Tourism problem grows for residents of overrun destinations. So what’s the answer to overcrowding?
Overcrowding and unruly behaviour are facts of life for residents of popular holiday destinations – and they aren’t happy. Experts say the industry needs to look at making itself more sustainable, or risk damage to culture and heritage
How do you solve a problem like tourism? It employs hundreds of millions of people, buoys entire industries – but can tear apart the very cities that benefit from it, alienating residents and causing irreversible damage to their culture and heritage.
Protests across Europe have spurred talk of “responsible tourism” and are forcing the sector to factor in sustainability. But the problem is already at such a scale that doing anything about it seems akin to turning around a cruise liner. What’s the way out of this mess?
Is the media to blame for overtourism? Or the travellers?
The most obvious solution to the problem of too many tourists is to spread them over a larger area, says Alex Dichter, a senior partner of McKinsey & Company travel consultancy, which in December produced a report on managing overcrowded tourist destinations.
Overcrowding is such a localised issue that even in a city apparently at breaking point, such as Barcelona, Dichter is “sure there are neighbourhoods that are overwhelmed and there are others that are in need of quite a bit more”.
Many cities compound the problem by promoting only a small number of sites – often the obvious ones. Tourists can be dispersed by boosting less popular attractions and developing new ones.
Encouraging visitors outside peak times of day, season and year similarly lessens their impact. If marketing alone doesn’t work, arrival limits and pricing adjustments might do the job, says Dichter.