Foreign visitors should pay more than local visitors for cultural and historical attractions. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

It is sometimes argued that visitors from overseas should be charged more than local residents to visit important sites and monuments. In my view, I completely disagree with

this

notion and reasonable claims will be discussed

further

in

this

essay. The argument in favour of higher prices for foreign tourists would be that the cultural or historical attractions often depend on state subsidies to keep them going, which means that the resident population already pays money to these locations through the tax system.

However

, I believe

this

to be a very short-sighted view. Foreign sightseers contribute to the economy of the host

country

with the money they spend on a wide range of goods and services including food, souvenirs, accommodation and travel. The governments and inhabitants of every

country

should be happy to subsidise important tourist sites and encourage more people from the rest of the world to visit them. If travellers from overseas realised that they would have to pay more to visit cultural or historical attractions in a particular nation, they would perhaps decide not to go to that

country

on holiday. To take the UK as an example, the tourism industry and many related jobs heavily rely on visitors coming to the

country

to see places

such

as Windsor Castle and Saint Paul’s Cathedral. These places charge the same price regardless of nationality, and

this

helps to promote the nation’s cultural heritage. If overseas tourists stopped coming to these important spots due to higher prices, there would be a risk of insufficient funding for the maintenance of the two buildings. In conclusion, I believe that every effort should be made to attract visitors from overseas and it would be counterproductive to make them pay more than local residents.