The turn against (Over)tourism
at the Battle of Ideas, 19-20 October, London
I’ll be speaking on so called ‘overtourism’ at this year’s Battle of Ideas conference. The details of the conference, and the sessions, are below. (There is also a great deal on my other favourite subject, free speech).
The turn against (Over)tourism
Sunday 20 October, 12:45—13:30, Battle of Ideas Festival, Church House, London
see: https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/ for all details and tickets
Holiday lets, overpriced bars and trinket shops – many of the world’s most beautiful destinations rely on tourism to stay afloat. Tourism is also a serious economic consideration for many countries – in 2023, the worldwide travel and tourism market recovered from a Covid-era slump and bounced back to a figure of around £7.6 trillion, making up 9.1 per cent of the global GDP. But not everyone is thrilled about the return of happy campers. Over the past few years, once-welcoming tourist destinations have now become verboten for visitors.
Last year, Amsterdam discouraged unruly British visitors with their ‘stay away’ advertising campaigns, warning against drinking to excess, urinating in canals and taking illegal drugs. In Barcelona, a growing housing crisis has brought scrutiny to the short-term rental economy propped up by apps like AirBnB. Anti-tourism graffiti has been spotted all over the city, and members of a ‘tourism degrowth’ organisation have been filmed squirting tourists with water pistols and blocking hotel doors with tape, revealing the tensions between local Barcelonians and the customers much of the city’s industry relies on. The city’s mayor has pledged to suspend short-term lets by 2029, taking pressure off the shrinking residential sector. But some argue these measures will simply force landlords underground, creating a black market for unruly tourists.
Some areas have introduced levies to soften the impact of overtourism. In 2023, Unesco threatened to move Venice onto their world heritage danger list following a rise in avoidable damage by tourists to the city’s fragile structures. While a €5 visitor levy introduced this summer has raised around £1million for the city’s council, it has seemingly done nothing to curb visitor numbers or to lessen nuisances for locals. This May, Wales proposed its own visitor tax for tourists staying in overnight accommodation, arguing that it is ‘fair and reasonable to ask visitors to make a contribution towards the wider costs of tourism’. But critics, like the Taxpayers’ Alliance, have argued that this charge will be detrimental to Wales’s ‘competitive edge’, harming small businesses and Welsh residents in the hospitality and tourism sectors as prospective visitors decide to go elsewhere.
We all love a holiday – indeed, the aspiration of ‘seeing the world’ is something many of us still hold as an essential human experience. With cheap flights, social norms more accustomed to international travel and more people seeking out the same destinations, how should we balance the lives of locals with the desires of out-of-towners? What effect did the pandemic have – why did many locals, accustomed to the solitude brought by Covid-19 on their beaches and beauty spots, suddenly become so hostile to tourists? Is there a bigger question of management, with states failing to control overtourism in attractive locations, while other parts of the nation decay and see less revenue? Is it up to the state to resolve this, or should local decision-making play a more significant factor?