At my first stop in Italy, I envisioned late night gondola rides down the canal with golden lights flickering all around, glasses of local wine enjoyed in quaint, quiet restaurants by the water, and a maze of walkways leading to the next undiscovered corner of the city. I wanted from Venice what everyone seems to want from it—that peek into Italian everyday life.
Maybe that’s what I would have experienced twenty years ago, but today the floating city feels more like an amusement park.
Venice is a destination affected by “overtourism,” a term so new it’s not even formally listed in the Oxford or Collins dictionaries. Visitors have begun overwhelming the very destinations they want to enjoy, and it’s affected places like Maya Bay in Thailand, Iceland, Zion National Park, and many others.
This is exactly what I witnessed in Venice—I weaved through heaps of people with cameras in hand (as I carried one myself), walked past countless souvenir shops, and never encountered a single person who lived in the city proper. When I asked restaurants servers or bartenders if anyone actually resides in Venice, they shook their heads and laughed a little. “Oh, no. Everyone lives outside of Venice.”
The World Travel & Tourism Council partnered with McKinsey & Company to release a study on the effects of overtourism, and found the “degraded tourist experience” is one of the ramifications. Destinations are struggling to keep up with visitor demand—there were over 1.3 billion international trips taken in 2017–thanks partly to services like Airbnb and Uber that make travel more affordable. But it’s not only tourists who are affected—the same study highlights alienated local residents, overloaded infrastructure, damage to nature, and threats to culture and heritage as other ways a massive amount of visitors can alter a destination.
“When overtourism occurs in destinations that are not prepared for an influx of visitors, their resources can be depleted,” says Gavin Tollman, CEO of Trafalgar. The global guided vacation company has put a high priority on mindful travel. More than half of its itineraries support the preservation of UNESCO World Heritage sites, it incorporates local guides, and tours provide accommodations which support historic landmarks. Trafalgar’s parent company, The Travel Corporation, also founded TreadRight a decade ago as a non-profit sector of the company which is dedicated to giving back to the local people, places, and wildlife.
“Water supply, food, and even imported goods may not replenish fast enough to support the visitors, which can end up negatively impacting local residents,” he continues. “Additionally, at natural or historical sites, overtourism can make it difficult to maintain original structures. Maya Bay in Thailand, one of the world’s most beautiful beaches, is now temporarily closed to visitors and undergoing rehabilitation of its coral reef and natural surrounding due to the excessive activity.”
It causes just as many issues in metropolitan areas. Sophia Casas was born and raised in Barcelona, and she (along with about 1.6 million other residents) still calls the city home. The capital of Spain’s Catalonia region has been hit especially hard by ever-increasing throngs of visitors—nearly 32 million people visit each year—and residents have held multiple protests against the mass tourism affecting their home.
“Some areas of town I’ll never go to,” Casas confesses. “The areas are just packed with tourists, and it’s so full of people that it’s annoying to go there.”
She says cruise ships are partially to blame. In the last five years, the demand for cruising has increased by more than twenty percent, but the behemoth ships bring in crowds of tourists who often do nothing more than eat at a few restaurants and purchase knickknacks before leaving. This is a phenomenon Tollman refers to as “the ice cream tourist.”
“Ice cream tourists are travelers who move from city to city, stopping in for just a day or a few hours, and all they contribute to the local economy is the purchase of an ice cream cone,” he says. “Many tourists do this to squeeze in as many cities as possible on their vacation.”
Locals like Casas find it frustrating to see waves of people entering and departing with such a short turnaround, and she doesn’t feel it provides a genuine experience of Barcelona. “People never experience what it’s really like to be here, and they won’t even have dinner here,” she says. “I feel sad because they’re getting such a bad image of the city.”
Low-cost air carriers like Ryanair or Easyjet can also play a part in overtourism. “They have a good side because you can visit anywhere for relatively cheap. But the downside is you can visit anywhere for relatively cheap,” Casas says.
Justin Francis, chief executive of activist travel company Responsible Travel agrees in his documentary Crowded Out. These budget airlines have made international travel more affordable than ever, meaning a flight from the UK to mainland Europe “can be as cheap as a couple of pizzas and a glass of beer,” he says.
Home share sites are one of the biggest culprits, though. Travelers who desire a genuine, local experience often use a service like Airbnb—in fact, this is what I selected for my own four-night stay in Venice. Jonathon Tourtello, the founder of the Sustainable Stewardship Center, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainable tourism, told The New York Times, “The issue for Airbnb…is that there are listings that are not home-sharing—the people who buy up multiple flats and list them all, which really changes the character of a city.”
When landlords turn apartments into rentals for visitors as opposed to housing for residents, it impacts the cost of living as well. “Rent has gone up a lot in the last few years,” Casas says about Barcelona. “I’d guess it has doubled in the last ten years, and it’s getting to a point where people have to leave.”
This all might sound bleak, but it doesn’t have to be—tourists can help by practicing sustainable tourism and traveling with the destination in mind. These don’t have to be grand gestures. It might mean eating in a restaurant not advertised in a guidebook or booking a tour with a company focused on eco-travel. Casas says something as simple as avoiding tourist apartments can make a big difference.
“Tourism can and should be a force for good, when managed holistically,” adds Tollman. “For the long-term, tourism has the ability to sustainably advance economies and societies, while protecting cultures and environments that epitomize destination identity.”
He identified three key steps for the conscious traveler: dissemination, dispersal, and direct action.
Dissemination involves year-round travel and avoiding the tourist overwhelm destinations experience during peak season. To practice dispersal, travelers should aim to go beyond top ten lists and explore lesser-known places within a destination. Finally, direct action encourages visitors to look for ways to get involved with and support the destinations they visit, whether that’s through fundraising, service, or simply traveling thoughtfully. In turn, these steps can help maintain local cultures, environments, and livelihoods.
I wish I could say I did all of these things when I wandered the streets of Venice, but while I strive to get off the beaten path, I’m sure I was inevitably part of the problem. This is the first step towards handling overtourism, though: recognizing where we’ve failed and making a plan for informed decisions in the future. By doing so, we can explore the world and save it at the same time.
“We must take action, now, or face the fact that the damage occurring may be irreversible,” Tollman says. “As little as we are in this world, we can make a big difference by each of us changing our behaviors—opening our minds and eyes to how big a responsibility we have to help preserve our precious planet.”
