Over-tourism: If We’re The Problem, Can We Be The Solution?
And where better to get inspiration to make our holiday dreams a reality than the glitzy, over-filtered depths of social media.
We scroll through the smiling couples on white sand beaches (that could be you and your situationship), the endless carousels of food and drink (I must have it now, fuck the January diet), the travel influencers who definitely aren’t (but definitely are) being paid to use the ‘best’ booking company, before we stumble across the soul-sucking reality-bringers (like myself) that start harping on about sustainability and the planet being on fire, and our mid-work moment of escapism comes crash-landing to a bleak, reality-laden end. Crash. Bang. Thud.
Throughout this daily delusional scroll, we see dozens of travel keywords, but one word is popping up quite a bit - ‘over-tourism’: a four-letter word in the world of sustainability. As much as I enjoy taking the piss out of myself and others who flout their ideas and beliefs on social media and the internet, I must say that I am genuinely passionate about this topic.
If you’re not sure what over-tourism is then you are in the right place, and you are most welcome. Over-tourism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the phenomenon whereby certain places of interest are visited by excessive numbers of tourists, causing undesirable effects for the place visited’. Although, a big fan of the OED and its work, I would add that these effects are not just undesirable but also damaging to local people, cultures, livelihoods, ways of life, flora, fauna, eco-systems, the list goes on and on. I want to give as many examples as possible to provide people with a detailed visualisation of the scope of impact that over-tourism has for destinations; it’s not limited to long waiting times to get into that café from Emily in Paris, fighting for a spot at 5am to get an Instagrammable photo at the Amalfi Coast, or vying for a grassy patch to do that weird hand thing at the Tower of Pisa. Over-tourism is causing actual, long-term problems.
But tourism in all of its different forms is complicated. On the one hand, the cultural, economic, and environmental impact caused by a surplus of tourists visiting any one place is undeniable and, in some destinations, the results are overwhelming and potentially irreversible. On the other hand, globally 1 in 10 people work in the tourism industry and without it they simply cannot provide for themselves or their families; the global Covid pandemic proved that for many, including my friends, colleagues, and myself. We lost our livelihoods overnight and, for many, the results were devastating to their financial situation, their physical and mental health. I wouldn’t want anyone to be in that position again. So, I feel torn when writing about certain aspects of travel that are purely negative. And over-tourism is purely negative. It is a surplus, something that exists beyond need.
And it is killing us.
That is not an exaggeration. I really wish that it were. But the long-term damage that over-tourism causes to our communities, our resources, and planet will eventually kill us if we don’t start making changes. I’m not delusional enough to believe that a single blog article in the recesses of Google will do the trick and solve the problem. But it’s a starting point.
From here, there is a bit more work to be done. So, throughout the next 12 months, I will be chatting with close colleagues and friends who live and work in some of the world’s most over-touristed places, Amsterdam, Prague, Rome, and Barcelona to name a few, and getting their firsthand perspectives about what it is like living in places that are suffering due to tourism while they themselves rely on that tourism to make their livelihood. We’ll be discussing the following:
- advice on how to be sustainable while in these destinations
- the cultural dos-and-don’ts to be respectful while there
- and what the impact of over-tourism has had on them directly with examples of how their cities have changed
- What they think the future looks if we don’t make necessary changes to the way we travel and explore