How Summer Overtourism Has Affected Barcelona, ​​Mount Fuji, and Airbnbs

SINTRA, Portugal (AP) — The doorbell at Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope, and when you pull it, a real bell rings on the roof, letting him know someone is outside the mountainside mansion his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.

There is not much of that in Pimentel during this summer of “over-tourism”.

He says commuters who navigate the idling traffic outside the Casa do Cipresti’s sun-drenched walls sometimes notice the bell and pull the string “because it’s funny.” With the windows open, he can smell the exhaust fumes and hear the tuk-tuk, the huge scooters so named for the sound they make. And he can sense the frustration of the 5,000 visitors a day who have to queue around the house along the winding, single-lane roads leading to the Pena Palace, the former retreat of King Ferdinand II.

“I feel more isolated now than I did during the Covid pandemic,” Pimentel, who lives alone, said during an interview on her balcony this month. “I try not to go out. What I feel is anger.”

This is a story about what it means to visit a country in 2024, the first year in which global tourism is expected to set records since the coronavirus pandemic brought much of life on Earth to a standstill. Wanderlust is on the rise, rather than settling, driven by continued revenge travel, Digital Nomads Campaigns And what is called Golden VisasBlame Partly due to rising housing prices.

Anyone paying attention to “overtourism” this summer will recognize the escalating consequences around the world: traffic jams in paradise. Reports of hospitality workers living in tents. “Anti-tourism” protests aimed at embarrassing visitors while they eat — or, as happened in Barcelona in July, spraying them with water pistols.

The protests are an example of locals using the power of their numbers and social media to issue an ultimatum to destination leaders: manage this issue better or we will scare away tourists — who could spend $11.1 trillion a year elsewhere. Housing prices, traffic and water management are all on the checklist.

You might complain that people like Pimentel, who are wealthy enough to live in places worth visiting, play the violin. But this problem is not limited to the rich.

“Not being able to get an ambulance or not being able to get my groceries is a rich person’s problem?” said Matthew Bedell, a resident of Sintra, which has no pharmacy or grocery store in the city center. appointed by unesco “I don’t think these problems are unique to the rich.”

But what is “overtourism” anyway?

The phrase itself generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their money stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, straining infrastructure, and making life significantly more difficult for those who live there.

It’s a hashtag that gives a name to the protests and hostility that have been taking place throughout the summer. But look a little deeper and you’ll find more complex issues for locals and their leaders, none more common than the soaring housing prices driven by short-term rentals like Airbnb, from Spain to South Africa. Some areas are encouraging “good tourism,” which is generally defined as more consideration from visitors toward locals and less drunken behavior, selfie-taking and other questionable choices.

“Overtourism is also a social phenomenon,” according to an analysis by Joseph Martin Chear of Western Sydney University and Marina Novelli of the University of Nottingham for the World Trade Organization. In China and India, for example, they write, crowded places are more socially acceptable. “This suggests that cultural expectations of personal space and expectations of exclusivity differ.”

The summer of 2023 was defined by the chaos of the trip itself – Airports and airlines are overwhelmed., Passports are a nightmare for US travelersHowever, by the end of the year, there were many signs that the pace of travel in retaliation due to the coronavirus was accelerating.

In January, the UN tourism agency forecast that global tourism would exceed the record numbers set in 2019 by 2%. By the end of March, the agency reported that more than 285 million tourists had traveled internationally, about 20% more than in the first quarter of 2023. It remains Most Visited Destination. World Travel and Tourism Council Expected in April The study indicates that 142 of the 185 countries it analyzed will achieve record tourism figures, which are set to generate $11.1 trillion globally and represent 330 million jobs.

Away from money, there was trouble in paradise this year, with Spain playing a starring role in everything from water Management problems are skyrocketing. Housing Prices and drunk tourist drama.

Protests erupted across the country. Country Earlier in March, when graffiti in Malaga reportedly urged tourists to “go home,” thousands of protesters demonstrated in Spain Canary Islands In Barcelona, ​​hundreds of protesters demonstrated against visitors and construction that was draining water supplies and driving up housing prices. In Barcelona, ​​protesters insulted people they assumed were visitors and sprayed them with water as they dined outdoors on the touristy Las Ramblas.

In Japan, where tourist arrivals were expected to hit a new record in 2024 due to the weak yen, Kyoto has banned tourists from some alleys. The government has set border In Fujikawaguchiko, which offers some of the best views of the mountain’s perfect cone, leaders have set up a large black screen in the parking lot to keep tourists from crowding the site. It seems that tourists responded to that. By cutting holes in the screen at eye level.

Meanwhile, air travel, It has become more miserable.The US government also reported in July. UNESCO has warned of potential damage to protected areas. No list 2024 She urged people to reconsider visiting areas suffering from pollution, including sites in Greece and Vietnam, as well as areas with water management problems in California, India and Thailand.

Non-hotspot areas have sought to capitalise on “de-tourism” campaigns such as Amsterdam’s “Stay Away” campaign, which targeted young party-goers. For example, the “Welcome to Mongolia” campaign attracted visitors from the land of Genghis Khan.Foreign tourist visits to the country increased by 25% during the first seven months of 2024 compared to last year.

Tourism is booming and changing so rapidly that some experts say the term “overtourism” is becoming obsolete.

Michael O’Regan, lecturer in tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that “overtourism” has become a buzzword that does not reflect the fact that the experience is largely down to the success or failure of crowd management. It is true that many protests are not aimed at tourists themselves, but at leaders who allow the locals who are supposed to benefit from them to become the ones paying.

“There has been a backlash against the business models that modern tourism is built on, and there has been a lack of response from politicians,” he said in an interview. “Tourism has come back faster than we expected,” he said, but tourists are not the problem. “There is a global struggle for tourists. We cannot ignore that. … So what happens when we get too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research.”

of visitors vs. visited

Verbi Máquila can accurately describe what is happening in her area of ​​Sintra.

Guests arriving at Casa do Vale, her bed-and-breakfast on a hillside near the village center, call Máquila in anguish because they can’t figure out how to find her home amid Sintra’s “disorganized” traffic rules that seem to change without warning.

“There is a pole in the middle of the road that goes up and down and you can’t go forward because you’re damaging your car. So you have to get down somehow but you can’t turn around, so you have to go back down the road,” says Máquila, who has been living in Portugal for 36 years. “Then people get so frustrated that they come to our road, which also has a sign that says ‘for licensed vehicles only’. They close everything.”

There is no denying that Portugal’s tourism boom needs better management. Global Travel and Tourism Center The government in April forecast that the country’s tourism sector would grow 24% this year compared to 2019 levels, create an additional 126,000 jobs since then, and account for about 20% of the national economy. Housing prices were already pushing an increasing number of people out of the real estate market, Real estate prices in Egypt have risen partly due to the increasing influx of foreign investors and tourists looking for short-term rentals.

In response, Lisbon has announced plans to halve the number of tuk-tuks allowed to ferry tourists through the city and build more parking spaces for them after residents complained they were blocking traffic.

The mayor’s office of Sintra, a 40-minute train ride to the west, said it had invested in more parking outside the city and lower-priced youth housing closer to the centre.

More than three million people visit the mountains and castles of Sintra each year, long one of Portugal’s wealthiest regions due to its cool climate and natural scenery. The Sintra municipality also said via email that fewer tickets are being sold to nearby historical sites. For example, this year the Pena Palace began allowing fewer than half the 12,000 tickets sold there in the past.

That’s not enough to get you started, say residents who have organized themselves in QSintra, an association that is calling on the city council to put residents first by improving communication. They also want to know what the government plans to do to manage guests at a new hotel under construction, to increase the number of nights guests can stay in the hotel, and to impose more restrictions on the number of cars and visitors allowed.

“We are not against tourists,” the group said in a statement. “We are against the chaos that (local leaders) cannot solve.”

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Associated Press reporters Helena Alves in Lisbon and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report. Laurie Kellman writes about world affairs for the AP Trends & Culture team. You can follow her at: http://x.com/APLaurieKellman