Here's Why Summer Hot Spots Are Turning Against Tourists

A surge in visitor numbers to top European destinations has sparked protests from residents, many of whom feel they've reached a tipping point into overtourism. How can towns and cities strike a balance between the economic benefits of tourism, and the drawbacks? Feargus O'Sullivan from Bloomberg CityLab joins host Stephen Carroll to discuss.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm Stephen Carroll and this is Here's Why, where we
take one new story and explain it in just a
few minutes with our experts here at Bloomberg.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
These record numbers in terms of tourism also pose challenges
and we need to deal with those challenges also for
our own population. What we see when looking at the
outlook for tourism this year is that we manage reached
a one hundred million. We are our forty nine million
inhabitants country.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
The sound of some of the anti tourism protests in
European towns and cities in recent months and reaction from
Spain's Economy Minister Carlos Corpo, what large numbers of visitors
took places like Barcelona, Paris or Venice are nothing new.
The resurgence in travel after the COVID pandemic has come
with more forceful opposition from residents. In twenty twenty four,

(01:06):
European countries hosted over seven hundred and fifty million tourists,
up almost fifty million on the previous year. In many places,
that's meant a tipping point into over tourism where daily
life becomes unbearable for locals.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
So here's why.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Summer hotspots are turning against tourists. Fergus O Sullivan from
Bloomberg City Lab joins me now for more. Fergus Everyone
loves to complain about tourists in their city. But how
bad is the problem of over tourism in Europe.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
Well, it's certainly bad enough that now people in tourists
destinations across Europe are taking to the streets to protest.
It's bad enough that museum workers in Paris at the
Louver have gone on strike to protest conditions because they
say the young overcrowding is unmanageable. It's also got bad
enough that tourist numbers have gone up compared to previous years.

(01:59):
It was a forty percent jump in arrivals in Europe
between twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, So certainly
people aren't just imagining this, and it's certainly true that
it's become a kind of a pressure cooker.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
It should be said.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
That this resentment over tourism may be driven as much
by exhaustion as by increases, because while tourist numbers.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Are projected to grow sharply ongoing.

Speaker 4 (02:27):
Many places are actually only reaching the visitor levels they
experienced before the pandemic now, so it's really as much
that people can't take it anymore than suddenly they're being flooded.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Ah, that's an interesting point.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Just give us an idea of what sort of places
are we talking about where we've seen the most resistance
to this.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
The worst place is for over tourism. I'd say fall
into three categories, So there are Mediterranean.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Beach resorts with the side order of the Canary Islands.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
Alpine ski villages, and high profile historic cities, places like Barcelona, Paris. Now,
in terms of the places that are suffering most, I
suppose the place with the highest number of visitors to
residents is the Greek island of Zacinthos in the Ionian Islands,
and that last year got one hundred and fifty visitors

(03:15):
for every individual resident, which is a huge number. However,
it could be skewed because of course holiday islands tend
to have low year round populations because people who were
born there often go to the mainland to get work.
You could argue that places like Paris maybe have it
even worse because the just the sheer concentrations they have there.

(03:36):
So in twenty twenty four, Paris got four hundred thousand
tourists per square kinometer, which is places it far far
ahead of other cities that have had similar problem concentrations,
such as Athens and Copenhagen. So I suppose those are
the places that are the worst. So places that are
seeing these issues. What are authorities doing about us? Well,

(04:00):
there are a lots of things that cities and local
governments are doing that might help to bring the situation
under control.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
They're various things.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
One big one is airbnb bands. In Barcelona there will
be no single legal Airbnb from twenty twenty eight, that's
when the last legal license runs out, and there are
also many other cities. There've been caps on rentable nights,
which means you can't rent out a flat on Airbnb
or window or verbo for more than the fixed number

(04:33):
of nights. That's supposed to stop those flats disappearing from
the long term rental market, which is a big problem.
So that's been happening. There's also been things like cruise
chip bands. Cruise ships are particularly resented in many cities
because not only do they disgorge a very large number
of visitors all in one go. They do so for

(04:53):
people that have already been fed and have somewhere to
sleep for the night. So actually, in terms of congestion
versus hassle, they are particularly strong offenders. So Amsterdam is
moving its cruise terminal out of town. Venice has banned
them from coming into the canals, so that's another one. Finally,
you'd say there were fees and taxes, so Venice now

(05:14):
actually charges on over one hundred and fifty days a
year for day trippers to come into the city as
a way of maybe managing that flow. Amsterdam is one
of the other places that charges a nightly tax on
accommodation that's twelve point five percent on top of your
hotel bill, so that's another thing. Finally, there's a more

(05:35):
of a promotional approach, which is just to spread visitors
away from hotspots, to encourage them to go to less
obvious places. Amsterdam again, for example, if you go onto
their main tourist website, I Amsterdam Now, then their top
ten sites they'll recommend would include places that you haven't
necessarily heard of. Breweries that don't brew Heineken, a castle
in the suburbs, various places that they're trying to get

(05:57):
people to go that aren't you know, flower Market or
around Frank's house, So.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Providing inspiration perhaps rather than persuasion from some of those authorities.
I mean, the big question here is, of course, a
lot of these places benefit massively economically from having a
lot of tourists.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
So where does the.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Balance lie between the money that you make from having
people come and visit where you live and the sort
of problems that we've talked about that that sort of
tourism can create.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
Well, that's a very good question.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
I'm not sure anyone has yet been able to answer
that fully. For a start, most of these measures that
are supposed to control tourism, they may have some positive benefits,
but they don't reduce visitor numbers, and they aren't reducing
the growth of tourism. So it's difficult to say if
anyone's going too far, if anyone's not going far enough.

(06:46):
Because this whole area is kind of in its infancy.
It is a course true on the most basic level,
most of us, if we can afford to go on holiday,
we love going on holiday. There is a potential for
mutually beneficial cultural exchange between people who host some people
who visit. This is also vital income for many many places,

(07:08):
especially places along them in Southern Europe, for example, where
governments may be quite heavily indebted and they need the
extra tax income. A lot of people rely on places
such as the Greek Islands, which are suffering under strain,
for their livelihood and to just pump stuff generally into
the economy.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
So of course there is value for this. There is
value to tourism, and there is people appreciate the income.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Finding that balance, I'm not sure where they're with a
fixed formula it.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
So we've talked about the problem, we've talked about some
of the solutions or the steps that authorities are taking.
Do we have or is there a place that has
a good recipe for how to manage tourism.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
I have to say that having a researched this myself,
I could not yet find anywhere that has truly managed
to create the right balance, partly because the demand for
tourism is so high and the income to be gained
from tourism is so high that most of the measures
designed to control it a really piecemeal. So, for example,

(08:11):
capping nights on Airbnb, that's very, very hard to police again.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
In Barcelona, they're actually banning airbnb.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
That only is really going to come into effect in
twenty twenty eight. There isn't yet evidence that it's necessarily
easing the housing crisis in the city, which of course
has many many causes, and tourism might be just one
of them, And actually just getting rid of tourism isn't
necessarily going to sort that. So entry fees into places
like Venice, tourist taxes they are maybe helping in that

(08:41):
they allow governments to get extra income to manage the
effects of tourism, but they don't necessarily do anything to
reduce the volume of people coming. There's an estimate from
some research actually, I think Amsterdam commissioned itself that for
their overnight hotel tax to genuine be a deterrent, it
would need to be three times higher.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
So there are problems with that.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
I know I'm finding like I'm really bashing hard on
these people at the moment, But spreading visitors away from hotspots,
there is evidence that if you promote places that are
less obvious destinations, numbers will rise in those destinations, which
could be a good thing. What doesn't happen is that
numbers then fall in the places that are oversubscribed, So
spreading people simply allows space for more tourists to come

(09:28):
and fill their place.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
AH A tricky recipe indeed. Fergus O Sullivan from Bloomberg
City Lab thank you very much. For more explanations like
this from our team of three thousand journalists and analysts
around the world, go to Bloomberg dot com slash explainers.
I'm Stephen Carroll. This is here's why. I'll be back
next week with more. Thanks for listening.