Tourism Management

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sustainability

Article

Is Overtourism Overused? Understanding the Impact
of Tourism in a City Context

Ko Koens 1,2,* , Albert Postma 3 and Bernadett Papp 3

1 Hotel and Facility Management, Breda University of Applied Sciences, PO Box 3917, 4800 DX Breda,
The Netherlands

2 School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg 2092, South Africa
3 European Tourism Futures Institute, NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, PO Box 1298,

8900 CG Leeuwarden, The Netherlands; albert.postma@stenden.nl (A.P.); bernadett.papp@stenden.nl (B.P.)
* Correspondence: koens.k@buas.nl; Tel.: +31-6-4544-0674

Received: 1 November 2018; Accepted: 20 November 2018; Published: 23 November 2018 �����������������

Abstract: In less than two years, the concept of overtourism has come to prominence as one of the
most discussed issues with regards to tourism in popular media and, increasingly, academia. In spite
of its popularity, the term is still not clearly delineated and remains open to multiple interpretations.
The current paper aims to provide more clarity with regard to what overtourism entails by placing
the concept in a historical context and presenting results from a qualitative investigation among
80 stakeholders in 13 European cities. Results highlight that overtourism describes an issue that
is multidimensional and complex. Not only are the issues caused by tourism and nontourism
stakeholders, but they should also be viewed in the context of wider societal and city developments.
The article concludes by arguing that while the debate on overtourism has drawn attention again to the
old problem of managing negative tourism impacts, it is not well conceptualized. Seven overtourism
myths are identified that may inhibit a well-rounded understanding of the concept. To further a
contextualized understanding of overtourism, the paper calls for researchers from other disciplines
to engage with the topic to come to new insights.

Keywords: city tourism; tourismphobia; tourism impacts; sustainable tourism; carrying capacity;
overtourism; urban planning; governance; destination management; touristification

1. The Rise of Overtourism

Cities provide visitors with a range of multifunctional, complex, multiuser environments. They are
able to simultaneously host increasing numbers of domestic and international leisure tourists, but also
business tourists and people visiting friends and relatives (VFR). The fact that cities tend to have good
infrastructure facilities and already host a diverse and dynamic population suggests that they will
better cope with increasing tourist numbers than other destinations. Indeed, until recently, tourism was
seen as one of the more sustainable economic growth strategies for cities. Particularly in the aftermath
of the economic crisis of 2008, it was viewed as an important driver for economic recovery or growth
and it was given plenty of scope to develop, thus reinforcing the relative importance of the industry in
city destinations [1].

However, in the last years, the perception of city tourism has changed dramatically.
Public transportation, infrastructure, roads, museums, attractions and other services that were
primarily created for local use suffer under increasing tourist numbers. The growing popularity
of online accommodation services (e.g., AirBnB, HomeAway, Uber) and a desire to see ‘real’ and
‘authentic’ everyday city life has meant that tourism activities become further intertwined with local
life, also outside of the main tourist areas in cities [2]. Such developments have led to an increasingly

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Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 2 of 15

vocal call from residents and local stakeholders to deal with tourism growth and protests have been
observed in multiple high profile destinations (e.g., Barcelona, Venice). Although the issue is most
prominent in European cities, similar sentiments have been reported in other destinations too, for
example tropical islands, backpacker ghettos, or even slums [3]. To describe these tourism disturbances,
the term ‘overtourism’ has rapidly been popularized.

In academia, overtourism has become commonplace overnight, too. Whereas it was largely
nonexistent prior to 2017, no less than four Special Issues of academic journals and three edited books
on the topic will come out in 2018 and 2019. The marketability and popularity of the term overtourism
appears to be at least partially accountable for its entry in academia, rather than its explanatory value,
as exemplified by a recent paper that uses the term overtourism in its title, yet does not mention it in
the main text at all [4]. More problematic is the fact that the term actually can be considered ‘fuzzy’ in
that it is ill-defined, lacks clarity, and is highly difficult to operationalize [5]. As such, it may possibly
be used as a vehicle for recycling existing ideas or to obfuscate agency and responsibility [6,7].

The current paper aims to provide more clarity to the overtourism debate by presenting results
from a qualitative investigation among 80 stakeholders in 13 European cities. It seeks to provide an
understanding of the different ways in which overtourism manifests itself in a city context, the issues
underlying it, as well as ways of dealing with it. It reveals overtourism to be a highly complex,
opaque phenomenon, which can be oversimplified by stakeholders. Particularly when overtourism has
not clearly manifested itself, this may limit their willingness to engage with more radical innovations
to prevent the negative impacts of tourism from spiraling out of control. In order to reduce confusion
and allow for clearer debates, it is therefore necessary to better delineate overtourism and address
some myths that appear to have become associated with the phenomenon.

2. A Concise History of Tourism’s Impacts

The term overtourism largely arose from media discourses without much theoretical grounding.
The issue it describes—an excessive negative impact of tourism on the host communities and/or
natural environment—has been a critical concern within academia for many years, though. While it
goes beyond the scope of this paper to provide a full overview of all work on the subject, it is useful to
highlight a number of key insights.

As early as the 1960s, authors already discussed the ways in which tourism negatively affected
destinations [8,9]. This culminated in concepts such as Doxey’s irridex model [10], Butler’s tourist
life cycle [11] and Pizam’s description on the social costs to destination communities [12]. A common
thread in this early work was that excessive tourism concentrations led to harm to the local environment
and negative attitudes among residents in urban and rural areas. In the 1980s, discussions regarding
the carrying capacity of a destination moved this debate forward. The idea is to find the limit with
regards to the number of tourists who could visit without serious negative consequences, which may be
higher or lower depending on the physical characteristics of the city and residents’ attitude, loyalty and
pride [13].

While carrying capacity continues to be a popular concept to appreciate the negative consequences
of tourism, the usefulness of this perspective has been questioned. The main issue is its focus on tourism
numbers, which brings with it that negative effects are equated with mass tourism or increasing visitor
numbers [14]. In fact, as early as 1979, Rosenow and Pulsipher [15] recognized three main underlying
different causes of what they called visitor ‘overkill’: (1) Too many visitors, possibly aggravated
by seasonality; (2) Too much adverse visitor impact (e.g., noise, rowdiness and other annoyances);
(3) Too much physical impact of the visitor economy (e.g., touristified city centers and destruction
of natural resources). Later research confirmed that visitor behavior, timing, concentration, location,
experience with tourism, local etiquette, etcetera are indeed as important as tourist numbers [16,17].
In addition, whereas the impact of tourists on the physical environment can be determined, this is more
difficult for the social environment, which is based on the tolerance of the host community towards

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 3 of 15

tourists. Not only is this a subjective concept, which is difficult to measure within ever-changing
individuals, but also the tolerance levels among residents with different interests do differ [14,18].

Alternative perspectives, such as the levels of acceptable change framework (LAC),
provide greater nuance [19]. LAC seeks to appreciate the extent to which the impacts of tourism
remain acceptable to local stakeholders in relation to the main issues and concerns. In times of financial
need, for example, people may be more tolerant of negative impacts, due to the potential economic
benefits of tourism. The benefit of the debates around the LAC framework and similar impact-based
approaches is that the emphasis has shifted from numbers to one that is based more on perceived
benefits and disadvantages [20–22]. These insights have led to different schools of thought on the
ways of managing tourism, in addition to limiting visitor numbers. The first, championed by UNWTO,
focuses on increasing the capacity of tourist activities. Capacity can be increased by enlarging the
physical capacity of activities, through ‘smart’ technological solutions [23–26] or by making the local
community gain financially by stimulating entrepreneurship [27]. Another school of thought highlights
the variety of tourism stakeholders that are involved with and are impacted upon by tourism and the
importance of the politics of tourism, power relations and citizen participation, given that benefits and
disadvantages are often not spread evenly among stakeholders [28]. It views the limits of a destination
as dynamic, contested, and constantly reconstructed in a local context. This largely aligns with some
of the systems-oriented approaches to urban tourism that were put forward in the 1990s [17,29–31].
These pointed to the fact that that while “tourists make use of almost all urban features, they make
an exclusive use of almost none” and, as such, a more integrative approach would be beneficial [32].
However, in spite of calls, much work on tourism impacts remains exclusively focused on the tourism
industry [33,34].

From the late 1990s onwards, the emphasis of work on dealing with tourism impacts shifted.
Whereas with carrying capacity, LAC and similar approaches, government and policymakers had a
significant role to play in managing and regulating tourism, this changed towards a more hands-off
perspective, which put more emphasis on the responsibility of industry actors and individual tourists
(e.g., certain conceptualizations of responsible and pro-poor tourism) [6,27]. The focus here is on
allowing “the market to act as a form of governance”, with government withdrawing from direct
involvement and instead seeking “to encourage the tourism industry to move in particular directions”
through, for example, financial incentives and education [35]. Such work has been criticized for putting
too much responsibility onto actors who lack the resources (e.g., small tourism business owners) or
knowledge (e.g., tourists) to act in a sustainable way [3,36]. However, tourism academia, both in
research and education, has continued to follow this trend and relinquished its role in “pressing the
industry and governing authorities to be more responsible and accountable” [37–39].

Perhaps because of this, the debate regarding overtourism developed outside of tourism academia.
Its first use dates back to the early 2000s, when it was used to describe the danger of overusing natural
resources [40,41]. About a decade later, the term was introduced in tourism media [42], but it took
until late 2016 for it to take off as a counterpart of the Spanish term ‘Turismofobia’ to describe the
outcry among residents in response to the unfettered growth of tourism [43]. Overtourism as a
term has proven very marketable and was trademarked by online travel magazine Skift in 2018
(registration number 5494076). The UNWTO definition of overtourism now is “the impact of tourism
on a destination, or parts thereof, that excessively influences perceived quality of life of citizens and/or
quality of visitors’ experiences in a negative way” [26].

Defined in this way, overtourism is similar in its representation of the issue compared to earlier
conceptualizations. However, while only a limited set of literature is available that associates itself
with overtourism (or tourismphobia) and much of it is explorative in nature, some differences can be
observed. Current work is more focused on the relation between tourism and its wider city context and
the political aspects of excessive tourism growth [43–46]. The issues related to overtourism are viewed
in the light of the interplay of tourism and urban change [47–50]. On this matter, reference can be
made to the upcoming discourse regarding tourism gentrification, which describes the transformation

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 4 of 15

of mostly middle-class neighborhoods into tourism enclaves that are marked by “a proliferation of
corporate entertainment and tourism venues” [51]. Whilst coming to the issue from a somewhat
different angle, this discourse overlaps with overtourism in that both describe an exclusion of residents
and other local stakeholders and the touristification and museumfication of popular tourist areas [52].

In dealing with overtourism issues, the authors of these recent publications emphasize the need for
regulation and government leadership. This perceived need is in clear contrast to the more hands-off
and self-governance perspectives that have dominated tourism discourses for several decades [24,48],
although there is still relatively little clarification of how new policy arrangements could be made to
work in practice.

3. Methodology

This study is based on work performed in two research projects regarding overtourism. Over a
period of two years, qualitative research was performed in 13 European cities. The first research project
ran from 2015–2017 and focused on six large and well-known tourist cities (Amsterdam, Barcelona,
Berlin, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Munich). Cities were chosen on the basis that they were prime tourist
cities in their countries, which already did or were likely to suffer from overtourism in the near
future. The idea was that different aspects of overtourism would be visible in these cities, but also a
wide variety of strategies to deal with the issue. The second project, which ran from 2017–2018 used
the same methodology to investigate tourism in smaller cities or cities with less tourism (Antwerp,
Bruges, Ghent, Leuven, Mechelen, Salzburg, Tallinn), as this might shed a closer light on other aspects
of overtourism and potential ways of managing the issue. The research was exploratory in nature,
with an emphasis on the perception and ways of managing overtourism as well as causes underlying it,
rather than directly comparing cities or measuring carrying capacities or values of acceptable change.

In each city, five to ten stakeholders were identified in cooperation with the city’s government or
the local destination management organization. Participants were purposefully chosen to represent
a range of stakeholders (residents, tourism businesses, transport service providers, policymakers
and politicians). This resulted in a total of 86 participants (Appendix A), who were interviewed
face-to-face (63), via Skype (16) or by phone (5). Two cooperated by answering a set of questions via
email. The interviews were semi structured in nature, using a topic list as a basis. This provided the
interviewers with structure, whilst allowing for the flexibility needed to customize interviews to the
context and interests of the interviewee. Interviews were held by seven interviewers, who received
instructions with regards to the subject and the topic list to ensure a similar style of interviewing.
Interviews lasted approximately 40–60 min and were held in English or the native tongue of the
participant. Interviews were analyzed, by listening to the recordings and writing down key points
on an answer sheet, which contained the main topics of the study—perspective on overtourism,
manifestation of potential issues, governance, future vision and developments. As a secondary source
of data gathering, short interviews were held with 150 residents in the first six cities. The interviewed
residents lived in the city center as well as the areas directly bordering the city center. Interviewers
rang the bell or knocked on the door at random in these different parts of these areas, and approached
people in the street, to get a more diverse sample. The goal of the interviews was to appreciate how
residents experienced their encounters with tourism. Interviews were performed by students and
were not recorded. Instead, short notes were taken of the main points that were discussed. Due to time
constraints, it was not possible to perform this research in the final seven cities. As such, results were
used mainly to provide context, rather than a primary source of information.

Results were compared and contrasted, which enabled the identification of emerging patterns on
different parameters regarding the perception and management of overtourism. In cases of factual
ambiguities, the results were discussed with city representatives to clarify matters. After each research
project, a session was held with participating city representatives in a meeting room near Schiphol
Airport, the Netherlands. The first of these sessions took place in December 2016 and the second took
place in January 2018. For the second session, representatives from the cities that participated in the

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 5 of 15

first research project were also invited. The idea of the meetings was to discuss findings and jointly
further understanding of the topic. This was done by means of a discussion of the research results,
but also through a short ‘scenario planning’ workshop to get shared insights of new developments
and potential future issues and solutions related to overtourism.

4. Causes of Disturbance

The discussions with stakeholders revealed that what is now called overtourism is actually an
accumulation of different impacts and perceptions that relate both to tourist behavior as well as
actions by, and encounters with stakeholders as well as changes to the social, economic and physical
environment. As such, it encapsulates a complex and multidimensional concept. The three different
causes of disturbance as discussed by Rosenow and Pulsipher [15]—overcrowding in city’s public
spaces, tourists’ behavior and physical touristification—can all be identified, but interviewees also
recognized displacement due to AirBnB and similar platforms and excessive pressure on the local
environment as separate causes of concern (Table 1). While interviewees mostly appreciated the fact
that these issues have different impacts, spatial distribution and causes, overtourism increasingly
became an overarching denominator for all as the research progressed. This made some participants
conflate causes and effects of different issues or even play down the importance of overtourism. Indeed,
participants preferred to talk about visitor pressure, as this was deemed more neutral and did not limit
itself to tourism, but also other visitors.

Table 1. Issues that are attributed to tourism.

Issue Type of Impact Spatial Distribution

Overcrowding in city’s public
spaces

Overcrowding on streets and
pavements, as well as public
transport, heavy traffic, loss of
local identity

Tourist hotspots and newly
developing tourist areas

Pervasiveness of visitor impact

due to inappropriate behavior

Noise, disturbance, loss of local
identity

Tourist hotspots and newly
developing tourist areas

Physical touristification of city
centers and other often-visited
areas

Loss of amenities for residents due
to mono-culture of tourist shops
and facilities

Tourist hotspots and city centers

Residents pushed out of
residential areas due to AirBnB
and similar platforms

Less availability of housing, loss of
sense of community and security

Throughout city, mainly near
tourist hotspots

Pressure on local environment
Increased waste, water use, air
pollution

Throughout the city, near specific
sites (harbor, road junctions)

Source: Interviews, Reference [15].

With regards to overcrowding, the spring months are commonly most problematic due to the
combined presence of tourists, residents and day visitors. In the peak summer months, many residents
move out of the city, thus ‘freeing’ up space for tourists. The fact that the tourist season has been
prolonged in recent years, to mitigate overcrowding or to stimulate more economic opportunities,
has meant that the sense of crowdedness now is observed nearly year-round. This has further
contributed to residents’ sense of touristification and the feeling that the local identity of the city is
lost. While issues with overcrowding and tourists’ behavior historically have been most noticeable
around tourist hotspots, interviewees noted that even in crowded cities, it was fairly easy to find streets
where hardly any tourists ventured. Rather than absolute visitor numbers, they argued that concerns
were most pronounced with rapid relative and/or unexpected growth. This can be observed in newly
developing tourist areas, which receive relatively few tourists, but often have limited tourist facilities
and a residential population that is neither used to nor desires tourism growth. Without sufficient
consultation, growth here can cause problems. The advent of Instagram and other social media has
meant that unplanned tourism to these locations can increase (e.g., if they are mentioned by a popular

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 6 of 15

influencer). In addition, sea and river cruise tourism is seen as a (potential) problem in cities like
Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bruges, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Salzburg and Tallinn, as it causes large numbers
of people to venture into the cities at set times, thus clogging up the city. Findings like this confirm
criticisms on using carrying capacity as an ‘objective’ means for measuring tourism impacts and serve
as a point of caution for city authorities that seek to manage tourism by spreading visitors in time or
place or seek cruise tourism growth.

Whereas overcrowding can at least to an extent be monitored and measured objectively, it is more
difficult to measure the impact of the inappropriate behavior of tourists. Here, individual excesses can
have a strong impact on long-term perceptions, even when objective disruption levels remain the same
or decrease. One resident shared that she was aware that she lived in a tourist area, and knew that this
would give some disturbance, but seeing someone urinate against her house decreased her tolerance
of tourism and increased her awareness of tourism annoyances. Another example is the so-called
beer-bike—a multipassenger human-powered vehicle, equipped with a beer tap—which has become a
symbol for overtourism, even in cities where they are rarely seen. The advent of social media has made
it easier to share these sentiments and bring opponents together, frustrating policymakers, who note
that relatively insignificant issues are blown out of proportion due to a combination of social media
and a willing press. Residential action groups, on the other hand, note that their misgivings were
previously ignored by laissez-faire governments and that these developments have merely helped to
redress the balance.

Physical touristification of city centers and other tourist areas is related mostly to the changing
retail landscape, which increasingly gets tailored to fun-shopping and food consumption rather
than local shops. The impact of AirBnB and similar accommodation providers can be seen as
a new and slightly different form of touristification. Although private house rental has a long
history, internet providers such as AirBnB have caused an explosive growth of such accommodation
offerings. Contrary to other forms of physical touristification, AirBnB and similar providers
impact neighborhoods throughout the city, leading to a displacement of people rather than services.
In addition, residents complain about noise, but also a more general sense of insecurity as they never
are quite certain who inhabits these rented properties.

The fact that the increase of visitors to a city puts more pressure on the local environment
(e.g., waste and water management) was mentioned only by a limited number of interviewees.
The issues that were mentioned relate mostly to local environmental issues that are already problematic.
For example, a lack of water is already a problem in Barcelona in summer, yet it is exacerbated by
tourists who use a disproportionate amount of it. An exception here is the air pollution caused by
cruises, which was seen as a pure tourism problem. Long-term global issues like climate change were
not so much related to overtourism, suggesting that it is related predominantly to a city context.

5. Managing Overtourism in a City Context

In line with earlier findings on overtourism, interviewees in this research were keen to point out
that while developments in travel and tourism receive most attention, the issues related to tourism are
at least partially caused by developments outside of tourism. A wide variety of changes in the social,
economic and physical environment, as well as infringements on resident’s quality of life, may also
be attributed to tourism [17]. A summary of mentioned tourism, city and societal developments that
have contributed to an increased pressure on city resources in recent years is provided in Table 2.

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Table 2. Developments contributing to issues related to tourism.

Issue Tourism Related Developments City and Societal Developments

Overcrowding in city’s public
spaces

Rise of tourist numbers; cheaper
flights, increase of cruise tourism

Increase of residents and
commuters; flexible work
arrangements; increase of
residential leisure; increase of
online shopping

Pervasiveness of visitor impact

Rise of tourist numbers; tourists
moving deeper into city in search
for authentic experiences; increase
of cruise tourism; tourism
spreading policies

Increase of residential leisure;
greater connectedness of residents
due to social media; popularity of
Instagram and social networks

Physical touristification
Rise of tourist numbers; increased
dominance of large tourism
businesses

Real estate speculation; city
modernization; increased costs of
city amenities; limitations on
restrictions of urban planning

Residents pushed out of
residential areas

Rise of tourist numbers; rise of
online platforms like AirBnB;
tourist desire for authentic
experiences;

Real-estate speculation; increase of
internet holiday booking;
residential gentrification; rising
costs of living; limitations on
restrictions of urban planning

Pressure on local environment
Rise of tourist numbers; greater
use of resources per tourist

Increase of residents and
commuters; increase of extreme
weather events.

Source: Interviews, Reference [2,17,43,49,50].

While international tourists are often the most visible group to contribute to perceptions of
overtourism, a large and growing number of people also use the physical space in cities for other
purposes. Day visitors constitute up to 50% of the people that visit the city for leisure purposes.
While these visitors blend in relatively well and are often not viewed as tourists by residents, they also
cause overcrowding and annoyances. In addition, the growing popularity of the city as a place to
live, work and for leisure means that the number of residents, commuters and day visitors using city
infrastructure facilities has increased by up to 10% each year in the participating cities. These groups
make use of city space and infrastructure on a daily basis and contribute to an increased perception of
crowdedness year-round, as expressed by an interviewee in Salzburg:

“Some of the underlying problems have nothing to do with tourism. If there is a rainy day you will
have traffic jams in town. Too many people are driving in. If you add a couple of thousands of tourists
it breaks down.”

If residents are forced to move out of the city due to tourism gentrification, this puts further
pressure on city infrastructure:

“People are leaving the city [because] rental prices are way too high. There are many people moving to
the surroundings and then commute by car every day. It is a circle that never ends.”

The perception of crowdedness in the city is further augmented by the fact that more flexible
work arrangements have made it more common for residents to visit the city and use its retail and
hospitality facilities during daytime when most tourists also come to a city. Indeed, behavioral patterns,
particularly of middle class urban dwellers, can be nearly indistinguishable from those of tourists [50].
In a similar vein, waste and water use also increase due to greater use by city stakeholders outside
of tourism, and media attention for both has increased due to increasing environmental awareness.
The strong increase of online shopping further impacts the perceived crowdedness, as an increasing
number of different delivery vehicles clog up roads and cause congestion and pollution. In other
words, an increasing number of different types of city users and services compete for a limited set of
city space and facilities.

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 8 of 15

To an extent, tourism may be used as a scapegoat by the daily users of the city. It simply is often
impossible to determine whether disturbance is caused by a resident or a tourist. In Amsterdam,
the example was given of people who were noisy aboard a boat in the canals in the evening.
Residents are inclined to put the blame on tourists here. However, it is difficult for tourists to
rent a boat in the evening and such disturbance is more likely, therefore, to be caused by local actors.

The impact of the touristification of city centers and online accommodation platforms also
needs further clarification. Undoubtedly, tourism has strongly impacted city centers and suburban
neighborhoods, but this impact can at least partially be attributed to real-estate developments. After the
economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent crash of the real-estate market, it became more attractive for
house owners to rent out properties to tourists, rather than sell them at a loss (see also [53]). In Portugal,
the economic bailout after the crisis by the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF was given on
the condition that the rental market had to be opened up to the free market. This drastically increased
rental prices that had previously been kept artificially low to provide lower-income households with
higher quality housing. When the economy started to recover, real-estate speculation, particularly in
capital cities, began to drive up house and rental prices and further reduced the number of properties
available for local shops and residents. As such, touristification is, at least partially, the visible effect of
other, underlying issues.

These examples highlight that overtourism cannot be dealt with sufficiently by focusing
on tourism alone. Instead, policy actions are required that take into account wider city usage.
However, in the investigated cities, the emphasis remains on increasing the carrying capacity by
developing the tourist industry and its attractions or mitigating the negative impacts. In cities
where overtourism is not an issue, tourism growth still mostly goes unquestioned, even when new
ways of management are discussed [54]. In addition, interviewees noted that within the current
political climate, the emphasis remains on economic or voluntary arrangements. This confirms earlier
findings, which emphasize voluntary and economic measures in managing tourism impacts (e.g.,
admission charges, education) [26,55]. At the same time, the number of stakeholders in the cities who
advocate a need to curb growth and increase regulation is on the rise, possibly also driven by the fact
that antitourism sentiments prominently featured in the last municipal elections in Amsterdam and
Barcelona. Measures have been implemented or are considered to regulate traffic (e.g., coach free zones),
regulate tourist behavior (e.g., strict regulation in tourist hotspots at night), manage disturbance caused
by tourist groups (e.g., use of earphones to listen to tour guides), tax cruise ships and day-visitors,
etcetera. Particular efforts are made to regulate providers such as AirBnB through, for example,
a limitation on the number of days a property can be rented out, the fact that a house-owner needs to
live in the rented place, taxation, registration systems, etcetera. Although policy measures and legal
regulations have up to now had difficulty keeping up with the rapid developments within this sector,
interviewees argued that progress is being made with such measures.

The complexity of overtourism reveals itself again when looking at the effects of policy measures.
It is revealed that these have been, at times, different than expected. For example, in Bruges, city-center
parking tariffs were raised aggressively to make tourists and day-visitors contribute more to the city
budget. In practice, this led to perceptions of touristification at the expense of residents. Tourists were
willing and able to pay the higher parking tariffs, but regular users now had to park outside of the city
center. Another example is the great faith that is put in smart or technological solutions as a means to
more efficiently measure impacts and steer tourism to maximize its carrying capacity. As discussed
previously, tourism capacity is but one element of overtourism. In addition, city governments are
already overloaded with apps and technological solutions that they need to promote and/or implement,
also to deal with issues outside of tourism.

One issue that policymakers agreed on was the difficulty they had in implementing policies
to deal with overtourism, also because it is not a tourism-only problem. Management measures
that take into account the wider city policy structure will require cooperation between multiple city
departments and other stakeholders, including residents. The remit of tourism policy makers or other

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 9 of 15

tourism stakeholders is too limited to successfully initiate such measures. As such, interviewees
noted that it was key to get tourism more established as an integral part of city development.
Amsterdam is experimenting with such an approach by means of a separate entity titled ‘City in
Balance’. Although commendable, the program has only few committed employees and other
stakeholders argued they were still insufficiently consulted. This perceived lack of consultation
reiterates one of the most often mentioned challenges for dealing with overtourism, namely to get
stakeholders from within and outside of tourism involved to work together and come up with joint
city-wide solutions.

6. Discussion

Within a very short time, overtourism has become the ‘de facto’ descriptor for excessive negative
tourism impacts. The issues it describes are similar to those discussed in earlier studies [13,15,16],
although these are perceived as a problem now in a greater number of cities and they can be also
observed beyond tourist hotspots and city centers. The debate surrounding overtourism has helped
to draw attention to the negative consequences of unconstrained tourism growth. In doing so, it has
pointed towards limitations of market-oriented voluntary approaches to effectively deal with this
issue [1]. Instead, possibilities for more regulatory, government-led approaches to manage tourism that
seemed to have gone out of fashion since the start of the century were up for discussion again [16,56].

The results show that the impacts of tourism are diverse, complex and multifaceted and that
the term overtourism fails to fully encapsulate this complexity. Overtourism suggests a certain kind
of uniformity of tourism impacts and implies that cities have a carrying capacity that tourism can
overshoot. This can be an issue when seeking solutions, as it hinders a common understanding
between different stakeholders of the specific nature of the problem(s) within the local context [14].
Such an understanding is particularly important because overtourism is not caused by tourism
alone and successful management strategies will require cooperation with stakeholders outside of
tourism, including residents [57]. More neutral terminology, like ‘visitor pressure’—preferred by most
interviewees—or already existing concepts, such as ‘levels of acceptable change’ or ‘carrying capacity’,
would appear more helpful when trying to appreciate the impact of tourism on city destinations.

Earlier work has already highlighted the importance of the urban context and the place of tourism
in urban planning [46–48,50]. However, the results from this research indicated that the issues can also
be rooted in wider societal developments, like changing lifestyles and seemingly unrelated things,
like the increase of internet shopping and social media. This suggests that overtourism should no
longer be perceived as a tourism problem or as an urban problem, but rather as a social problem within
a city context.

These nuances are still largely lacking in the current discussions on overtourism and this may
have led to what can best be described as ‘overtourism myths’. These myths may well have acted as a
focal point to raise awareness, create coalitions and popularize the concept of overtourism, but moving
forward, they can also promulgate falsehoods and inhibit further understanding [58]. At least seven
myths cropped up during the research, which will be shortly reviewed to help demystify the term and
lead to a more well-rounded understanding:

1. Overtourism is not a recent phenomenon—In spite of the recent increase of attention to overtourism,
the underlying issues on which it is predicated are not new, even if they may be more intense
and expressed in new ways (e.g., sharing economy platforms);

2. Overtourism is not the same as mass tourism—Whilst increasing tourist numbers are a cause of
overtourism, some areas are able to cope with large numbers of tourists. It is about perceived
tourism encounters, environmental changes and infringements on people’s lives [17]. Indeed,
even a small absolute increase of tourist numbers in newly developing tourist areas can have
great negative impacts;

3. Overtourism impacts are not city-wide—Overtourism is predominantly observed in (increasingly)
popular parts of the city, at a certain time or during certain events. Even though this means that

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 10 of 15

there are areas with limited tourism activity, residents can still perceive overtourism. It is not a
concept that can be objectively measured;

4. Overtourism is not a tourism-only problem—Overtourism is caused by an overuse of the resources,
infrastructure, or facilities of a destination, or parts thereof. Tourists share these with residents,
commuters and day visitors and their numbers have also increased in recent years. In addition,
wider societal trends and events (e.g., the global crisis of 2008, real-estate speculation, increase of
internet use for shopping and/or social media) have also contributed to the issues now associated
with overtourism;

5. Technological or smart solutions alone will not solve overtourism—The importance of technological
solutions to combat overtourism should not be overestimated, given that the issue of overtourism
is largely social in nature—different groups of city users sharing and competing for the same
space. In addition, new technologies also lead to or intensify specific issues in the city (e.g.,
sharing economy accommodation platforms);

6. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for overtourism—The way in which overtourism manifests itself,
as well as the possibilities for dealing with the issues strongly depend on the city context and
solutions need to be made to fit this local context. To achieve this, stakeholders need to engage
with each other to come to inclusive solutions;

7. Overtourism is not just an issue in cities—Much of the discussion regarding overtourism focuses on
the tourist city context, but it can also be observed in rural or island destinations.

To prevent myths like these from continuing to color the debate on overtourism, it is recommended
that academic researchers continue to engage with the issue, both through direct interaction with
stakeholders [59], but also by building a strong body of academic output that informs teaching [60–62].
The literature review has already shown that there is a rich history of work to form the basis for
future work. It is recommended not to let this work go to waste and to build on it rather than start
a new overtourism discourse. Having said that, future research should not limit itself to rehashing
the earlier work. There is a need for more advanced analytical frameworks and process-oriented
research that shed a new light on the role of tourism for future city development and the complex
interactions between residents, commuters, tourists and other stakeholders [63]. Results indicate that
misunderstandings and lack of communication between these stakeholders are one of the main issues
that hinder solutions.

A recommendation to achieve this is for tourism scholars to engage more with other disciplines
and vice versa. This includes discussions on (tourism) gentrification, the right to the city, transformative
changes, etcetera. Current discourses on these issues are largely informed by thinking from other
domains (human geography, urban planning, innovation studies), which may hold the key to new
avenues of research and frameworks to deal with overtourism. It is promising that several contributions
have already started to bring in such thinking [47,48,50,52]. A promising line of work deals with
social innovation, where concepts like inclusiveness and resilience are increasingly recognized as
important for a long-term sustainable development of tourism destinations [64,65]. Still, many avenues
are still left unexplored. Microanalyses of specific impacts are one example of this. A recent study
on the influence of overtourism on the quality of employment has provided highly useful insights
already [66]. The combined efforts from scholars from such different disciplinary backgrounds will
be key to better understanding the role of tourism in a city context as well as the (im)possibilities of
managing overtourism.

Author Contributions: All authors made equal contributions to the research design, analysis, and
conceptualization. K.K. had the lead in writing, reviewing, and editing, with support from A.P. and B.P. All authors
read and approved the final manuscript. Conceptualization, K.K. and A.P.; Data curation, K.K., A.P., and B.P.;
Formal analysis, K.K., A.P., and B.P.; Funding acquisition, K.K. and A.P.; Investigation, K.K., A.P., and B.P.;
Methodology, K.K., A.P., and B.P.; Project administration, K.K., A.P., and B.P.; Writing—original draft, K.K., A.P.,
and B.P.; Writing—review and editing, K.K., A.P., and B.P.

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 11 of 15

Funding: This research was funded by the Dutch Center of Expertise Leisure, Tourism and Hospitality
(CELTH—www.celth.nl), in cooperation with partners in the participating cities (DMOs, city government),
Vlaamse Kunsteden, and the European Tourism Association.

Acknowledgments: This report would not have been possible without the valuable support of the cities and the
European Tourism Association (ETOA)—with particular acknowledgement to the late Nick Greenfield.

Conflicts of Interest: The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses,
or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Appendix A

Table A1. List of interviewees.

Name City Organization/Company

1 AMS1 Amsterdam WeCity App

2 AMS2 Amsterdam Stad in Balans

3 AMS3 Amsterdam Iamsterdam

4 AMS4 Amsterdam Vereniging Amsterdam City

5 AMS5 Amsterdam Stadsregio Amsterdam

6 AMS6 Amsterdam G250 Buurttop de pijp

7 AMS7 Amsterdam Freelance author

8 ANT1 Antwerp Building Today for Tomorrow

9 ANT2 Antwerp MAS Museum

10 ANT3 Antwerp Visit Antwerpen

11 ANT4 Antwerp Antwerp Hotel Association

12 ANT5 Antwerp Stad Antwerpen

13 ANT6 Antwerp Visit Antwerpen

14 ANT7 Antwerp Touristram

15 ANT8 Antwerp Touristram

16 BAR1 Barcelona Independent consultant

17 BAR2 Barcelona Turisme Sant Ignasi

18 BAR3 Barcelona Turisme de Barcelona

19 BAR4 Barcelona Trade Union UGT

20 BAR5 Barcelona Associació d’Apartaments Turístics de Barcelona

21 BER1 Berlin Berliner Senat

22 BER2 Berlin Senat Neukoelln

23 BER3 Berlin Senat Charlottenburg

24 BER4 Berlin VisitBerlin

25 BER5 Berlin Sofitel/Kurfuerstendamm

26 BER6 Berlin Friedrichsstadtpalast

27 BER7 Berlin Stadtentwicklung Berlin

28 BRU1 Bruges Interparking NV

29 BRU2 Bruges Stad Bruges

30 BRU3 Bruges Visit Bruges

31 BRU4 Bruges Kenniscentrum Toerisme en Horeca

32 BRU5 Bruges Hello Bruges

www.celth.nl

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 12 of 15

Table A1. Cont.

Name City Organization/Company

33 COP1 Copenhagen Tourist Office, formerly WoCo

34 COP2 Copenhagen Roskilde University

35 COP3 Copenhagen Strømma Danmark A/S

36 COP4 Copenhagen Wonderful Copenhagen

37 COP5 Copenhagen Tivoli A/S

38 COP6 Copenhagen Turismens Vækstråd

39 GHE1 Ghent Visit Gent

40 GHE2 Ghent Horeca Vlanderen

41 GHE3 Ghent Stad Gent

42 GHE4 Ghent Stad Gent

43 GHE5 Ghent Stad Gent

44 GHE6 Ghent Sint-Baafs Cathedral

45 LEU1 Leuven Visit Leuven

46 LEU2 Leuven Visit Leuven

47 LEU3 Leuven Leuvenement

48 LEU4 Leuven De Lijn

49 LEU5 Leuven Stad Leuven

50 LEU6 Leuven Stad Leuven

51 LEU7 Leuven Leuven Leisure

52 LIS1 Lisbon Turismo de Lisboa—Visitor and Convention Bureau

53 LIS2 Lisbon Câmara Municipal de Lisboa

54 LIS3 Lisbon Associação da Hotelaria, Restauração e Similares de Portugal

55 LIS4 Lisbon União de Associações do Comércio e Serviços

56 LIS5 Lisbon Associação Renovar a Mouraria

57 MEC1 Mechelen Kazerne Dossin

58 MEC2 Mechelen Visit Mechelen

59 MEC3 Mechelen Stad Mechelen

60 MEC4 Mechelen Stad Mechelen

61 MEC5 Mechelen Stad Mechelen

62 MEC6 Mechelen Stad Mechelen

63 MUN1 Munich Tourismuskommission Munchen

64 MUN2 Munich Munich Airports

65 MUN3 Munich Director of the DMO Munich Tourism

66 MUN4 Munich Referat fuer Arbeit und Wirtschaft Munchen

67 MUN5 Munich Allianz Arena

68 MUN6 Munich City Partner Munich (Retail Marketing Association)

69 SAL1 Salzburg Salzburg Christmas Market

70 SAL2 Salzburg Panorama Tours and Travel GmbH

71 SAL3 Salzburg Salzburg AG

72 SAL4 Salzburg Salzburg AG

Sustainability 2018, 10, 4384 13 of 15

Table A1. Cont.
Name City Organization/Company

73 SAL5 Salzburg Hohensalzburg Fortress

74 SAL6 Salzburg Tourismus Salzburg GmbH

75 SAL7 Salzburg Tourismus Salzburg GmbH

76 SAL8 Salzburg Helbrunn Palace

77 SAL9 Salzburg City of Salzburg

78 TAL1 Tallinn Estonian Folk Art and Craft Union

79 TAL2 Tallinn Estonian Travel & Tourism Association

80 TAL3 Tallinn Port of Tallinn

81 TAL4 Tallinn National Heritage Protection Unit

82 TAL5 Tallinn Tallinn Urban Planning Department

83 TAL6 Tallinn Tallinn City Administrations

84 TAL7 Tallinn Tallinn City Tourist Office & Convention Bureau

85 TAL8 Tallinn Tallinn City Tourist Office & Convention Bureau

86 TAL9 Tallinn Society of the Tallinn Old Town

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• The Rise of Overtourism
• A Concise History of Tourism’s Impacts
• Methodology
• Causes of Disturbance
• Managing Overtourism in a City Context
• Discussion

References

FEATURE – ‘Overtourism’ Worries Europe. How

Much Did Technology Help Get Us There?

By Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times Aug. 29, 2018

Reference: Manjoo, F. (2019, Aug. 29). ‘Overtourism’ Worries Europe. How Much Did
Technology Help Get Us There? The New York Times. Retrieved from

By Farhad Manjoo

Over the summer, my wife and I traveled with our two young kids on a two-week
vacation through Europe.

It wasn’t as highfalutin as it sounds. In London, our Airbnb had ample skylights —
which rendered the place all but uninhabitable during Europe’s heat wave. In Paris, our
charming home-share had a cavernous hole in the ceiling of the entryway, revealing
load-bearing beams that appeared to have been rotting since Napoleon’s reign. And in
Amsterdam, our Airbnb advertised a kids’ bedroom stocked with toys — but failed to
mention the mosquitoes and mice.

I’m not complaining. If travel mishaps are the stuff of memory, my vacation was
unforgettable. And without home-sharing services like Airbnb, review sites like
TripAdvisor and conveniences like Uber, OpenTable and Expedia, the trip would have
been far more expensive, less accessible and, in a strange way, less authentic.

But my tech-abetted trip was illuminating, too, because it provided a firsthand look into
a vexing problem that has gripped much of Europe lately — the worry of “overtourism,”
and the rising chorus that blames technologies like Airbnb, Uber and other internet-
enabled travel conveniences for the menace.

Every summer, the most popular European destinations get stuffed to the gills with
tourists, who outnumber locals by many multiples, turning hot spots into sweaty, selfie-
stick-clogged, “Disneyfied”towns. They offer a taste of a growing global threat: Across
the world, thanks in part to rising affluence, travel is becoming a more widely shared
pastime. International trips were up 6 percent in the first half of the year, surpassing
experts’ forecasts, according to the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization.

This growth might once have been considered unambiguously good news. But the
world’s most popular destinations cannot expand to accommodate an infinite flood of
visitors. Advocates of curbing tourism say too many visitors are altering the character of
historic cities, and making travel terrible, too.

“It’s a level of tourism which is degrading the enjoyment that residents have, but it’s also
degrading the tourist experience, because the tourist who is endlessly queuing behind
backpacks of hundreds of other tourists is not discovering the real or the authentic
place,” said Justin Francis, the chief executive of Responsible Travel, a company that
arranges “sustainable” travel for customers.

What’s to blame? In addition to broad prosperity, there’s technology, defined very
broadly.

Over the last few decades, innovations in aviation — wider, more efficient jets and the
rise of low-cost airlines — significantly reduced the cost of flying. Bigger cruise ships
capable of holding many thousands of passengers now take entire floating cities to
coastal ports (which is why Venice recently banned these). Then there are the many
splendors enabled by the internet, among them online booking, local reviews,
smartphone mapping, and ride-hailing and home-sharing, which have collectively
democratized pretty much every step involved in travel.

Finally, as in almost every other issue these days, there is the influence of social media.

“You can’t talk about overtourism without mentioning Instagram and Facebook — I
think they’re big drivers of this trend,” Mr. Francis said. “Seventy-five years ago, tourism
was about experience seeking. Now it’s about using photography and social media to
build a personal brand. In a sense, for a lot of people, the photos you take on a trip
become more important than the experience.”

That so many different forces play into overtourism highlights the difficulties of doing
much about it. Managing a tourist destination is something like managing a natural
resource, like a mine or a fishery; a sustainable level of tourists brings widespread gains
to the local economy, but too many ruin it for everyone. Cities that are looking to tame
the number of tourists must manage a delicate balance — to gently discourage some
forms of travel without appearing unwelcoming to others.

That brings us to the hand-wringing over Airbnb, which has been singled out by
lawmakers across Europe as a primary driver of overtourism. In Amsterdam, the
authorities are pushing to slash the number of nights that residents can rent their
homes to 30 from 60. Several other cities, including London and Barcelona, Spain, have
also instituted stringent home-sharing rules.

The measures reflect Airbnb’s jaw-dropping growth. In just a few years, the company
has become a significant force in the tourism economies of many cities. In Amsterdam,
according to the company, Airbnb accounted for 12 percent of all overnight bookings in
2017. In Barcelona, Airbnb had an 18 percent market share. And in Kyoto, Japan, it was
22 percent.

But Airbnb — which, like Uber, is a veteran of combating regulatory pushback across the
globe — disputes being a cause of overtourism and argues that in many ways it can be a
solution. In the company’s report on “healthy tourism” this year, it presented a
blizzard of geographic and economic data to show that the service is producing a more
“authentic” travel experience.

Airbnb said that because it offered lodging across a city — rather than only in the tourist
hot spots where hotels typically congregate — it could distribute crowds more evenly.

In an interview, Chris Lehane, Airbnb’s vice president for public affairs, also argued that
the site benefited local economies more directly than hotels did.

“Our local hosts make 97 percent of the money that they list their homes for,” Mr.
Lehane said. “Our guests stay longer than a typical hotel guest, and they’re spreading the
economic gains across a whole community in a way that doesn’t happen with hotels.” He
said that while there was some friction with cities over the company’s huge growth, he
had seen signs of a more recent thaw.

“Amsterdam is an outlier right now,” he said. “For the most part, we are generally in the
ballpark in our discussions with cities.”

Mr. Lehane pointed to Barcelona, where Airbnb’s negotiations with the authorities over
what sort of rules make sense for home-sharing broke down acrimoniously last summer.
Since then, the two sides have mended their relationship. Airbnb agreed to remove
thousands of listings that violated the city’s rules, as well as to set up a system to collect
taxes and help hosts comply with regulations.

These challenges are unlikely to remain fixed for long, because the technology that
exacerbates it is always changing. One recent problem is the rise of a more professional
class of home-sharers — people who buy up properties to rent out full time on home-
sharing sites, often in violation of local rules.

Airbnb said it tries to crack down on rule-breaking hosts, but even some of its nominal
allies wonder how diligently.

“The issue for Airbnb, and I’ve said this to them, 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,” said Jonathan Tourtellot, the founder of the Sustainable
Stewardship Center, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainable tourism. Airbnb
commissioned Mr. Tourtellot to write the foreword of its report.

Another issue is that Airbnb has faced more competition from newer home-sharing
services — and the authorities have had trouble policing some of its competitors.

The more general problem is nonstop growth everywhere.

“At the end, this story is just a numbers problem,” Mr. Tourtellot said. He noted that in
1960, when the jet age began, around 25 million international trips were taken. Last
year, the number was 1.3 billion.

As for the cities that are the major destinations? They are “the same size they were back
in 1959, and they’ll probably stay that way,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 29, 2018, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the
headline: ‘Overtourism’ And the Role Of Technology.

FEATURE

– Top tourism spots crack down as they

become victim of own success

By Emma Batha, Thomson Reuters Foundation Reuters•July 22, 2019

Reference: Batha, E. (2019). Top tourism spots crack down as they become victim of own
success. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-tourism-city-
feature/top-tourism-spots-crack-down-as-they-become-victim-of-own-success-
idUSKCN1UI00N

By Emma Batha

LONDON, July 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – It is not the sheer number of tourists
descending on Venice that bothers Italian food blogger Monica Cesarato so much as the
type of visitor.

Not so long-ago Venice was considered the trip of a lifetime, said Cesarato, who runs
gastronomic tours there. Visitors took days, even weeks, to explore the City of Canals,
spending money in local restaurants and businesses.

Today they pile off cruise ships and coaches, go on whirlwind tours run by non-locals, take
umpteen selfies and buy little more than a cheap trinket made in China.

As millions of holidaymakers head off for their summer break, increasing numbers of
popular destinations are saying they cannot take much more.

The Belgian city of Bruges is cracking down on cruise ships, Paris wants to limit coaches,
Prague is fed up with beer bikes – and one Thai beach has banned tourists altogether.

While tourism creates jobs and wealth, there is growing awareness of its negative impacts,
from environmental damage to the destruction of neighborhoods as residents are priced
out.

The problems have created a backlash, spawning anti-tourism movements and protests
from Amsterdam to Rome and Dubrovnik, the Croatian city featured in the TV show “Game
of Thrones”.

SOARING NUMBERS

Mass tourism took off after World War Two. Last year there were 1.4 billion tourist
arrivals, up from 25 million in 1950, according to the United Nations World Tourism
Organization, with Europe absorbing half of them.

The nation generating the most tourists is China – 143 million trips abroad in 2017, while
France and Spain receive the most visits – more than 80 million a year.

The boom is down to a fast-expanding global middle class combined with a proliferation of
budget airlines and online travel agents which have made travel cheap and easy. A
Londoner can fly to the south of France for less than 20 pounds ($25).

“The perception of going on holiday has shifted from being pretty much a privilege to
becoming very much a right,” said Marina Novelli, professor of tourism and international
development at the University of Brighton.

She said for decades tourism authorities and ministries have only measured success in
terms of increased visitor numbers.

“This model no longer works and that’s probably the most important message to get out
there,” she said, warning that overcrowding and “Disneyfication” in some places could
destroy the charms that draw tourists in the first place.

“If we look at numbers only, and we don’t look in more detail at the impact – economic,
social, environmental – we risk killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”

CRUISE SHIPS

Nowhere epitomises the problems as much as Venice, which attracts 30 million tourists a
year to its magnificent canals and bridges.

As visitor numbers soar, the “Queen of the Adriatic” has seen its own population plummet
from about 175,000 after World War Two to just over 50,000.

“We used to have a low season when Venetians had time to recuperate. Now it’s all year
round and Venetians don’t get the city for themselves anymore,” Cesarato told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Stores like bakeries and greengrocers and community services are vanishing as residents
bail out. “I can only just see this getting worse and worse,” she added.

UNESCO has threatened to add Venice to its list of endangered heritage sites, partly
because of problems with tourism.

Calls to ban cruise ships from the centre of Venice intensified this summer after one
hulking liner crashed and a second had a narrow miss.

Travel experts say cruise ships – along with other day-trippers – exacerbate “overtourism”
because passengers increase congestion while spending little locally.

Several European destinations including Dubrovnik, Bruges and the Greek island of
Santorini, have slapped restrictions on cruise ships. Barcelona’s mayor has also promised
action.

RENTAL APPS

Another phenomenon fueling anti-tourism protests is the rise of short-stay letting
platforms such as Airbnb, which are blamed for hiking rents and changing neighbourhoods.

With landlords able to make far more on holiday lets than traditional leases, housing
supply has shrunk and residents have been squeezed out.

Paris has about 60,000 homes listed on Airbnb, Amsterdam 19,600, Barcelona 18,300 and
Venice 8,500, according to Inside Airbnb, a website highlighting the company’s impact on
neighbourhoods.

Cities including Palma de Mallorca, Paris, Amsterdam and London have introduced or are
discussing measures to mitigate the impact.

While overtourism is most apparent in Europe’s historic cities, the World Travel & Tourism
Council (WTTC) warned last month that certain cities in Asia, Latin America and Africa
could be at risk if they do not plan ahead.

Nor are problems confined to cities. Thailand closed a beach made famous by the Leonardo
DiCaprio movie “The Beach” indefinitely last year to give its ecosystem time to recover.

The Philippines’ top holiday island of Boracay also shut for a clean-up last year after the
president raged it had become a “cesspool” and warned of an environmental disaster.

The Indonesian island of Bali and Italian island of Capri both banned single-use plastics this
year, the latter threatening hefty fines for violations.

BEER TOURISM

Rochelle Turner, research director at the WTTC, which represents the travel and tourism
private sector, said there was a need for more lateral thinking to disperse tourists away
from congested spots.

She cited an innovative example of a travel company that took Asian tourists to an English
farm when the canola fields were ablaze with yellow flowers, creating dramatic vistas.

Turner said Belgium was among countries making major efforts to diversify tourism.

It is moving away from marketing its medieval cities like Bruges and Ghent as it tries to
lure cyclists, art lovers and beer aficionados to its country lanes, cultural gems and
monastery breweries – taking them off well-worn tourist trails.

But Turner said the debate around overtourism often ignored the many benefits the
industry brought, including the protection of lands and wildlife and the preservation of
buildings that might otherwise decay for lack of money.

“Yes, we hold our hands up – things have got a little out of control in some places, but
tourism is not a bad news story. It brings tremendous good,” she added. ($1 = 0.8015
pounds)

(Reporting by Emma Batha @emmabatha; Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters
Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+
rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

San

Francisco State University, College of
Business, Department of Hospitality and

Tourism Management

HTM 424 – Tourism Management

Assignment – Overtourism

Instructions: You are required to answer the following questions. You should
save your answers in a Word document for submission. Please do not repeat the
questions on your answer sheet. Instead, please list the answers
numerically/sequentially by simply utilizing 1, 2, 3, and 4. Each assignment must
have a cover page listing your name, the name of the assignment, and the date.
The cover page does not count towards the word count. For each assignment, you
are expected to answer the assigned questions in your own words. Each
assignment paper should be at least 250 words. Papers less than the
required 250 words will get zero. This does not mean each question requires a
250-word response; rather, the total number of words for answering the
questions must total more than 250 words. An exemplary answer demonstrates
comprehension through a complete understanding by translating, interpreting
and extrapolation as well as full analysis of the basic information into elements by
identifying causes and relationships.

Assignment – Read the assigned articles then answer the questions/prompts
below.

The authors discuss the growing concern of ‘overtourism’ and the impact that
tourism is having on tourist experiences and the destination and its locals.

Readings

1.Batha, E. (2019). Top tourism spots crack down as they become victim of
own success. Retrieved from (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-
tourism-city-feature/top-tourism-spots-crack-down-as-they-become-victim-
of-own-success-idUSKCN1UI00N)

2. Manjoo, F. (2019, Aug. 29). ‘Overtourism’ Worries Europe. How Much Did
Technology Help Get Us There? The New York Times. Retrieved from
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/technology/technology-
overtourism-europe.html)

3. Koens, K., Postma, A., & Papp, B. (2018). Is overtourism overused?
Understanding the impact of tourism in a city context. Sustainability, 10(12),
4384.

Questions/prompts

1. Identification – In both articles, the authors identify and discuss the problems
with overtourism and identify a number of causes. Based on these articles

and your own research from other sources, address the following prompts:
o a) Based on the articles, define “Overtourism”;
o b) Is overtourism a legitimate problem/issue facing destination (why

or why not – your answer must include facts/figures that demonstrate
that “overtourism” exists);

o c) based on your research, what are the primary 3-4 reasons for such
condition (cite your sources)?

2. Managing – What role do local tourism officials have in managing
overtourism and what steps could be taken to affectively deal with
overtourism?

Sample Reflection Paper Format/Outline

• The following outline should be used for your reflection paper. You are not

required to use the titles (e.g., Brief Introduction, Body, etc.) but should use
this general format when writing your paper.

• Cover Page
o Title of paper to include the following:
o Reflection Paper Title
o Student Name and ID
o Course Title and Section
o Professor Name and Title
o Due Date of Submission

• Main Paper
o Brief Introduction

§ Introduce the topic to the reader and summarize your
reflection of this topic/article.

o Body
§ Address the following prompts as prescribed in the

assignment. Include 3-4 examples for each prompt
o Conclusion

§ Conclude the reflection paper by summarizing your comments
and main points to the reader.

o References
§ Include any references that were used in your reflection paper

including the main authors. Use APA style.

Plagiarism – Unless noted otherwise, assignments will be submitted through
Turnitin.com. It is strongly encouraged that you provide citations for any
source/reference that is used in your writing. Turnitin.com provides both a “match”
analysis and grammar analysis. Your “match” rating must be under 20% and ideally
under 15%. Points will be deducted for high match ratings, including failure of the
assignment.

Reflection Paper Assignment Title Goes Here

John Q Student

HTM424 – Tourism Management

ID: 123456789

San Francisco State University

Faculty: Dr. Andrew Walls

January 1, 2000

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doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore

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voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur

magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est,

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doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore
veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam
voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur
magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est,
qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non

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suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum
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suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum
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illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur. Neque porro quisquam est,
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numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat
voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis
suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum
iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel

illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur.

Hospitality & Tourism Management
HTM424 Writing Assignment

Assessment Rubric – 100 pts possible

9/2019

Criteria Unacceptable (U) Acceptable (A) Exemplary (E)
Formatting & Sources 1-pts ea 3-pts ea 5-pts ea

Grammatical structure,
sentence formation

Errors in grammar, sentence
structure or spelling

Uses correct grammar,
sentence structure and
spelling throughout document

Readability enhanced by
facility in language use,
range of diction and syntactic
variety

Formatting (word count, font,
etc.)

Paper does not follow
prescribed format

Paper follows prescribed
format marginally with a few
exceptions

Paper follows prescribed
format

Plagiarism (Turnitin.com) Similarity rate above 15% Similarity rate = 15% Similarity rate below 15%

Citation of secondary
sources

None; or majority are
inappropriate or
inappropriately cited;
and/or portions are
plagiarized

Most sources are appropriate
and cited adequately

All sources are appropriate
and cited completely and
accurately

Criteria Unacceptable (U) Acceptable (A) Exemplary (E)
Content and Writing 6-pts ea 11-pts ea 16-pts ea

All prompts addressed Some portion or all of the prompts were not addressed
All prompts were addressed
in brief and/or imprecise
manner

All prompts were addressed
in a detailed and thorough
manner

Knowledge, Comprehension,
Understanding & Support of
topic

Demonstrates some
understanding of topic; Does
not make connections
among ideas

Beyond surface
understanding; Demonstrates
facility with topical and
disciplinary knowledge

Demonstrates disciplinary
understanding and
interconnections; makes
links that suggest discovery
of new information or new
ways of relaying information

Source Exploration;
Evaluate information and its
sources critically

Does not evaluate or
mention primary source(s) or
other independently
researched sources

Evaluates primary source(s)
but does not evaluate a
variety of other independently
researched sources that are
appropriate to the topic of
discussion

Critically evaluates a variety
of sources (including primary
source & independently
researched sources)
appropriate to the scope and
discipline of the research
question

Application of idea/concept Paper does not solve problems to a new situation

Paper solves problems to a
new situation by applying
acquired knowledge, facts
and techniques in a different
way

Paper solves multiple
problems in a new situation
by applying knowledge, facts
and technique in different
ways

Conclusion None or extremely weak Good summary
Reviewed main points and
tied everything together;
future direction(s) proposed

• HTM 424 Assignment #7 – Overtourism Directions
• Assessment Rubric – HTM424 – Writing Assigments