What are the bad effects of travel and tourism in New Zealand?
Tourism and travel has its effects no matter where you go. I can’t answer for New Zealand but I can give you an idea from living next door in Australia (and we would have the same kinds of problems so its still relevant). 1. The original culture of the land gets made over to attract the tourists. Everything that was once rustic and natural becomes all polished as if it was built yesterday. 2. International travel makes it much easier to transmit viruses (the recent swine flu epidemic a case in point). 3. Large numbers of visitors can cause wear and tear on the natural landscape to point where the number of visitors has to be limited. 4. International criminals hide behind the guise of being tourists to import contraband goods in the country and export protected and endangered wildlife. 5. Aircraft and cruise ships could potentially be terrorist targets. 6. Tourists can bring in food and plants could become dominant in a country that has no natural defence against them in the wild.
