For years, the American chef Anthony Bourdain, in his television shows with trips around the world, emphasized that the spirit of those who travel should be that of the traveler and not the tourist, the person who respects and appreciates the culture of the place he visits.
How would the well-traveled Bourdain (who died in 2018) comment today on cities sinking under the weight of too many tourists?
In 2023 the number of tourists worldwide reached 1.5 billion. Many cities are now taking a series of measures to control the lucrative overtourism. But how effective have these measures been?
The example of Barcelona
Recently the Municipality of Barcelona, a city of 1.7 million inhabitants which receives an average of 12 million visitors a year, pledged that by 2028 the licenses for 10,000 short-term rental properties (Airbnb) will be put to an end in order to deal with the acute problem roof.
The initiative comes in addition to the municipality’s decision to invest 44.2 million euros in direct investments to hire municipal police officers, strengthen cleaning services and security services, control street vendors and remap tourist routes.
“The measures announced by the Municipality of Barcelona are pretentious and ineffective,” Daniel Pardo Rivacomba, who represents Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (ABDT – Assembly of Districts for Tourism Development), told “Vima” in “Vima”. umbrella where many residents’ organizations opposed to “tourism” participate.
“Until the beginning of this spring, the Municipality of Barcelona had recommended that we limit our water consumption because we had gone through a prolonged period of drought and the city’s water reserves had decreased to 16%. The establishment of the municipality concerned citizens and all professionals except tourism businesses – because hotel swimming pools had to remain full of water. After heavy spring and early summer rains, water reserves reached 41%. Thus the problem was temporarily “solved”.
The housing problem
ABDT participated in the July 6 protest marches in Barcelona against unregulated tourism, during which some protesters water-gunned unsuspecting tourists. At the end of the protest, ABDT presented a 13-point manifesto calling for, among other things, a reduction in the number of tourist accommodation in the city, fewer cruise ships entering the port of Barcelona and an end to the tourism campaign, which is funded by money of Catalan taxpayers.
According to Rivakomba, “the only measure that worked was the one put into effect by the previous municipal authority (s.b.: of the left-wing mayor and former activist Anti Colau) in 2017, when the creation of tourist accommodation in specific zones in the city center was prohibited, while in the rest of the areas rules were set for the operation of the tourist activity. This measure was an important brake on hypertourism.
However, the recent measures announced by the current municipal authority (s.s.: socialist mayor Zaume Kolboni) are only promises, such as the alleged ban on cruise ships entering the port. They announced with fanfare the abolition of short-term tenancies within the next five years. But they did not mention the abolition of seasonal leases: those who rent their properties on a short-term basis will simply change their status and rent them on a seasonal basis. In addition, while the municipality has announced that it will abolish short-term rentals, at the same time it is considering the possibility of creating 5,000 new hotels in the city and 15,000 in the greater Barcelona area.
Rents sky high
According to official figures from the UN tourism agency, 2023 was a record year for tourism in Spain, becoming the second country in the world, after France, to receive the most tourists, totaling 85 million. Tourism contributes 12.8% of Spain’s Gross National Product (GDP).
Tourists, however, are blamed for the increase in rental prices, for the non-existence of houses for rent by permanent residents, for the alteration of the character of the city and for the transformation of Barcelona into a theme park.
In the last ten years, rent prices in Barcelona have increased by 68% and prices for buying a new home by 40%, while an estimated 6,000 apartments are rented illegally.
According to S. T. Chang, a professor of Geography at the University of Singapore, an expert in urban tourism and the author of studies on the phenomenon of hypertourism and urban gentrification, “Barcelona and Venice were the first cities in Europe where the residents began to strongly oppose hypertourism, two or three years before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020”.
This happened, as he pointed out in “Vima”, “because these cities receive waves of tourists mainly in the summer months. It is known that Spain, France and Italy are among the most popular tourist destinations. When the crowds of tourists in Barcelona and Venice use the infrastructure of the cities (from the transport networks to the supermarkets) that the residents also use, then the balance of the cities is disturbed.”
The efforts of Venice
Since last April Venice, where during the tourist season the ratio of tourists to residents is three to one, has trialled 5 euro ticket to enter the city. After the pandemic, tourists visiting Venice left 2.7 billion euros and 70,000 tons of garbage in the city.
The municipal authority is considering another measure to be implemented from August, according to which groups of tourists should not exceed 25 people. It is recalled that in 2021 the municipality prohibited large cruise ships from entering the “laguna”, the lagoon of Venice, and mooring near the historic center of the city.
“Vima” contacted Simone Venturini, Councilor of the Municipality of Venice, in charge of tourism, who stated that the municipality is waiting for the end of the summer to evaluate how effective the measures taken to protect the city from overtourism are. .
Professor ST Chang points out that there are parallels in the phenomena of hypertourism in the cities of Europe and Asia. “Hypertourism is seen in the ‘exotic heart of cities’, whether it is St. Mark’s Square in Venice or the historic center of Kyoto in Japan. The difference between the two continents lies in the fact that hypertourism in Asia mainly affects the coastal areas (Bali in Indonesia, Boracay Island in the Philippines) while in Europe it mainly affects the cities.
The responsibilities of governments and local authorities
In her new book entitled “The new tourist: Waking up to the power and perils of travel” (“The New Tourist: Realizing the Power and Perils of Travel”), American journalist Paige McClanahan, who lives in France, writes that every tourist is responsible for the places he visits. In the context of this responsibility and respect for the places he visits, the way the tourist captures his experiences on social media is also included. The tourist, McClanahan writes, bears responsibility for how real the images he conveys through social networks are.
The author, however, argues that tourists are not solely to blame for the transformation of cities. Local authorities and governments also have a great responsibility. The example of Barcelona is typical. Until the 1992 Olympics, Barcelona was a dreary industrial port of Spain, a half-asleep city. The Olympics changed her forever.
Daniel Rivacomba of the ABDT organization confirms to “Vima” that “indeed 1992 was year zero for the boom in tourism in Barcelona”. On the occasion of the Olympics, the local government of Catalonia invested heavily in tourism, did everything to ensure that the city did not disappear from the map after the Games ended, but did little to regulate the tourism industry and protect its residents from negative consequences of hypertourism.
A similar strategy, McClanahan writes, was implemented by Amsterdam after the global financial crisis of 2008. The city’s authorities mounted a massive advertising campaign to attract tourists that included a video inviting tourists to “spend a night full of mischief in Amsterdam”.
Sixteen years later, Amsterdam finds itself at the opposite end of that campaign, protesting the explosion in tourist numbers. Municipalities and governments must not forget who elected them and why, and prioritize for the benefit of residents first and visitors second.
“Plenty does not mean good”
ST Chang agrees: “If countries,” he says in “Vima”, “continue to prioritize the strengthening of their tourism industry based on the logic of ‘the more the merrier'” and if tourist companies set goals by adopting the concept of “big is beautiful”, the phenomenon of hypertourism is not going to be stopped. Traditional tourism destinations should focus on quality rather than quantity. This practically means fewer tourists for each destination, but tourists who will spend more time and money and who will interact with the locals in a more meaningful way.”
The ticket did not interrupt the “current”
Was the €5 ticket measure introduced by Venice in April a success or failure in an attempt to reduce the number of tourists in the high tourist season?
“We have limited certain visitor peaks,” said Mayor Luigi Brugnaro. But the city authorities believe that they need to look more closely at the numbers before deciding whether the measure succeeded or failed.
Venice’s local authorities set aside 29 peak days (mainly weekends and national holidays 8.30am-4pm) from April to mid-July on which day visitors paid €5 each to visit the city and its canals. In these months, 485,000 visitors paid the day ticket, making Venice 2.43 million euros richer.
This amount is much higher than the 700,000 euros that the authorities estimated they would collect. Critics of the measure consider it a failure because it did not sufficiently curb over-tourism in the city.
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