UNESCO Urges Venice’s Inclusion on Endangered Heritage List Due to Overtourism

It must be said that travel has resumed in force this summer. According to the International Air Transport Association, 4.35 billion people will travel in 2023, a number comparable to 2019 (4.54 billion).

The airlines are doing golden business, as reported by the Financial Times at the end of July: International Airlines Group (IAG), owner of British Airways, and Air France-KLM post record profits of 1.25 billion euros for the second quarter alone.

The catch: everyone wants to travel to the same places. According to the World Tourism Organization, 95% of tourists visit less than 5% of places in the world. In France, which remains the most visited country on the planet, the government estimates that 80% of tourist activity is concentrated in 20% of the territory, an imbalance that greatly mortgages certain regions such as Brittany, the Côte d’Azur and , of course, Paris, the most visited city in the world with its 44 million annual tourists.

We obviously cannot compare the situation in Quebec to that of European countries, but on a smaller scale, Gaspésie experienced a similar phenomenon when, in the midst of a pandemic, tourists rushed to the Gaspé beaches with disastrous consequences. for the sites visited.

The mayor of Quebec Bruno Marchand is also concerned about the ravages of tourism. He does not want Old Quebec, where local shops have given way to tourist-oriented businesses, to become a “cardboard Disney”.

This is the whole paradox of mass tourism: visitors in search of authenticity kill authenticity.

In too large numbers, their impact becomes harmful. The transformation of housing into tourist accommodation causes a rise in prices and contributes to the housing crisis. Neighborhoods are changing.

Social peace is disturbed by the presence of too many visitors who do not always respect the premises. And that’s without taking into account the environmental impact of travel, which is a subject in itself.

While some regions of the world are trying to attract film crews to showcase their city or region – what is called film tourism or “jet-setting” – others are suffering from the success of certain series that drag too many curious people in their wake. The example ofEmily in Paris immediately comes to mind, but one can also think of White Lotus for Sicily, or to the series Lupin for the cliffs of Étretat in Normandy where the population is multiplied by ten during the high season.

In the Bordeaux region, we now speak of the “Côte d’Azurisation” from the Gironde. Of course, we do not disdain the economic benefits (105 million for Bordeaux only this year), but at what price? The two million visitors who climb the Dune de Pilat each year are largely responsible for its erosion. In 50 years, the dune has retreated 200 meters!

What to do to regain control? Some will say that we should outright ban trips that generate astronomical quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs). We are obviously not there yet.

To better control the peaks of influx and the flow of tourists, France has just adopted a plan which provides, among other things, for the establishment of an observatory which will document movements on French territory.

Several regions of France are already adopting measures to limit the number of visitors. In the islands of the Port-Cros National Park, in the Var, quotas have been introduced in 2021: 6,000 visitors per day, not one more. Same approach on the island of Bréhat in Brittany: on weekdays, from mid-July to the end of August, only 4,700 people are accepted on the island.

Back home, the city of Percé in Gaspésie tried to impose a tourist fee, but in doing so, it went beyond the powers granted to municipalities, as highlighted by a judgment of the Superior Court. However, a reflection remains to be done on the implementation of measures in the most visited regions of Quebec – think of the Îles-de-la-Madeleine.

You can’t stop a heart from loving and, in the same way, you can’t stop tourists from dreaming of the beaches of Nice, the Trevi Fountain or the Eiffel Tower.

On the other hand, we can create other favorites by discovering other regions, one of the objectives of the French plan which proposes to promote lesser known regions such as Auvergne or Picardy.

Some even go so far as to advocate “demarketing”, that is to say the dissemination of images of places invaded by tourists (ultra-crowded beaches, overflowing museum halls, endless queues) in order to discourage tourists to choose a destination. But to see visitors crowding in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, it seems that this approach is more or less effective.

In the medium and long term, the climate crisis will force us to review our relationship to travel. Let’s not wait until we are banned from traveling altogether to think about smarter, more sustainable ways to travel.