Tahoe's overtourism challenge

Most of what I know about Lake Tahoe comes from early 1960's hipster Rat Pack-ian references to "Tahoe" made by Frank and Sammy, often using the same sly, knowing, winking way they referred to "Vegas." 

I know Lake Tahoe from watching all those years of Bonanza, on which show the Ponderosa, the Cartwrights' sprawling ranch, bordered on the lake. Or did the Cartwrights own it? 

I also know Lake Tahoe from The Godfather because that's where the Corleone family decamped to from Queens in Godfather II after Vito, the godfather himself, died. The (gorgeous) house that Michael and his family lived in was shot up by enemies on the night of his son Anthony's Holy Communion. And it was on Lake Tahoe that hapless, gormless Fredo Corleone made his final, fatal fishing trip, condemned to a watery grave by his brother Michael for being in unwitting cahoots with the enemies who shot up Casa Corleone. 

I know Lake Tahoe because have been there once in person, when a years-ago visit to a friend in Reno included lunch at a hamburger joint somewhere on the lake. (Good burgers; excellent view.)

Finally, I know it from its occasional appearance on House Hunters or some other show on HGTV.

So I know by reputation, by TV and movies, and by personal appearance that the area is just gorgeous. 

I'm an Easterner by baptism and by desire, and, to me, New England is beautiful. But the West, well, it's just breathtaking. 

That the Lake Tahoe area is beautiful isn't exactly a secret. Plenty of tourists know that, too. So many tourists that, last November, Fodor's noted that Lake Tahoe has a "people problem" - as in too many - and recommended that tourists stay away. They added Lake Tahoe to "Fodor's No List 2023," where it keeps company with the cliffs of Normandy, and with Antarctica, on the list of areas where "nature needs a break." 

(Fodor's also warned tourists off of "suffering cultural hotspots" like Venice, Cornwall, Amsterdam, and Thailand; 

and "destinations suffering from water crises" (among them Maui and the American Southwest).

Tourism can just be too much of a good thing, sayeth Fodor. And, as someone who has tourists clomping by my front door pretty much every day during the high season, I can sayeth it as welleth. 

When the Fodor warning came out, Tahoe tourism officials were surprised, "miffed," even. (As an aside: is "miffed" a great word or what?) Some found it "a little bit shocking." But they also recognized that landing on the "no list" was well-founded. And that they needed to do something about it. 

Since Fodor’s declared last November that “Lake Tahoe has a people problem,” some unlikely voices have expressed a new willingness to consider taxes or fees on motorists, a nonstarter not long ago.

Meanwhile local business and tourism officials are lining up behind a new effort to persuade people to check out less trafficked parts of the lake and to visit outside of high season.

The idea is to preserve a $5 billion local economy built around the tourists who come to hike, camp, boat, bike, ski and gamble, while also easing their impact on the environment and communities. Roughly one-third the size of the Sierra Nevada’s also-crowded Yosemite National Park, the Lake Tahoe Basin gets about three times as many visitors — around 15 million each year.

“We know that we really need to get out of the tourism marketing business and get into the tourism management business,” said Carol Cha plin, CEO of the Lake Tahoe Visitor’s Authority. (Source: Fortune)

Recently, a plan for "sustainably preserving" the gold mine that is Lake Tahoe tourism - a plan backed by a group of "conservation, business, governmental, and private entities" - was released. Some of the ideas in the plan call for encouraging midweek and off-peak visits. Other ideas address traffic and parking "nightmares", and promoting public transportation to ease those nightmares. The idea of charging a fee to drive through town is also being batted around. (If you've driven through Carmel in California, you'll remember paying a fee to get onto the Monterrey Peninsula.)

Solving the overtourism problem won't be easy. 

...especially because of the multiple jurisdictions involved, including five counties in two states, individual towns, regulators, the Coast Guard and the U.S. Forest Service.

But here's hoping.

Meanwhile, getting on the Fodor No List hasn't exactly put a crimp in Tahoe tourism. 

Hotel occupancy between December and April, the height of the ski season, was up 12% from last year, Chaplin said, and that included a stretch when visitation fell off or was flat as one of the wettest winters on record snowed in neighborhoods and businesses and buried roads and highways.

Tourists want to go where tourists want to go...