Barcelona, Venice and Amsterdam are among Europe’s favourite travel destinations and benefit greatly from tourism. However, the massive influx of visitors places a considerable burden on the cities and their inhabitants.
To counteract the negative effects of overtourism, these cities are taking decisive action. Following public protests, no new hotels may be built in Venice and cruise ships will have to use other moorings in future. Amsterdam has banned guided tours of its famous red light district in order to protect local residents. Paris is planning to ban coaches from the city centre in order to improve the quality of life. Other overcrowded cities are also trying to control the situation through various methods.
Do you think that overtourism is a serious problem in Europe?
Sources: National Statistics Offices, Statista, Le Monde, Forbes
I’m going to Spain this fall (though not Barcelona) and I refuse to stay in airbnbs for that exact reason. Affordable housing is a problem in the US city I live in, and a huuuuge problem in all of the ski towns where everything is a tourist rental, and I don’t want to contribute to that anywhere else. To be honest, I wouldn’t blame a lot of these places if they started requiring tourist visas and seriously limiting the number of them.
I’m also going to Barcelona this fall and same thing. No airbnb for us. But we pretty much had no choice in Amsterdam. We did manage to find a hotel that we could sleep 5 in, but it was insanely expensive compared to airbnbs in the same area.
Hotels probably underinvested in new rooms because airbnb took away so much business.