Paul Walters

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When Too Much Tourism Is Simply Too Much

When Too Much Tourism Is Simply Too Much


Francesco Russo is a native of Venice who makes his living selling Venetian glass from a small store on one of the winding lanes that surround the Doge’s Palace. He has a prime seat from which to observe the hundreds of thousands of selfie – posing, ice cream licking tourists who pass his shop each and every day.


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Even though his business relies on the hordes who clog the streets, even he has to admit that the sheer weight of numbers is bordering on the ludicrous. “There are too many,” he says with a shrug, “our city which is one of the most beautiful in Europe, is now just a theme park”

That’s a sentiment echoing across a number of European cities which, until a decade ago made up the gems that constituted the “grand tour’ or were stops on the package tours so popular in the 19th century. Since 2000 the sheer number of people now visiting these self-same cities has not so much grown, as exploded into a human tide that ios overrunning the central areas of several cities.


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In 2017, more than 87 million tourists visited France, 54 million descended on Italy and even the tiny Netherlands received in excess of 18 million visitors. This bonanza is not only restricted to Europe as the tourism sector is now booming all over the world. Asia experienced a staggering 9% increase in international arrivals in 2017 while visitors to Latin American countries have pushed up the average GDP by almost 4%.

But it is Europe which is bearing the brunt of this human avalanche. Of the 1.3 billion arrivals as tracked by the U.N., 600 million of those visited  Europe, an increase of 8% over the year before.

With numbers for 2018 expected to break all records, many residents in some European cities feel they have become victims of this unstoppable deluge and are taking matters into their own hands. From Madrid to Munich it is not unusual to see signs and wholesale graffiti adorning the sides of buildings with slogans such as, ', tourists go home' or “F%#k” Air B&B.


 In short, they have had enough.


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On a recent trip to Barcelona, I was able to witness for myself just how prevalent the crowds actually are. At 9.am on a Tuesday morning, tickets to visit Barcelona’s emblematic Sagrada Família Basilica have already sold out. Just a few years ago, one could simply turn up at the turnstiles, buy a ticket and wander the cathedral in relative peace, but these days, with the explosion of visitors to the city ( expected to exceed 30 million this year) arriving without a prepaid ticket will result in disappointment.

La Rambla is Barcelona’s most famous street but these days it is the least loved by residents, fed up with having to compete with crowds clogging the wide boulevard. It so crowded in summer as to be virtually impassable during the high season.


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Along each side of this wonderful avenue, there is nothing but tacky souvenir shops, mediocre buskers, existing cheek by jowl with McDonald’s stores and shabby restaurants serving kebabs and paella that would arouse the suspicions of any food safety official anywhere. Barcelona is on the cusp of losing its identity and in doing so is becoming like everywhere else, in other words, like Venice, an overcrowded theme park.

The reasons are perhaps many but, fueling the growth are the low-cost carriers who ferry millions of passengers across the continent at prices so low that it is almost free. Ryanair, EasyJet and Vueling are continually adding new planes to their fleet to cater to the ever-growing market, eager to take advantage of the rock bottom prices on offer.

It is not only air travellers adding to the numbers. 

The cruise ship industry in Europe grew by a whopping 51% over an eight-year period since 2007. Each day, in cities like Lisbon or Porto it is not unusual to see three or four of these gargantuan structures tie up at the docks and promptly vomit out up to 10,000-day trippers. Again, given the competitive nature of the cruise industry, it is now affordable for most people to take an all-inclusive European cruise at prices that were unheard of a few years ago.


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Then, of course, there is Air B&B which only launched in 2008 and is now is one of the largest accommodation sectors across the globe.

A major factor driving the tourism sector is rising prosperity in China and India which has created almost a billion middle-class families who all seem and want to be avid travellers, eager to experience the charms of other countries.

Love it or hate it, tourism has been an economic lifesaver for many of the countries hit the hardest by the Global Financial Crisis as in 2016, international tourism generated over $321 billion for the EU and now employs in excess of 12 million people.


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Even with this financial windfall, city fathers are trying to curb the numbers arriving or at least channel the hordes that throng the streets and turn their precious monuments into no-go zones. But, as they are discovering it is a lot harder to stem the tide than it was to attract them to their cities in the first place.

However, authorities are clamping down in cities like Copenhagen whose government issued a new law limiting the number of days per year where owners can rent out their rooms or apartments. Barcelona too has targeted Air B& B, forcing the company to share its data to curb the renting out of unlicensed apartments.


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It’s a fine balancing act as imposing too many restrictions risks alienating residents who have now become reliant on the tourist dollar. A recent attempt by the city authorities in Venice to charge visitors a fee to access San Marco Square was shot down by shop owners and restaurateurs who maintained that tourists were their only source of income as local residents no longer visit the world famous site.

Many of the residents of cities overrun by tourism are leaving in droves, seeking a quieter existence in smaller towns or even moving countries. The upshot of this relocation is that essential services such as, dentists, doctors and pharmacies are slowly moving out the city centres which, in turn, leaves their vacant space to be filled with even more restaurants, fast food outlets and cheap souvenir stores.

While in Porto recently I overheard a couple talking while taking pictures from one of the many bridges that cross Duomo. “It really is amazing,” said the woman gazing at the scene, “but you know what? I wouldn’t come back. There are far to  many tourists.”

Enough said.

Paul v Walters is the best selling novelist of several novels. When he is not cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali, he also scribbles for several Airline and Vox Pop journals around the globe.


Komentar

Paul Walters

5 tahun yang lalu #24

#26
Thank you as always your comments are greatly appreciated. A meeting with my publisher in London recently has indeed spawned a travel book...watch this space!

🐝 Fatima G. Williams

5 tahun yang lalu #23

Well Paul Walters I think tourism is like a infestation and needs regular control before it spoils the beauty of the place. Please keep these travel stories coming and I hope you're getting all this in a book we can get our hands on :)

Zacharias 🐝 Voulgaris

5 tahun yang lalu #22

#24
It's a pity though. Florida is one my favorite places in the world for tourism. Beyond the glamorous sites that everyone knows from the movies, it has so much to offer if you dare to explore its lesser known parts...

Neil Smith

5 tahun yang lalu #21

I grew up in a part of Scotland that has grown to depend on tourism as a driver of the economy. The long term result has been an exodus of our best and brightest minds leaving for university and a job that isn't seasonal. The focus of local development is on short term innovations to improve the attractiveness of the area for visitors. Housing is in short supply because of large numbers of holiday homes and apartments which are only rarely used. The sad thing is that the emphasis has always been on developing the cheapest, least attractive and least sustainable aspects of the tourist industry so we have a history of short lived enterprises of dubious worth coming and going. The tourist industry could raise it's sights and aim to provide a higher quality of experience but that would inevitably mean fewer tourists and I don't believe any company wants to be the first to step back from the current free for all but surely it can't go on forever as it is.

Jerry Fletcher

5 tahun yang lalu #20

#11
thanks Paul. Going in early May. Perhaps I'll precede the Brits.

(Nacho) Ignacio Orna

5 tahun yang lalu #19

Cuando se crea un falso turismo "Aviso a quienes visiten la Sierra de la Culebra con la finalidad de observar lobo" http://www.tercerainformacion.es/opinion/opinion/2017/06/19/aviso-a-quienes-visiten-la-sierra-de-la-culebra-con-la-finalidad-de-observar-lobo

Zacharias 🐝 Voulgaris

5 tahun yang lalu #18

#19
Exactly! It's all about taking a bunch of nice pictures for these tourists, completely void of context or any in-depth understanding of the culture these monuments belong to.

Lada 🏡 Prkic

5 tahun yang lalu #17

Paul, this is a great topic and article that also raised an important issue about how the tourist overcrowding ruins heritage towns. The good example is Dubrovnik, the Pearl of the Adriatic, with the world heritage status at risk because of the overwhelming number of visitors from cruise ships. Passengers have only about three hours to make a tour of the Old Town spending very little money ashore. Many even don't know what country they in. :-) The new tourism strategy will finally reduce the maximum number of tourists allowed in Dubrovnik per day from 8,000 to 4,000 by 2020.

CityVP Manjit

5 tahun yang lalu #16

The saddest part is when they can't live with them, but they cannot live without them.

CityVP Manjit

5 tahun yang lalu #15

The sad part is when you they can't live with them, but they cannot live without them.

Ken Boddie

5 tahun yang lalu #14

Ah the age old conundrum, Pak Paul ..... everyone wants to tour, but noone wants to be labelled a tourist. Luckily when we ‘toured’ Europe a few years back, it was early spring and possibly too chilly for many of the list tickers. I distictly remember a huge tour ship in Venice, however, and a noisy flotilla of small local craft protesting the wave damage which these multi-storey floatels can do to the fragile local structures. The challenge appears to be not to kill the tourist goose that lays the golden eggs, but to battery farm her production and in effect inhibit free range. Perhaps the ‘smart city’ concept needs to include visitor influx controls, before we all end up swimming in scrambled goose eggs? 🐣

Paul Walters

5 tahun yang lalu #13

#7
Gert Scholtz Are you sure you aernt with the Tourism Department. ? See you in May next year.

Paul Walters

5 tahun yang lalu #12

#8
Ian Weinberg sounds like a great gig. Will be in Jhb in about May next year so a catch up is in order.

Paul Walters

5 tahun yang lalu #11

#2
Zacharias \ud83d\udc1d Voulgaris . Well said. and pimp is the perfect adjective. Thanks for stopping by

Paul Walters

5 tahun yang lalu #10

#3
Debasish Majumder Many thanks as always

Paul Walters

5 tahun yang lalu #9

#10
Jerry Fletcher Barcelona is manageable but it depends on the time of year. Madrid...wonderful as always and the coast trip to Basque country highly recommended. There's also Toledo an hours drive from Madrid...not to be missed.

Jerry Fletcher

5 tahun yang lalu #8

Paul, Managed to get to Venice before it turned into the circus it is today. I'm now alarmed about a planned trip next April. If Barcelona is that touristed I will have to find a better way...but I had planned time there and in Madrid and in the Moor's palaces. Perhaps I should plan a leisurely journey along the coast or to Basque country instead. thank you for your insight. Keep traveling.

Ian Weinberg

5 tahun yang lalu #7

I guess I have the best of both worlds: I live in a place uncluttered by tourists and a Paul Walters to do my travelling for me! Bring it on Paul Walters ...

Gert Scholtz

5 tahun yang lalu #6

Paul Walters Or... you can visit South Africa out of season and be one of a handful on people on the world famous Clifton Beach, motor along for an hour in the Karoo without passing another car, choose from one of the many game parks on your drive down to the Lowveld, ascend Table Mountain after a five minute wait for the cable car, drive to any small town and choose a quaint B&B when you get there, or just show up at any of the many golf courses for a round. Of course I would say this about South Africa !:)

Lyon Brave

5 tahun yang lalu #5

tourism can get annoying, nut then again so can locals.

Pascal Derrien

5 tahun yang lalu #4

Ransom of success or marketing excess ? I think countries and cities have to ask themselves some hard questions too? Never been to Venice partly because I actually don't want to go to a supermarket unless I can manage to go to the little islands around the main city. Prague is the same I went there before it was fashionable and went back when it was very different experience to say the least.....

Debasish Majumder

5 tahun yang lalu #3

relevant and informative buzz Paul Walters! enjoyed read and shared. thank you for the buzz.

Zacharias 🐝 Voulgaris

5 tahun yang lalu #2

I don't know if it's tourism to blame or the fact that the destinations tourists go to are very narrowly clustered around the airports that pimp charter flights by the dozen. Italy is a great example. The country is vast and has a large number of options for tourism, all quite unique and enjoyable in different ways. Every Italian city I've visited has more to offer than just great food and nice weather. Ravenna, for example, is famous for its mosaics, Rome for its antiquities, Milan for its stores, and some cities are just very picturesque and traditional. I've avoided going to Venice on purpose because of the tourist, just like I haven't visited Florence yet. After all, someone can enjoy what Italy has to offer without going to all the places that everyone else goes to. Perhaps if people taking a trip were more deliberate about where they'd go, instead of blindly following tourism books, everyone would be happy; the locals for having less tourists crowding their streets, the tourists for having a more unique and perhaps more memorable experience, and the other travellers for riding less crowded planes / trains / ferries / buses / etc.

Paul Walters

5 tahun yang lalu #1

Don \ud83d\udc1d Kerr

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