Overtourism

Are we there yet?! This question is asked almost every summer, winter, or heck, probably most of the year. It is asked on vacation where normal citizens transform into tourists. While everyone deserves a vacation, too many vacations can cause some issues with tourism. And today, our world is dealing with something called overtourism. Overtourism is the perceived congestion or overcrowding from an excess of tourists, resulting in conflicts with locals. This term was coined in 2015 and was the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2018 word of the year. As world citizens who yearn to explore the earth and relax from weary work routines, we must understand the effect our abundant travels have on the places we travel to.

So, Today we will explore the cause, drive through the current situation, and fly to the future in order to fully understand how yet another excessive luxury affects the world around us as we focus on what CNN explains on June 2, 2019 as one of the most highly debated issues in the modern age of travel.

(I) First, the particular cause of overtourism can be centered around countries’ economics and culture. But before we explain the exact cause, let’s go back to the beginning and look at how tourism became the concern that is discussed today. The Atlantic explains on June 4, 2019 that “through the early 19th century, travel for personal fulfillment was the provenance of “wealthy nobles and educated professionals” only,” As the middle class grew in the 1840s, commercialized mass tourism began to develop into the industry that it is today. This growth fosters more opportunity to travel, which has led to an excess. In our current world, tourism consumes popular and historic cities across the globe, and until 2017, tourism lurked in the shadows as Responsible Vacation reveals.

(A) But next, let’s examine why our culture has recently gravitated towards these sites. These causes are two-fold. Many sources denote the cause to be associated with various microeconomics, but other sources explain that the bigger picture of a country’s macroeconomics steals the spotlight. But first, overtourism could be caused by smaller economical changes including a decrease in flight prices, especially in Europe, or increased amounts of cruise ships docking at popular cities that are extremely overrun. This allows an excess of tourists to travel easily across popular Europe and the rest of the world. Responsible Vacation equates part of the cause to the increased amount of Airbnb’s in various countries. Airbnb owners can undercut local hotels and hostels and deviate from required permits or even taxes to offer beds to thousands of tourists every night. Social media, like Instagram, TripAdvisor and Yelp also plays a role in the increased amounts of tourism across the globe. However, these may only be symptoms that are leading to overtourism.

(B) Second, the main monetary cause may be associated with each country’s perspective towards tourism. Many nations in the past viewed tourism as a valued commodity because it generated revenue for the country to prove a successful year in tourism. And for some countries today, this still holds true. However, for other countries, they have altered their perspectives after areas have become so overcrowded, that local residents are fighting against the influx of tourists, and their surrounding environments are being affected. Therefore, in order to fully grasp the concept and causes of overtourism on our world, we need to examine the current situation and peer through countries’ lens to understand this rapid increase of travelers today.

(II) Now that we have taken a trip to determine the cause, let’s begin to drive around the present effects. The aforementioned CNN article explains that of 1.4 billion international tourist trips in 2018, more than 36%, or half a billion, involved a visit to one of the planet's 300 most popular cities, a trend that's set to continue upwards. Responsible Vacation reveals that overtourism takes different forms either through a million additional tourists arriving in top cities, or through twenty more travelers in smaller, more rural communities. Either way, this increased number of people entering a particular area affects the surrounding region. These effects can be centered around environmental and societal camps.

(A) First, overtourism affects our surrounding environment. Tourists, along with residents, can destroy the environment with simple wear and tear. Because of this, countries place limits on amounts of visitors entering the area in order to preserve the extremely fragile habitats like Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands. Other locations have followed suit. I was on the Hawaiian island of Kauai this entire summer, and overtourism has sadly reached this beautiful garden isle. In April of 2018, the entire island was destroyed by a massive flood, but the North Shore was affected the most, especially Haena State Park. The park used to see 3,000 visitors a day; however, after the flood, the road was closed until mid-June of this summer. Before the road was fully repaired and open for travel, a committee of nature preservationists created a system to limit the number of visitors, and that number of 3,000 has decreased to 900 pre-registered visitors only. However, when the road opened on June 15, 2019, rental cars stormed the tiny residential roads of the North Shore, and local residents were in an uproar, which brings me to the next effect that excessive tourism could have on a particular location.

(B) While the environmental effects hold most of the spotlight, the society surrounding the affected area plays a role in the increase of overtourism. Every tourist-attractive city in the world benefits from tourism through business and revenue. Tourism has been known to save a dying community from going under with tourists visiting just a few weeks out of the year. However, despite the positive generation of revenue, if it had not have been for residents’ uprisings, most people would not even know about overtourism. In popular cities like Barcelona and Venice, but even in lesser known communities like Iceland and Skye, residents held marches shouting, “tourists go home” and marking walls with graffiti defining their resentment. The day the road opened on Kauai, residents posted signs near their driveways demanding tourists to slow down as they drove north since children and dogs frequently play on the streets. Moreover, while tourism supplies many cities with revenue and brings attention to endangered species, too many visitors can cause residents and the community to feel overrun and hostile.

(III) Now that we have driven around the current situation involving overtourism, it is time to fly to the future and discuss some possible prospects. As the afore mentioned CNN article reveals “familiar over touristed destinations could be joined by the most unlikely of others like Delhi, Cairo, Manila, Bangkok and Moscow. All of these cities are ill equipped and unprepared to handle the surge of tourists coming in the next decade. Obviously, overtourism will affect the future. These future predictions can be encompassed into both negative and positive possibilities. But first the negative prospects.

(A) Obviously, no one can accurately foretell the future, but based on the causes of overtourism and the current situation, one can deduce the basic probabilities. As we gathered from the current prospects, overtourism is entirely capable of affecting the environment. Saara Taiminen’s international business thesis on the Negative impacts of overtourism in 2018 explains that tourism causes a depletion in the area’s resources and pollutes the water, soil, and air. If these resources were decreased in any way, tourists would not even be able to travel to these areas. Also, the diversity of nature could be affected in the future. When tourists enter an area that has animal and plant species specific to that area alone, there is a risk that new species could be introduced, or the existing species could be taken away and spread elsewhere. These possible environmental impacts should be taken into account when discussing overtourism.

(B) Next, the positive prospects of overtourism are important to note as well. Tourism generates extreme amounts of revenue for cities, so this could spark more efforts to recondition the tourism industry in particular places. For example, more governments may begin to change policies by raising prices, issuing permits to certain attractions, banning cruise ships over a certain size, or having greater control over which businesses open and where. City leaders may begin to find a way to balance the quality of a tourist vacation and the quality of life for residents and the surrounding environment. And according to some sources, leaders are already making headway in some locations. As tourist numbers are constantly increasing, the future will be altered by one or both of these prospects.

Are we there yet? Yes! In conclusion, tourism creates a spread of various cultures across the globe, and this is important to notice and sustain, especially in today’s polarizing society. And, with the recent extreme numbers of tourists taking the world by storm, it is important to understand the cause, effects, and future possibilities of overtourism on the world as we know it. As one of the tourism presidents of Kauai, Chipper Wichman explained on August 10, 2019, “it’s really important for our visitors and community to work together to create this vision of sustainable tourism.” And that is just what the world needs: harmony among tourists and residents because everyone deserves to explore this great earth and its wonders.