Do tourists take resources from locals in a disaster?

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I'm on a lot of Walt Disney World discussion groups where a major current topic is Hurricane Milton, which is expected to hit the Orlando area around Wednesday. A very common comment is that people should cancel their Disney World vacations for this time, because if they go, they'll be taking resources away from the locals.

I don't mean to to belittle the impact that the hurricane will have on locals, but I find this comment curious.

I admittedly know very little about how cities prepare for a storm like this, but it seems to me that either:

A) A hurricane-prone city that's known for being one of the world's most popular tourist destinations doesn't plan enough resources for everybody -- and if that's the case, it seems like you'd blame the people who plan the resources, not the tourists for wanting to come there.

Or

B) These people don't know what they're talking about and are just looking for somebody to get mad at.

I was glad there was at least one comment pointing out that people plan and save for these vacations for months or even years and thus don't want to just cancel them.

It also seems like one of those cases where I don't get why the people complaining about this live in an area so uniquely known for attracting tourists. It's like if people who live in Las Vegas complained about gambling happening in their city...which I'm sure some do.

Anybody who knows more about this stuff, do these comments have any merit?

Why would you go through with plans to vacation to a city you know is going to be hit by a hurricane?

Unless you wanna drown.

^

That's a valid point. As I understand it, Disney World, being in Central Florida, typically isn't hit as hard as the coast and remains open during most hurricanes. Milton is expected to be an especially bad one. And there are also tons of comments trying to dissuade tourists from coming for that reason. What I found curious were specifically the comments claiming that tourists shouldn't come because they'd be taking resources away from locals.

Resources in disasters are not primarily ones provided for by government but ordinary everyday things like food and gasoline. When there's a hurricane, power outages and impassable roads make those resources harder to access. Some stores and gas stations are closed or can't be reached, and there are often long lines at the available ones. This is just an example. So yes, any additional influx of people in a disaster makes resources harder to access for everyone.

^

Also a fair point. I guess I would expect a city where both tourists and hurricanes are so commonplace to have additional resources on hand at stores and gas stations and such, but I guess some things are just inevitably finite.

Part of the issue is related to breakdowns of logistics and resupply, since often roads are either damaged or flooded.

If there's problems getting fuel or food into the area that means what's already there needs to be adequate until resupply at the normal rate is able to occur again.

The local gas stations can only store so much fuel on site, for example. If they're in a high volume area they're not going to invest in substantially higher on site storage capacity, they're doing to arrange more regular deliveries.

Same goes for all sorts of other goods. Walmart doesn't build the back storeroom 10x bigger because the store has especially high traffic, they just schedule more deliveries and put more of the most in demand goods on each delivery.

If they normally sell 40 widgets a day and keep 120 in stock, but now resupply of widgets is likely to be interrupted for the next 4 days, some folks are gonna have to do without widgets for a day. If tourists make up a quarter of that demand, having no tourists for those 4 days would mean the existing widget supply won't be exhausted before the next anticipated delivery.

Further, if keeping ~120 widgets in stock is the best balance between supply and storage requirements, why would Walmart store more of them on-site unless they're forced to? Maintaining a higher than ideal supply just costs them money, either because it's eating into storage space for some other goods (impacting the ability to optimize in stock storage of those goods) or because they had to build a larger facility than ideal which adds to their overhead.

Much of the resource planning is motivated by profit margins, there's no incentive to use local (privately owned) businesses as warehouses in the event of emergencies, so why would you blame the people who do the planning in that context for not doing something that's literally both not their job and counterproductive to what their job actually incentivizes?

The tourists get blamed because they don't need to be there, they chose to be there.

TBH, I probably wouldn't go during or in the immediate aftermath. Although, going afterwards to volunteer is probably doable for folks with the ability to lend a hand. But, otherwise, I'd personally wait until things are cleaned up enough that their local economy can start to benefit from tourist dollars.

Aren't tourists like paying houseguests?

So if you take a vacation to a disaster area...an area which has lost its infrastructure and can no longer support anything local...including it tourist economy...so you cant go to their beaches, fine restaurants, museums, tours, theme parks,etc because its all buried under debris and human bodies, and thus have no reason to go there as a tourist...should you feel guilty?

No.

You should feel like a friggin idiot.

Unless you're going there not as a conventional tourist but as a volunteer to help with the clean up and rescue (which youd prolly lack skills for).

hmmm during the Arab spring revolution in 2011 in Egypt, foreign tourists were being targeted in terror attacks. Despite the country being a no go destination an unbelievable record number of tourists (nearly 10 million) visited in 2011 despite the travel warnings.

But if you're short on essentials like food and water and gasoline and a place to sleep and shelter, because they're not accessible, what good is the houseguests' money?

When Haiti was having civil strife and cuts in power/water it experienced a massive drop in tourism but even during the height of conflict there were still 150,000 tourists. Currently the number has grown back to its original number of 1.2 million visitors.

tourists = $$ for the locals.

As I recall, though I am weak on the details, when there was an earthquake in Haiti in 2010 there was a problem with even aid workers using up resources like housing.

And when the wildfires happened in Maui the locals wanted the tourists out.

It's not just disaster areas. Places like Spain, local people are sick of foreign tourists.