Tourism: A Victim Of Its Own Success?

Millions more of us are descending on the same handful of tourism hotspots each year, giving rise to the very modern phenomenon of overtourism. How to manage the effect this is having on local economies and communities is the subject of fierce debate.

- Simon Usborne

More than 125,000 people visited Venice on Easter Sunday this year, presenting a small city with a big problem. Having long since shrugged off any notion of a tourist season, the Queen of the Adriatic is routinely submerged by tourists, water or both. But there are peaks within peaks, and the Easter influx worried city authorities. So, before the May Day weekend rush, they deployed a radical new weapon in the fight against overcrowding; at two key bridges leading to the city’s historic heart, metal turnstiles appeared overnight.

The barriers would be shut if crowds reached dangerous levels, and only residents carrying a Venezia Unica transport pass would be permitted entry. But the radical experiment was controversial, stoking an increasingly fraught debate taking place in Venice and elsewhere.

Each year, millions more of us are travelling, and a new word for the problem this new age of mobility creates — overtourism — reflects a heightened level of anxiety in tourism hotspots.

“I’ve been trying to get people to think about the impact of tourism for nearly 20 years without getting very far,” says Justin Francis, CEO and co-founder of British travel company Responsible Travel. “But now it’s on everyone’s lips because, after 50 years of staggering growth, the locals are taking to the streets. We’re seeing a global tourism backlash, and I think it’s a defining moment in the history of the industry.”