Got a Wheelie Bag? Roll It at Dubrovnik, and It Could Cost You a Pretty Penny

Seasoned globetrotters will remember when suitcases were hefted by hand or strapped over one’s shoulder. We lumbered noiselessly like humanoid galleons across sun-drenched piazzas until innovations in luggage brought forth a quality-of-life issue that is fraying Europeans’ nerves like fingernails across a blackboard: the clamor of wheeled suitcases on cobblestones.Now it turns out that one prominent city — Dubrovnik — has officially had its fill. The mayor of the picturesque seaside Croatian city, Mato Frankovic, is cracking down on the nefarious practice by imposing a fine of $288 on anyone caught dragging their roller bag across the cobblestone byways of the Old Town. From November on, the ban will be in effect for the whole city.It is all part of a plan to rewrite the rules of tourism in this particularly popular city. Mr. Frankovic is spearheading a plan that will see tourists leave their luggage outside the city center altogether. “They will leave their bags at the designated point, and we will, of course, for a fee, bring their things to the address where they will stay,” he told a local newspaper. Lest prospective visitors — or “guests,” as the city describes them — think the mayor is making too much of a fuss over what might qualify as the world’s least pressing problem, consider tourism trends in general and per Dubrovnik in particular. With the end of pandemic travel restrictions, tourism in Europe drawing unprecedented crowds in popular cities like London and Barcelona and packed flights to and from America.In 2022 more than a million tourists descended on Dubrovnik, a walled city that owes much of its popularity to its use as a film location for “Game of Thrones.” This year tourism is up nearly a third over the year-earlier period. So a battalion of wheeled suitcases that may glide noiselessly across an airport floor is creating in the city a symphony of clacking cobblestones.That racket is what prompted locals to complain and the municipal authorities to take action. Yet answering the needs of residents along with those of the tourists on whom many locals depend for their livelihoods, and minimizing friction between them, can be a tricky balance. Another pearl of the Adriatic, Venice, has already introduced congestion fees on visitors.Critics say that implementing crowd-control fees and persnickety regulations on things like what kind of suitcase one can carry are turning European cities into little more than urban theme parks, like miniature Disneylands without the rides.Yet measures like the wheelie bag clampdown in Dubrovnik could end up paying dividends to short-term visitors as well as locals. After all, whether one is perched along the Croatian coast or in always lively Paris, nobody likes to be roused before dawn by the jarring sound that a wheeled suitcase invariably makes on centuries-old pavement when a frenzied tourist drags it along as he scrambles to catch up with a taxi. While for some guests the new restrictions smack of too much bureaucracy, in effect what we are seeing is a prioritization of quality-of-life issues over convenience. Between a rebounding tourism industry, cruise ships that keep getting bigger, and social media, which serves as nonstop free advertising for destinations like Dubrovnik, a ban on noise-making bags was probably inevitable. Mindful that the aesthetics of their historic city is one of its chief assets, Dubrovnik tourism authorities have also produced a short animated video. The film encourages tourists to, among other things, pick up their roller suitcases, not parade around town with their shirts off or on bikes, and refrain from clambering atop public monuments.Mr. Frankovc, at a press conference in June, said that the video is meant as “a means of communication with our guests, to inform them about the behavior we expect from them when they arrive in our city.” He adds that “our goal is not to punish them but to familiarize them in a simple way with what constitutes acceptable behavior in the protected UNESCO heritage site.”

Got a Wheelie Bag? Roll It at Dubrovnik, and It Could Cost You a Pretty Penny

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