Tourists are as much a feature of life as a student at this University as tutorials, Summer Eights, or getting unfathomably hammered next to your tutors at subject dinners. They are also considerably less fun to experience than any of these three staples, and it is regrettable that we are so constantly subjected to their effects. While tourism to this city and its colleges bring in considerable revenue not just for the University, but for the local and national economy too, are we really so shallow as to value something simply because of its commercial value? I’d hope not.
Before this term, I had really only suffered bumping into large groups of distinctly lost looking tourists in the usual hotspots: Cornmarket, the Martyrs Memorial, etc. – I am sure we are all familiar. As of this term, however, my tutorials have been at Christ Church, and I am now tortured far more frequently and far less avoidably.
Walking to the damned college is bad enough, as I am not only subjected to the overcrowdedness of many of the aforementioned hot spots, but subjected to them on a Friday of all days, which comes second only to the weekend in managing to bring the hoards out of the woodwork. Having got there and negotiated hard with the Porters to let me in (their suspicion of visitors is remarkable – seemingly another negative externality brought about by their subjection to hundreds of lost tourists every day) Tom Quad brings a brief moment of respite. Alas, it is a Trojan Horse. Walking around the corner towards Peck can feel like being suddenly launched head-first into rapids and told to swim against the current. Having made it through my tutorial, I then have the delightful task of repeating this challenge in reverse.
It is true, of course, that tourism is an important part of Oxford’s economy. In the 2018/19 financial year alone, tourism to the University generated a whopping £611 million. On an annual basis, tourism to the City generates an even more impressive £780 million. However, one cannot help but wonder which businesses this sizeable financial endowment supports. Is it the quaint independent bookshops or cafés? Or is it the unremarkable, copy-and-paste tourist traps that plague Cornmarket? I have a feeling it is rather more the latter. It is worth asking whether we really want to see this as beneficial to the City’s culture. Unlike the strong arguments for immigration that stand on the dividends of cultural diversity, tourism simply cannot do the same. Mass tourism, involving shipping large numbers of visitors to the city arriving on buses that crowd St Giles’, brings little but constant and annoying obstacles that residents are subjected to on a daily basis. I pity the poor students who live in ground-floor rooms in St. John’s front quad – I cannot count the number of times I have seen tourists wandering into staircases or having their picture taken in front of the large windows. I also cannot help but wonder about how many embarrassing or intimate moments have been caught in the background of these inappropriately-taken photos.
Colleges, and this City in general, should not feel like a minefield, nor an obstacle course, but rather a place to live and enjoy without constant observation. It is a sad indication that one of the first memories I made here is being photographed by persistent flocks of seagull-like tourists squawking at me on my matriculation day, which made me feel more like a caged animal than a budding undergraduate. While tourism brings in money to the City and the University, I cannot help but wonder if financial gain alone is enough to justify those of us who live here being constantly subjected to this pesternace.
Of course, even if you concur with this assessment, the question that emerges from all of this is what are we to do? As much as scheming about how to deal with these pesterances has amused me, the more practical solutions seem rather harsh – even in the opinion of this generally unforgiving author. Limiting tourist visiting hours or demarkating no-go zones seem more like the machinations of some deranged dictator than viable policies. It is important to note, however, that many of the issues caused by the visiting hoards are the result of a general lack of awareness rather than deliberate ignorance. For instance, the seemingly simple (and, dare I say, common sense) notion that when walking as part of a large group, one should not stand side-by-side as some sort of tribute to the Iron Curtain, seems to have been missed in the Tourists’ Handbook to Oxford (if this is yet to be written, please consider this article my formal declaration of intent to do so). Ultimately, as much as we can loathe the tourists and be pestered by their genuinely impressive capacity to always be standing in the most inconvenient places possible, maybe we as hosts – albeit rather unwilling ones – should try and do better to inform and explain rather than scoff and judge. After all, one day we might be playing the role of the annoying visitors in some strange and interesting land.
