Barcelona, Venice and Amsterdam are among Europe’s favourite travel destinations and benefit greatly from tourism. However, the massive influx of visitors places a considerable burden on the cities and their inhabitants.
To counteract the negative effects of overtourism, these cities are taking decisive action. Following public protests, no new hotels may be built in Venice and cruise ships will have to use other moorings in future. Amsterdam has banned guided tours of its famous red light district in order to protect local residents. Paris is planning to ban coaches from the city centre in order to improve the quality of life. Other overcrowded cities are also trying to control the situation through various methods.
Do you think that overtourism is a serious problem in Europe?
Sources: National Statistics Offices, Statista, Le Monde, Forbes
We also need to know what proportion of the city’s economy is driven by tourism. For a tourism dominated city, it feels backward for the local population to complain about it. Unless it’s the retired folks in these cities who are complaining the loudest after benefitting from the same tourism earlier.
At the same time if the city relies on tourism and we know that tourism isn’t environmentally sustainable then we might have to accept that some cities will either need to slowly die or get their shit together and diversify.
