Arabia - In an effort to diversify its economy away from oil, the country is pushing a massive tourism development agenda, despite having many factors that make it less appealing to visitors. Religious tourism seems to be a primary focus.
North Korea - For obvious reasons... For example, only a few floors of the Ryugyong Hotel are ever occupied.
Northern Japan (Aomori, Akita, Sendai) - These places are heavily fueled by domestic tourism, and are basically deserted for half of the year (despite attractions and so on still functioning).
To clarify, I'm not looking for hidden gems or places that are simply underrated travel destinations. Instead, I'm interested in learning about locations where there is a clear mismatch between the available tourism infrastructure and the actual number of visitors.
I want to find places where I might end up being the only visitor to a museum or one of few tourists on an airport bus. The fact that these museums and airport limo buses even exist is where the question stems from.
Mogadishu has tried increasing tourism for years but no one wants to visit.
It could be because you would immediately get robbed, raped and killed as a tourist there, but what would I know.
It's not just tourists that need to worry about that stuff. I have friends with Somali heritage and they don't want to go there either, even with having family there.
I think I'm going to need a source for that...
On top of that, there's little tourism infrastructure in Mogadishu so I doubt that. There's basically Omar and Ali's Visit Mogadishu outfit and his guest house, and that's really about it.
https://www.travelsafe-abroad.com/somalia/
Pretty easy to find really...
https://apnews.com/article/somalia-syl-hotel-attack-alshabab-7a9bdd2dd1da050e942819afe2ba4b4a
Hotel siege March 2024
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65861346
6 killed at a hotel siege June 2023
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/somalia-hotel-attack-al-shabab-12-dead-mogadishu-hayat-hotel-rcna44051
20 killed Hyatt August 2023
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61196325
6 killed seaside restaurant 2022
None of these sources point to tourism promotion in Mogadishu.