An easy cure for overtourism

Don’t follow the herd, go somewhere else

Talk of ‘overtourism’ has been omnipresent in the world of travel in the last year, as more and more destinations approach breaking point due to the huge number of visitors they attract. Again and again overcrowded tourism hotspots have been stripped of their charm, cultural diversity and vibrancy, while considerable environmental and economic negative impacts have been created.

Too many luxury hotels and villas with private pools drain water supplies, traffic jams build up to intolerable levels, prices rise far out of reach of locals and housing problems are exacerbated as more and more properties are rented out as holiday homes. Local authorities struggle to cope with basic services such as clearing rubbish: Amsterdam residents last summer dubbed the city a garbage dump, saying that tourist-generated rubbish triggered streets being overrun by rats and seagulls.

A Europe-wide YouGov poll in September found that 45% of Spanish respondents said they had a negative view of the holiday letting sector, while 48% in Catatonia, the region which includes Barcelona, said that there were too many foreign travellers in their area. 47% of French respondents had a strong negative opinion of the cruise industry, and between 46% and 58% of respondents in all seven countries surveyed were in favour of banning the construction of new hotels in popular cities. What more indication is there that enough is enough?

No wonder that locals have been fighting back, for example in Amsterdam stag dos have been heavily discouraged, while in Japan initiatives ranging from erecting a huge black barrier to obscure a popular tourist’s viewing spot, fees applicable for ascending Mount Fuji, and closing areas of the historic geisha district in Kyoto have been implemented.

Mallorca and the Canary Islands have seen regular organised protests, as has Greece. Cornwall, Florence, Dubrovnik, Iceland, Alaska and Hawaii are just some of the other destinations that have been adversely affected by overtourism in recent years. Venice banned tour groups of more than 25 people and forbid the use of megaphones by guides last year, while in Barcelona guns were even used in protests - albeit water pistols.

Being branded a UNESCO World Heritage Site used to be a badge of honour, but now it just exacerbates the problem of overtourism, drawing in evermore people. In Kotor, Montenegro, for example, the streets are now like the Oxford Street sales in summer, traffic jams off the scale, and huge cruise ships dominating key views.

In Reykjavík, Iceland, music venues have been demolished to make way for new hotels, while the Lofoten Islands in Norway saw a 15% increase in tourism from 2022-3.

Initiatives to reduce visitor numbers aren’t a new thing. For some years only a small number of permits have been granted daily to visit the gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda and Congo, for instance. Costing US$1500 for an hour’s audience with gorillas in Rwanda, US$800 in Uganda, and US$400 in Congo, not only do they prevent too many visitors to the gorillas, which would be be detrimental to the primates, but the income helps secure their future too.

The Spanish Cies islands off the north-western region of Galicia in Spain introduced a cap on visitors seven years ago after the thousands of daily visitors that descended became unmanageable. Now, only between 450 and 1800 visitors, depending on time of year, are permitted daily. Other destinations, including Machu Picchu and Venice, also tried visitor caps, to varying success. Venice’s recently imposed ‘entrance fee’ was seen to simply to reduce the city to little more than a theme park.

While it is totally understandable that some destinations swamped with mass tourism may protest about huge influxes of visitors, the tourism industry is a main source of income for many such places. In 2023, the worldwide travel and tourism market totalled around £7.6 trillion, making up 9.1 per cent of global GDP.

Being too heavy handed at deterring tourists could mean a drop in visitor numbers that is much higher than anticipated, swapping the problem of too many crowds with a catastrophic fall in income. For example, following protests in Mallorca for tourists to go home - including in May 2024 around 10,000 demonstrators and in July 20,000 marching in the capital, holding posters that read ‘SOS Residents’ and ‘Enough Mass Tourism’ - a recent poll by the Mallorca Daily Bulletin found that 58.8 per cent of respondents were reconsidering a holiday to the island following the protests.

With many people increasingly considering holidays to cooler climes due to climate change, the exodus from our most familiar holiday hotspots will also invariably be boosted by their feeling unwelcome.

The simplest way to eradicate overtourism is for people to increasingly explore off the beaten track options and not follow each other like sheep. There are loads of emerging and overlooked destinations waiting to be discovered and desperate for tourists, from Algeria to Albania.

I recently stayed in the town of Asolo, around an hour from Venice. Rich in history and charm and wonderful architecture, it was delightfully uncrowded and had the air of a Europe from some years ago. Other Italian towns such as Agrigento, Urbino and Ravenna are attractive and culture-rich yet receive a tiny proportion of visitors to the popular Italian holiday hotspots.

There are scores of alternatives to the well worn destinations, such as Taipei instead of Tokyo, Cadiz rather than Barcelona, Rotterdam rather than Amsterdam. Ljubljana is a good substitute for Prague, while Peru has 13 Inca sites listed by Unesco, most receiving a tiny fraction of the visitors to Machu Picchu.

September 2023’s earthquake in Morocco saw visitor numbers drop considerably, while bookings to Jordan were down 35% year-on-year between 16 September and 4 October 2024, according to flight data analyst ForwardKeys – before the Israel-Gaza conflict began on 7 October 2023.

So next time you’re researching a trip, do consider one of the less obvious destinations - you won’t regret it.