by Tiziana Barillà
translation by Giovanni Marenda
Summer 2024 was the season of struggles against overtourism, the ideology of tourism as the panacea for all economic and social ills that is turning our territories into playgrounds where everything is allowed. Falling wages, loss of quality of life, perpetual noise and housing speculation are the consequences of an uncontrolled and ravenous tourism that ends up overwhelming every right and every service.
Summer 2024 was the season of overtourism and protests against this phenomenon, which the World Tourism Organisation defines as ‘the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts of a destination, that excessively and negatively influences the perceived quality of life of its citizens and/or the quality of visitors’ experiences’.
In last summer’s news headlines we saw thousands of people parading through the streets of Mallorca, in recent weeks we have seen a similarly overflowing stream of people along the streets of enchanting Tenerife. In Barcelona, too, protests raged, some residents ‘fenced’ a group of tourists into a bar in the streets of the city centre, while other residents armed with water pistols pelted other tourists with spray. Although it is Spain that is leading the fight against overtourism, the problem of tourism devouring everything is a European issue, hence also an Italian one.
In Italy, according to the United Nations agency that deals with tourism (UNWTO), in 2022 almost 50 million people crossed the borders without a shot in the arm, a number almost equal to the resident population. A result flaunted by the government as a success, but not counting the consequences: overcrowded beaches, besieged mountains, historic cities suffocated by masses of visitors. In Bolzano, for example, 64 tourists arrived for every resident. And Venice registers more than 14,000 tourists per square kilometre, earning it the title of the second most overcrowded city in the world by 2023, behind only Croatia’s Dubrovnik (data from the annual report ‘The state of tourism and hospitality’ by McKinsey, a platform that deals with sustainable development).
In an experimental study, the Demoskopika institute has drawn up an interactive map of tourist overcrowding: Rimini, Venice, Bolzano, Livorno, Trento, Verona and Naples are the seven Italian destinations that ‘suffer’ the most from the phenomenon of overtourism. Followed by those with a ‘high’ risk: Milan, Florence and Rome. If large cities like Milan, Rome and Naples still manage to manage the flow thanks to their size, smaller ones like Florence and Bologna are in obvious difficulty.
In Florence, in order to limit short-term rentals in the city centre area, former mayor Nardella had signed an ‘anti-Airbnb’ resolution. To date, the Tar (Regional Administrative Court) has declared inadmissible the appeals presented by a number of subjects with a strong interest in the topic, such as Codacons and Confedilizia, but all things considered, the ruling has not rejected the resolution. In Bologna, in order to protect the right to housing, projects such as the Plan for Housing signed by the deputy mayor Emily Clancy are being considered, but in the meantime, in the short term, Bologna continues to be prey to foreign investors speculating on the city’s real estate.
Let’s go back to Spain where, as we have seen, the revolt against overtourism has already started. Over the last ten years, rents in Barcelona have increased by 68% and house prices by 38%. The Catalan capital is undoubtedly a laboratory of urban policies for European cities and is certainly one of the first cities to question how to cope with the voracity of tourism that swallows up every right. During the two terms of office of mayor Ada Colau (2015-2023), for example, an urban plan was approved that limited the opening of new hotels.
A ‘vengeance tourism’ bred in the ganglia of a mad rush for economic recovery, within the anxiety of recovering from the years of semi immobility of the pandemic
And today Barcelona is announcing new and even more drastic measures, such as a stop to short-term rentals and a clampdown on cruise passengers. Mayor Jaume Collboni announced that by November 2028 the Barcelona City Council will eliminate the licences of the more than 10,000 homes that are currently licensed for short-term rentals. Also planned is an increase in the tourist tax for cruise ship passengers visiting the city for less than 12 hours.
The ideology of tourism as a panacea for all economic and social ills is turning our territories into playgrounds where everything is allowed and liquidating communities into hordes of landlords, waiters and entertainers at the service of his majesty the tourist. Declining wages, loss of quality of life, perpetual noise and housing speculation (i.e. rising rents and selling prices of houses). These are not counter-indications, nor an ineluctable fate, but they are the consequences of uncontrolled and ravenous tourism that ends up devouring every right to the city, every right, every service. Proximity trade, shops and personal services disappear where everything is designed and organised to serve tourists.
But is tourism really bad? And, above all, are tourists our enemies or our allies in the battle against a tourism at the mercy of ferocious and ravenous capitalism? To avoid falling into the easy simplifications that point to the all against all so much in vogue in our times, let us put on the lens of complexity and start by calling a spade a spade.
Tourism is not evil, rather it is what Eric Sylvers in the columns of the Wall Street Journal has called revenge tourism. A ‘revenge tourism’ bred in the ganglia of a mad rush to economic recovery, within the anxiety of recovering from the pandemic’s years of semi immobility. Overtourism, in truth, is a pre-pandemic problem and has been ongoing for years, as early as 2018 UNWTO warned us of the need to find adequate measures to limit the problem. Instead, the problem came to a halt with the pandemic and then resumed, after a two-year stop, more overwhelming than ever.
In the aftermath of the global semi-immobility and the pandemic economic crisis, many countries thought of taking the shortcut of salvation tourism to replenish state coffers. Greece, Spain and Italy are the three countries that more than any other in Europe have put all their chips on tourism. Minister Santanché’s campaign – ‘Open to Meraviglia’- is blatant and tangible proof of this in the vulgarised image of Botticelli’s poor Venus who seems to be singing Viola Valentino’s 1980s must-have: ‘Buy me, I’m for sale’.
Overtourism is also putting a strain on our territories and our lives. Nations open the doors of our homes leaving our cities – without means and without power – to bear the burden. Local authorities try to find solutions to manage the influx of tourists and preserve the cultural and environmental heritage of our communities by introducing new entrance fees or, in some cases like Venice, restrictions on group sizes. They are fumbling around, where the legislative hole on mass tourism allows the law of the jungle to assert itself.