Afterword: Over overtourism or just the beginning?

This is a pre-publication version of the final chapter in: Milano, C., Cheer, J. M., & Novelli, M. (Eds.). (2019). Overtourism: Excesses, discontents and measures in travel and tourism. Oxfordshire: CABI.

Please cite as: Cheer, J. M., Milano, C. & Novelli, M. (2019). Afterword: Over overtourism or just the beginning? In C. Milano, J.M. Cheer and M. Novelli, Overtourism: excesses, discontents and measures in travel and tourism, Oxfordshire: CABI, pp. 227-232.

Status Quo

As the European summer of 2019 beckons, it seems more than likely that the spectre of overtourism will once again emerge amidst the hordes of travellers flocking to popular cities including Barcelona, Venice, Amsterdam and Reykjavik as featured in this volume. But of course, these destinations represent one end of the overtourism spectrum; that is, destinations where host communities and city administrators are groaning under the weight of growing and seemingly excessive tourist demand. While at the other extreme, there are destinations off the ‘beaten track’ that would give almost anything to be afflicted with the problem of too many tourists.

This describes the conundrum that tourism has become, in particular for destinations that have become so reliant on the tourist dollar – ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ as it were. The common refrain is that tourism per se is not the problem; instead it is the way it is planned and managed and the extent to which good governance is able to optimise the benefits from tourism while at the same time negating its many undesirable impacts. Writer for Lonely Planet, James Kay (2018) highlights the inherent contradictions and conundrums central to the overtourism debate most succinctly:

"With the world’s population projected to pass 10 billion halfway through this century, it won’t be alone. From Venice to Kyoto, the challenge is enormous – a Gordian knot whose untangling requires a coordinated, multi-pronged effort from governments, businesses, communities and, of course, travellers themselves."

That the overtourism phenomenon has pricked the conscience of travellers, the tourism industry, journalists, policymakers and scholars, among others, is that in many popular destinations around the globe, tipping points appear well and truly exceeded, rupturing the happy coexistence between hosts and guests. Naturally, the question that arises is: so who is to blame and what can be done about it? To pretend to know the answers to this question is fanciful, for as this volume has demonstrated, overtourism symptoms come about for a wide variety of reasons and is shaped by a plethora of supply side destination factors and demand side drivers very often driven by national aspirations for greater number of visitors and the global travel supply chain, and beyond the destination level.

Indeed, if one resorts to simplistic analyses of supply and demand, it is clear that overtourism is driven by dissonance between desire to visit a destination and the destination’s capacity to deal with such demand. In this volume, the cases presented highlight that a common thread across destinations that are regarded to be suffering from overtourism is an inability for destination stakeholders to maintain pace with the growing desire for visitation. Demand side drivers including enhanced travel technologies and aviation industry developments that enable affordable access to destinations are at the vanguard of what is regarded as heightened contemporary mobilities; put simply, the modern traveller has access to more information on destinations than ever before and can now get there more seamlessly at lower cost.

What the debates on overtourism highlight is that a global shift is at play where hosts who once welcomed visitors to their cities and towns are now revolting and pressing policymakers and the tourism industry to ensure that their well-being concerns are given renewed priority. After all, host communities and the cultural heritages and ways of life are the centrepiece of what distinguishes one place from another and one people from another. However, in the drive to increase visitation, the tourism system in many destinations where overtourism symptoms have emerged have become prone to expansionary narratives that see growth as the Holy Grail and concomitantly, social and ecological concerns fall by the wayside. It is unsurprising than that this makes casualties of host communities, compromising social-ecological resilience and undermining the destinations inheritances for future generations.

If tourism growth trajectories continue at the current pace, it is clear that before too long, the number of international travellers criss-crossing the globe will breach the 1.4 billion mark for the first time. This does not include the much bigger flows seen in domestic tourism across the globe suggesting that not only are international flows underlining overtourism effects, travellers moving within their own borders must also come into consideration. Furthermore, the role that Chinese outbound travel will play must also be given due consideration, especially when this source market now comprises the lions share of arrivals in many destinations across the globe, and that projections for continued strong growth are plausible.

Implications for Research and Practice

What this all means for research and practice is obvious – beyond anecdotal observations and impassioned pleas from the various stakeholder groups with vested interests, not enough is known about how and why overtourism symptoms are occurring and what can be done about them. This is largely because baseline data and understandings required to inform policy and practice are still being developed and emerging slowly. Notwithstanding, the importance of arming policymakers and practitioners with an evidence base is vital and this is where ongoing and rigorous research endeavours are required.

The implications for research are clear – meticulously collected data that informs underlying assumptions about the impacts of tourism are pressing. These must go beyond the generally touted measures of tourism success as seen in visitation and tourist expenditure growth, toward the development of additional and alternate measures of tourism success; these might include indices related to well-being and quality of life, ecological integrity, cultural cohesion, social capital, land and water security, heritage protection, fair work and gender empowerment, among others.

More importantly, a key implication is that research must be conducted collaboratively between sector stakeholders, and then used to inform policymaker deliberations and tourism industry trajectories with the underlying aim of encouraging holistic emphasis on the tourism system, and diverting attention away from more its dominant constituent parts, research runs the risk of becoming redundant. Research can proactively provide the evidence to underline tourism sector planning and governance rather than research that is led retrospectively by problems that occur, as is seen in the overtourism debate. This means that policymakers in particular have an obligation to avoid expedient, financially driven decision-making and instead consider the long term, non-economic implications.

Overarching areas for research related to the proliferation of overtourism in destination tourism systems that continue to cry out for attention include:

1. The ongoing and cumulative effects of tourism growth on host communities where tourism is dominant
2. Impacts on social capital development and social justice concerns
3. Ecological integrity where natural resource exploitation is central to tourism demand
4. Cultural heritage safeguarding where threats to viability and protections are evident
5. Urban and regional planning frameworks that inform policy and planning interventions

The implications for policy and practice are also palpably clear, framed by interventions that acknowledge and integrate sustainability thinking beyond oversimplified goals based on solely optimising visitation and expenditure, and toward emphasising alternative indicators of tourism success. This includes hoisting dimensions that are underlined by non-economic variables including:

1. Host well-being
2. Ecological integrity
3. Urban, rural and coastal and regional resilience
4. Protection of sense of place
5. Emplacement of host communities
6. Cultural heritage security
7. Natural resources management - especially water

The final word

Whether overtourism is old wine in new bottles, or who invented the term and other intellectual and emotional entanglements are moot points that do little for getting to the bottom of how excessive tourism development is impacting destinations, and the multitude of stakeholders who rely on it for a living. It is clear that the issue is not whether we have tourism or not; for many destination communities who have come to rely on tourism curtailing its presence is not an option for fear of causing far more damaging repercussions. Rather, the call is to do tourism better as it were, given that so long as the current status quo is underlined by ongoing hyper mobilities and global affluence, the propensity to travel will remain.

The consumption of travel underlines the modern day mantra of choosing experiences ahead of possessions for the contemporary consumer. While this signals opportunity for global tourism, it should also sound alarm bells, for in the age of global warming and climate change, the net effect of more tourists traversing the globe seems counter intuitive - more travel equates to a greater contribution to carbon consumption. This underlines concerns about global consumption patterns more broadly and policies that are firmly focused on continued GDP growth and productivity as measures of healthy national economies.

The Guardian’s Tobias Jones (2018) points out that tourism has become a Faustian pact, and this is a reality for destinations where although tourism has become disruptive and hinders the optimal rhythm of life, communities that have come to rely on it find themselves in an unenviable bind.

“But many Italians now regret the Faustian pact of throwing open the gates for the most money. In an attempt to stem the rising tide of visitors, Venice last week announced a plan to charge a €10 entrance tax for day-trippers, and the mayor of Florence is considering something similar. This comes two years after the tiny Cinque Terre region in Liguria brought in a ticketing system to cap tourists at 1.5 million a year. There is a sense that Italy is a victim of its own success – it is the fifth most-visited country in the world, with 52.4 million tourists a year – and can no longer cope”.

This is especially problematic where tourism has come to underwrite the economy and where it’s whittling down could have direct consequences beyond the economic. The question then, to use a well-known homily is - how can destinations have their cake and eat it too? How can destinations optimise tourism while at the same time maintain some of the more vital lifestyle and well-being benefits that its host communities enjoys? Is it simply about putting in place more effective planning and management regimes? Or does it extend far beyond planning and management and is to be found in broad government policies that privilege growth above all else? Or is it also related to insatiable contemporary consumption trends where as consumers, we are driven to have more and to do more, and not less?

Doubtless, responses to and opinions of tourism will continue to reflect ambivalence and business as usual sentiments on the one hand, and conversely raise concerns and prompt calls to action as seen in this volume. Measures that apply will differ depending on the local-level dynamics at play, as well as wider global trends in travel consumption, as well as trends in the wider economy. The onset of a global recession will probably curb global travel, as would a prolonged oil crisis or widespread global conflict between nations. Some say that the globe and future of humanity is at a crisis point where alongside climate change and global warming, the rate at which the earth’s resources are being plundered and the extent to which it can adapt and remain resilient to the imposts being put upon it is being stretched beyond its capacity. In this light, overtourism may be emblematic of wider societal trends at large and the solution lies in a wholesale rethinking of how we as humans live and how governments govern; either with an eye on the distant future and the generations to come, or on short term fixes that further withdraw from out collective global inheritances.

The final word on overtourism and the many discontents attached to it, as well as the measures that are required to deal with it productively are reflected in the founder of Lonely Planet Tony Wheeler’s (2018) latest tome:

Travel is never harmless. Overall, I believe the positives outweigh the negatives, whether it’s for us personally (we come back tanned, relaxed and, hopefully, a little wiser) or for those we’ve visited (hopefully we’ve left them a little wealthier and possibly a little wiser as well). Unfortunately, that education and wealth transfer undoubtedly has some costs attached to it; there’s ugly tourist development as well as ugly tourists. Sometimes there’s nothing worse than sitting next to the development without being involved with it, suffering the drawbacks without enjoying the benefits.

As a self-confessed lover of travel and although cognisant of the many pitfalls and inconveniences that tourism can generate, Wheeler is clearly optimistic that on balance, travel can underline positive encounters and drive beneficial and reciprocal exchange. The clincher lies in ensuring that the people subjected to tourism and tourists are central to its development and proliferation and receive more from it than is taken away. Seemingly a simple answer to what has become a long-drawn out, agonisingly over argued and arguably over intellectualised topic. Perhaps we are not over overtourism by a long way and the many barriers that prevent more inclusive, responsible and sustainable tourism lies in the intractable inability of governments, travellers and stakeholders to consider interests beyond their very own, and that of generations to come.

Acknowledgements

The editors of this book acknowledge chapter contributors for generously sharing their insights. We also thank the publisher CABI for all of their assistance.

References

Jones, T. (2019). Why Italy regrets is Faustian pact with tourist cash. The Guardian, 6 January. Accessed on 17 January, 2019 at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/06/cost-of-tourism-in-italy

Kay, W. (2018). Wonderings: has tourism become toxic in 2018? Lonely Planet online. Accessed on 17 January, 2019 at https://www.lonelyplanet.com/blog/2018/11/23/wonderings-has-tourism-become-toxic-in-2018

Wheeler, T. (2018). On travel. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.