Tourists contribute significantly to the economies of the places they visit. Tourism creates jobs, increases revenue and reduces poverty, and local businesses benefit from the increased demand for their services and products. It is no surprise, then, that culturally-significant cities or towns in Europe want to attract tourists.
However, in recent years, many popular destinations have suffered overtourism, a trend that has become more evident since the pandemic ended and borders reopened.
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A billion travellers
About a billion people cross international borders every year. The World Tourism Organization expects that number to rise to 1.8 billion by 2030. The problem isn’t so much the number of people travelling, but that so many go to the same places at the same time. For residents, the sheer numbers can be overwhelming and make locals feel like their cultural sites and even their cities have been hijacked.
In some places, the number of tourists far exceeds the number of people who live there. This results in accommodation shortages (for tourists, but also residents, with landlords favouring short-term tourist rentals), inflated prices, heavy traffic, environmental damage and acute overcrowding.
Damaged monuments
High numbers of visitors can cause accidental damage to natural and manmade attractions. It can also encourage vandalism. There have been recent reports of deliberate damage done to historical monuments in Italy by tourists. Last summer, tourists were caught carving initials onto the stone walls of the Colosseum in Rome in three separate incidents; a group of German tourists toppled and destroyed a 150-year-old statue at a villa in Northern Italy; a French tourist carved a heart and initials into the iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa, and two German tourists spray-painted slogans for a Munich soccer team onto the side of the Vasari Corridor in Florence.
POSITIVE Action?
Such actions have resulted in increased hostility from locals towards tourists, and heightened efforts by officials to control them. Many places have set limits on their numbers, and imposed fines for what they deem bad behaviour. However, some measures have been controversial, as they appear to affect locals just as much as tourists. For example, Greece now limits the number of visitors to the Acropolis in Athens to twenty thousand a day, while Rome has introduced a €250 fine simply for sitting on its famous Spanish Steps.