This almost reads like a parody - could it be that the author really doesn't get it?
I visited this weekend / and we wanted to bike through some of the islands to the mainland of Finland. The only problem? Their anti-growth state of mind which makes it hard for tourism to shine. / I can understand wanting to keep housing prices low but if demand is great, just build more like they do everywhere that is popular? / What I cannot understand is a fee to simply pass through. It is just super anti-growth. / We will not exactly recommend people going there because it's kind of boring for a tourist.
That's the whole point. They don't want tourists, and they don't want tourism based growth, or any other kind of growth for that matter, any more than a person would want an actual growth on their body!
Just visited Ă…land two years ago. It was perfectly tourist-friendly on the main island, where most of the people live.
The author speaks of visiting Åva island in Brandö (county). That place is tiny; the population of the county is 436, split between multiple islands. It can't really support a booming service industry. Again, go check out the main island, that's where the party's at.
The author also complains about high fees on ferries if you're just driving through. The ferries are small, and primarily for the locals to move around; the high fee discourages drive-thru on purpose. Imagine you're trying to get to the other island for work or whatever and there's 300 cars queuing for places on a 60-car ferry.
Wait, "between Finland and Sverige"?!
Why not "between Suomi and Sverige"?
Or "between Finland and Sweden"?
Is it because Ă…land is mostly Swedish speaking that "Finland" gets written in English and "Sverig" gets written in Swedish?
I can only assume that this blog post is an extremely dry variety of sarcasm. Very, very well done, and an enjoyable tongue-in-cheeks read.
OMG this must be the most tone-deaf travelogue in the world. Hey, nice peaceful place, lots of nature—but why on Earth don't people there want to spoil it? Growth, we need growth! People here are anti-growth!
To paraphrase, "I went to a place whose people do not want to be visited by tourists; they have opted not to develop any tourist-focused amenities, and they've enacted policies which discourage tourists from visiting, which made my visit as a tourist boring and inconvenient. I can't imagine why they did that!"
The article leaves me far more puzzled by the author's mindset than that of the Ă…landers.