Travel without leaving a trace

Joseph M. Cheer
Professor of Sustainable Tourism & Heritage, Western Sydney University, Australia, and Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Future of Sustainable Tourism. He is a Co-Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal, Tourism Geographies.
 

When Louis Turner and John Ash first published The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery in 1975, concerns about excess tourism were evident. It is no accident that they used the term “golden hordes”, comparing the effects of tourist groups to the “cultural devastation left in the wake of the great barbarian migrations”.

Since then, the golden hordes have only increased. With greater affluence, knowledge, and advances in technology, travel is accessible and affordable. Tourism now underlines local and national economies, comprising 9.1 per cent of global GDP and equivalent to US$9.9 trillion in 2023.

The concept of overtourism usually refers to excess tourism that is beyond what a locality can cope with. But the usual focus on symptoms, rather than on wider system-related causes, is oversimplifying matters. Overtourism involves factors that negatively affect residents, diminish the essence of places, and contribute to social, cultural and environmental deterioration. It develops from long, slow change and where tourism is the agent of change, it is driven by those who aim to optimize economic returns.

In a work I published in 2019 with Claudio Milano et Marina Novelli called Overtourism: Excesses, Discontents and Measures in Travel and Tourism, overtourism is defined as excessive numbers of visitors leading to overcrowding, causing resident to “suffer the consequences of temporary and seasonal tourism peaks, which have caused permanent changes to their lifestyles, denied access to amenities and damaged their general well-being.”

Complaints about unmanageable tourism are not new, and emerged as advances in air transportation allowed access to places that were difficult and costly to get to.

As early as 1963, the German geographer Walter Christaller hinted at the urgency to manage tourist demand: “I hesitate to mention such places for thereby I participate in the guilt of making these known,” he said, leading to little-known places becoming “developed resorts where ‘you ought to have been’.” 

When exactly the term “overtourism” first emerged is unclear; journalist Freya Petersen used it in 2001 in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald to refer to the unpleasantness of too many visitors at the archaeological site of Pompei. 

Destinations subject to overtourism are found around the world, and the fallout from excessive visitors occurs for different reasons. For example in Bali, Indonesia, the effects of overtourism are evident in the increased cost of living, and cultural clashes are common when tourists transgress on sacred places. Public infrastructure has not kept pace with increased demands; this can be seen in traffic jams in tourist areas, and in meeting demand for dwindling water resources.

For Kyoto, Japan, its rich cultural heritage is a lure for mass tourism and has led to the emergence of kankō kōgai, or “tourism pollution”, where the city is challenged with trying to control visitor flows and manage tourism adequately.

Environmental impacts are another result of excessive tourism, especially in small islands where the social and ecological environment are quickly overwhelmed. Boracay Island, Philippines, Komodo Island, Indonesia and Maya Bay in Thailand are all examples of this.

Cruise ships can also have a negative impact, as seen in Venice, the poster child of overtourism. Enthusiasm to consume the city has overwhelmed it. Tourism is concentrated in parts of the city subject to cruise tourism, and governance measures have yet to regulate it. The evolution of the city highlights the duality of overtourism: economic benefits are prized, while the social and environmental impacts tend to be overlooked.

The evolution of tourism has also affected Barcelona, Spain. The city had minimal prospects before it arrived on the global tourism stage with the 1992 Summer Olympic Games, and the city’s cultural heritage has continued to be popularized, including attractions like Antoni Gaudí’s architectural icon La Sagrada Familia, and Catalonian gastronomy and culture. Barcelona has made efforts to regulate excessive tourism and its continuing growth, for example by restricting access to popular sites such as the famous Park Güell.

But the impacts of overtourism on local residents are largely the same everywhere, no matter the country or locale. As vacation rentals proliferate, residents find themselves priced out of their own neighbourhoods, and have to move; small businesses also have to leave and are replaced by multinational brands. Too many tourists make shopping and other daily activities difficult for locals, and the noise and rowdy behaviour of visitors at night –including consuming drugs and alcohol in public spaces, and low-level criminal activity – mean that residents don’t recognise their own neighbourhoods and no longer feel at home. Too many tourists are seen to ruin a place’s character, without even noticing what is special about it in the first place – aside from what looks good posted to Instagram.

In response to these threats, municipalities and public authorities have started to take action. Many different types of measures are being applied, and they are constantly evolving. Their success or failure will have to be tested over several tourist seasons to establish what solutions are most effective in the long-term, and most approaches are still new, given the resurgence of tourism in 2023 and 2024 after the Covid-19 pandemic. Some positive results have already provided glimpses of what might work.

Reducing or banning cruise ship arrivals, and the attendant crush of travellers who spend the day in the city is helping to curtail overcrowding. For example, Amsterdam has decided to move its cruise ship terminal away from the centre of the city. 

Limiting numbers of tourists to attractions has met with success, and so has redirecting tourist traffic to lesser-known places, whether it’s within a museum, a city or a country. Visitors to see Michelangelo’s David in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, will find themselves gently routed to visit other artefacts in the museum. Amsterdam’s “I 🖤 Amsterdam” sign, popular for selfies, has been moved to an area to reduce congestion, and when planning holidays, tourists are increasingly encouraged to visit alternate destinations – Valencia, Spain instead of Barcelona, for example.

There are also different attempts to protect residents and their housing. Increasingly, short-term holiday rentals must be licensed or registered, to measure their impact on neighbourhoods, and curfews are put in place to reduce noise and disruption at night.

Some tourist destinations, such as Maya Bay, Thailand and Boracay Island in the Philippines have already been closed for a period of months to allow for the environment to rehabilitate naturally after excessive visitors, and the Faroe Islands are closed for maintenance every year. 

What has been less successful is introducing entry fees to tourists to manage their impact, as has been seen in Venice, Italy and in Japan. As these charges are relatively modest, they do not deter people from visiting. This also applies to other fees for tourists, such as for 30-day visas to visit Bali, which do not actually reduce visitor numbers.

The impact of these policies remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: a balance needs to be struck, as overtourism is not going to disappear. Some, like Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet travel guide books, argue that overtourism can be reconciled with a shift in behaviour from travellers if they will just explore “two streets over” saying, “It’s remarkable how different the story can be just two blocks away from the main drag.”

The challenge is to find the right compromise. Ultimately, overtourism must be addressed through reconciling trade-offs. Tourism is always likely to have an impact and transformations to places are likely – the key is in finding the right balance. 

Measures to reduce visitors must be considered carefully or they can be catastrophic for communities where tourism sustains local livelihoods. Finding equilibrium is a delicate balance between effective regulation and planning, while ensuring community well-being.

We must not lose sight of the positive contribution of tourism to communities and their long-term prospects. As Tony Wheeler says, “For every crowded metropolis there are probably a dozen places that would dearly love to be making a baby step up from undertourism”.