While the term itself only emerged in recent years, the problem itself is almost as old as tourism itself (Dodds et al., 2019). So how come that in recent years we seem to have reached a tipping point?
To start from the very beginning, what even is overtourism? As the name suggests, it describes the phenomenon of excessive numbers of tourists at a specific location, which can cause various different problems for the local population. Those problems can range from increased competition on the housing market from companies acquiring short-term rentals via i.e. AirBnB, ignorant and disrespectful behaviour towards residents and simply overcrowding of public spaces (Dodds et al., 2019).
While antagonism of local populations towards tourist crowds is no new phenomenon either, in recent years residents have become more vocal about their dissatisfaction. In summer of 2024 local protestors have made an effort to “reclaim” their hometown of Barcelona , spraying graffiti demanding “Tourists go home!” or even targeting individual tourists with water guns. The citizens of Barcelona, however are not the only ones feeling like this and public attention has been drawn to the topic (Guy, 2024).
Now to understand why the issue of overtourism is seemingly reaching a boiling point as of late, one has to take a step back and look at all of the current developments fuelling mass tourism in our current society. Not only is there an ever increasing number of tourists globally, travel is also becoming more affordable with low air fares and cheap accommodations, causing more and more tourists to be able to travel more widely and more frequently. Another contributing factor is the digitalisation taking place in recent decades. Arranging travels is becoming easier, faster and more flexible with people not having to rely on third party travel agencies anymore (Dodds et al., 2019).
Not only the organisation of specific journeys but also the marketing for countless destinations has been radically changed by digitalisation. Nowadays social and popular media are some of the strongest influences for travellers. While in an age before social media, tourist destinations had to be marketed specifically and under significant financial effort, social media has now taken over and it does not matter anymore whether a place is small or big, as long as it is “instagramable”, the masses will follow (Jang et al., 2020).
However, not only social media but other forms of mass media such as movies or series contribute significantly to the promotion of certain locations. Shows such as “The Game of Thrones” for example have brought the town of Dubrovnik into the public’s eye and turned it into a popular tourist destination.(Dodds et al., 2019).
The influence of media attention has led to unexpected, unpredictable rise in tourist numbers to certain destinations and has made it even harder to control the masses, leading to the phenomenon of overtourism. Tourist numbers increase rapidly, while facilities and services find it impossible to adapt in time, worsening the problems arising with overtourism. While overtourism used to mainly affect cities, in recent years many non-urban travel destinations such as the Mount Everest have started to suffer under the sheer amount of visitors as well (Dodds et al., 2019).
Unfortunately, none of these issues will resolve themselves without any of the underlying factors changing. Limiting the amount of tourists to cities and destinations, as straightforward as it might seem, is a lot more complicated than what meets the eye. There has to be a consensus as to how many visitors are too many visitors, reducing air travel is a question of international relationships and lastly, and maybe most importantly, tourism is still a greatly profitable sector. While there is an increasing number of unhappy citizens, tourism also is an important pillar to many economies and there are many powerful people benefitting from it. Moreover, the influence of social media will most likely increase in the future, making it increasingly harder to regulate which destinations get which amount of attention (Dodds et al., 2019).
In conclusion, overtourism is merely a new name given to an old problem, which has been fuelled by social media, movies, series and the global economic development. Whilst there is a global consensus among experts that it poses a significant problem and a danger to many cultural sites, there has not yet been found a solution to combat the negative effects of overtourism.
While this blog post was merely a brief introduction into what overtourism is and which factors contribute to it, I would like to dive deeper into the influence of (social) media on the issue and maybe also explore what possibilities there are for future developments and improvements.
Literature:
- The phenomena of overtourism: a review
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijtc-06-2019-0090/full/html - Video – Crowded out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1370&v=U-52L7hYQiE&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesmoothescape.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjQsMjM4NTE - Social media, media and urban transformation in the context of overtourism – Hochan Jang, Minkyung Park
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijtc-08-2019-0145/full/html - Barcelona anti-tourism protesters fire water pistols at visitors – Jack Guy
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/08/travel/barcelona-tourism-protests-scli-intl/index.html
