Overtourism, also known as excess tourism, occurs when there are too many visitors for a particular destination or when residents think that the number of guests is excessive. The final result of overtourism is the collapse of a location’s ability to handle the excessive number of visitors. There are three types of imaginable impacts of overtourism: (1) physical impacts (e.g. denial of tourist access to overcrowded sites and the degradation of sites); (2) quality of life impacts (e.g. increased traffic pollution, increased levels of litter, and destruction of the social system); and (3) degradation of a destination’s identity and image as a visitor attraction. Consequently, overtourism can damage various management elements that have been constructed for providing for specified types of tourist use of sites (points and routes), including information and education, booking capacity management approaches, management law and corridors, designations and zoning system construction, payment systems including entrance and reservation systems, which has over-response, continuous improvements, and interpretation and visitor management map.
Some small islands in Thailand, due to their infrastructure and the marine environment, are not able to accommodate an extremely large number of visitors during specific vacation periods. The common sunspot tourist destinations, recognized throughout the country and internationally, are located within the south of the country. The area covered in the study includes both the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea, which are popular tourist destinations in the south of the country. These high-density tourist destinations experience visitors traveling with large groups of people, particularly during the high season months of November to April, generating related tourism activities that produce either physical or quality-of-life impacts. However, during this period, the total number of visitors increases dramatically and has generated problems in the form of congestion of visitors and the overuse of natural resources. Tourists are increasingly interested in traveling in the high tourism season, which results in the region being overcrowded.
Definition and Scope of Overtourism
The demand for travel experiences is ever growing, leading to an unsustainable increase in tourism. When the benefits of tourism do not largely contribute to the local communities, natural and cultural attractions are overcrowded. Consequently, the existence of tourism is threatened. Although this process has multiple side effects, the full dimensions of demographic displacement, touristification, and cultural impoverishment have been subsumed by the term “overtourism.” Expanding the scope to overtourism into: megatourism, ultramass tourism, unbalanced tourism, excessive tourism, and unsustainable tourism shall help to broaden the understanding of the challenges of mass tourism and increases the scope of sustainable tourism while integrating the interests of local residents in the observed destinations. Proposed remedies are building awareness and experience creation, travel and tourism industry involvement, and political activity to improve institutions and regulations.
Importance of Sustainable Travel
Tourism, and sustainable travel in particular, is more important than ever. With international visitors expected to grow at an annual rate of 3% until 2030, people are recognizing now more than ever the critical importance of being mindful and respectful travelers. As the need for more sustainable and responsible travel strategies grows, more and more attention and resources are being dedicated to this issue by governments, nonprofits, and the private sector – from major international organizations such as the United Nations through its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to travel bloggers and influencer campaigns throughout social media.
Different entities and regions have identified different categories and strategies for responsible travel, including:
– Reducing the carbon footprint of travel, with related initiatives to promote alternative modes of transportation such as cycling-friendly towns. – Supporting the local economy at your destination, with a focus on spending money at locally-owned restaurants, markets, etc. – Social consciousness – traveling with a concern for social issues, and supporting charitable organizations throughout travel that address social and environmental issues. – Consideration of local customs and traditions. – And a broader connection to nature such as protecting areas of natural beauty, wildlife, and ensuring communities are clean and free of waste while simultaneously minimizing traveler impact and carbon footprint.
Understanding Overtourism
While the discussion about overtourism has been gaining momentum, it is important to understand both the complexity and dimensions of the problem. NaTHNaC (2016) defines overtourism as “Localized destination congestion to the point that quality of life for residents and quality of experience for visitors start to decline significantly”. Overtourism is recognized as an impact upon the quality of life of residents and the quality of the visitor experience. Locals have lost their sense of place with more effort going into hosting tourists over the local identity, which increases, for example, community tension, governance risks, cost of living, etc. It can be manifested by congested infrastructure, crowded public spaces, strain on natural resources, negative economic impacts due to seasonality, and rising housing prices, and partly be caused by poor visitor management and rapid visitor growth.
It is important to differentiate overtourism from other tourism impact-related issues. Resident Attitude Barometers 14 2017, for example, segmentation results have revealed five distinctive groups – Passive Non-Supporters, Resigned Accepters, Conditional Supporters, Activist Supporters, and Active Non-Supporters. Active Non-Supporters have gone beyond simply disliking the impacts of tourism to take some form of direct action, such as attending local protests. These groups reported varied levels of social gain and economic gain from tourism. At the other end of the spectrum are Passive Non-Supporters and Active Non-Supporters who reported little support for tourism in any form. This scale implies that not all residents are grappling with the pressures of a growing tourism industry, despite the pressures evident from increasing visitor numbers. Characteristics relating to positive and negative impacts, with the most severe impacts equating to overtourism, are presented for a broader understanding of the positions and scale.
Causes and Impacts of Overtourism
The number of international tourists worldwide has been increasing exponentially, growing from 25 million in 1950 to 278 million in 1980 and 1,087 million in 2013. In 2018, international tourists reached 1.4 billion. This trend has also led to increased crowding in traditional tourism destinations such as Venice, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, or Dubrovnik. Also, in cities such as Berlin or Prague, which have not traditionally been mass sun and beach destinations, there has been a proliferation of tourism activities that severely affect the host community and the tourist experience. This issue has been labeled “overtourism” and has led to a series of recent academic articles that analyze the phenomenon.
One of the main reasons why overtourism has taken place is the lack of responsibility from the different political agents responsible for tourism planning in many international destinations. They are often characterized by serious temporal myopic behavior and their generally reactive measures, which have a bad effect on long-term sustainable development. This lack of foresight has debris impacts, distortion of the territory, loss of social fabric, an imbalance in the generation of economic benefits in a broad local framework, and saturation of tourism services. These low-quality services lead to the depreciation of traditional offerings. On the environmental level, it has a negative impact on the over-exploited areas due to the present infrastructure or transportation. These negative externalities of mass tourism give rise to a decline in tourist satisfaction, which has nothing but deleterious effects on the reputation and attractiveness of destinations, accelerating the unavoidable decline and the consequent necessary realignment of the destination’s supply and demand.
Strategies for Sustainable Travel
The following multifaceted solutions exist to combat overtourism and strive towards a more sustainable model of tourism that works for, rather than against, the local community, its built and natural environment, and the travelers themselves. These are but a voluntary few; priority for a range of strategies is desirable to ensure the health and prosperity of all stakeholders.
1. Visitor responsible: What type of tourist hosts want to visit is being reimagined through responsible tourism models, with local customs and sustainable-approved opportunities and tourism revenue generation. A reshaping of the learning and re-defining activities presents opportunities for not limiting the hosts of over 10,000 Chinese tourists who visited Marseille on cruise ships at peak times. Embracing diversity of experiences can be defeated by the reality of thousands of micro-stores, which requires the effort of both the destination and the tourist. Already successful models that focus on further afield are relevant.
2. Initiatives to make booking data publicly available: Better transparency in booking data helps to direct tourism demand more evenly throughout the year. This has proven effective in a pilot agreement contracted between Barcelona City Council and the leading hotels in the city that has already been renewed for two more years. With consumer support given to LED to continue collecting information that has already been analyzed to great effect in Valencia and Christchurch, more forms of public intervention could be formulated. In addition, when tourists know what they can expect to find, they will make more informed decisions about their visit and better manage their expectations.
3. Smart destinations: How can technology be harnessed in the pursuit of sustainable tourism? What innovations are currently available and which are still to come? These are some of the questions facing the three-and-a-half year Injunio, which aims to develop, manage, and promote smart destinations for tourists. “Then the visitor report helps, when everyone walks to the traditional local bakery, it is quite frustrating for the postman when he can’t drop off the mail on time. If we all do it at the same time because it is available on our smart device, it makes life easier, not more frustrating.” With the current pace of digital advance, are platforms a problem, a solution, or both?
Destination Management and Planning
Destination management and planning in tourism have faced numerous challenges in the twentieth century. The success of tourism and its management can be affected by the limitations and challenges of tourism policies and guidelines. These limitations can narrow the service levels and management of tourist destinations. Destinations have implemented capacity management to avoid a competitive disadvantage and to control growth. Achieving a balance between the pressures of tourism and its adverse effects may require new changes or priorities at the destination. This can lead to the presentation of new project concepts or visions that destinations will strive to embody.
To minimize congestion within destinations, several management techniques have been developed. Campaigns aim to spread market demand throughout the year and week, which can help optimize the existing hotel and service infrastructure. Other ways to manage tourism throughout the year involve providing tourism elements that attract different markets during non-peak periods. For example, special activities and events can be organized to attract families during off-peak periods. Some areas offer exceptional products tailored to specific markets, such as senior citizens, schoolchildren, or members of recognized clubs. The goal is to attract non-group markets to travel to specific areas. Throughout the year, the resident or host population can direct tourism from a mixed destination to various domestic visitor markets. Residents can influence large infrastructure plans or impose fees for multiple nights, while seeking high-quality attractions and services that generate maximum revenue from guests.
Community Engagement and Empowerment
Community engagement and empowerment give residents a voice and vote in tourism decision-making. There are many creative ways to support and channel community input and ideas. For example, projects that empower women to start development projects, efforts that enable youth to inform tourism development, heritage-based arts-driven community organizing, and traditional local governance are all good examples. Community workers and other local leaders need to catch a vision long-term of more inclusive and equitable ways to engage local citizens, projects that respect and encourage heritage revival and pride exercises, and other expressions of local grassroots ownership.
To empower a community, the community’s concerns, practices, and culture are what need to be carried forward, not those of the advisors or professionals. Working to find fun, lighthearted, convivial solutions to tourism carrying capacity often ends up finding the truly transformative ones. Consider the process of recruiting and training community-based neighborhood tour guides and establishing home-stay accommodations in local residential neighborhoods. Residents start by being informed about their current situation and by participating in stakeholder meetings. Residents then receive support for impactful community organizing. Home stay guests in this neighborhood tour also serve as participants in heritage block parties that have brought vibrancy back to the neighborhood.
Technological Innovations in Sustainable Tourism
The tourism sector is currently experiencing a technological revolution. From drones and next-generation virtual reality to 3D printing and the blockchain, this chapter presents the opportunities for these new technologies to contribute to sustainable travel and tourism. While designed primarily to showcase destinations and venues to potential visitors, virtual reality can also play a useful role in managing numbers at regions that are under strain. Augmented reality can provide enriching information on artwork, places of interest, signs, and monuments without the presence of large numbers of tourists or loss of authenticity.
Recent technological developments are changing people’s interactions with the world and the environment and have introduced new strategies for sustainable travel and tourism. Early-stage disruptive technologies such as drones, virtual and augmented reality, as well as 3D printing and the blockchain, have provided significant opportunities for developing a more sustainable environment. The aim of this chapter is to showcase how these solutions are contributing to alleviate some of the environmental pressures and inconvenience in places of work and leisure associated with increasing tourist numbers. The development of technological solutions which are primarily targeted to virtual visitation chance is not actually new. The difference is that as technology such as drones and sophisticated virtual reality systems become cheaper and more reliable, the need of users is increasingly met.
The contributions in this special issue illustrate a significant and growing concern for the pervasive and serious impacts of tourism on local communities, cultures, and the environment. The world has now experienced multiple cases of sites, and even entire regions, impacted to the point of saturation, and we have experienced the damaging impacts that mass visitor flows can have. Academics, policymakers, tourism industry leaders, and, increasingly, local communities are demanding strategies that ensure that tourism does not cause unacceptable cumulative and irreversible impacts. The evidence presented in the contributions suggests that governance and participatory approaches are key to addressing this critical issue.
Although the theme of overtourism has been well covered in popular media, there is a dearth of academic research. The contributions in this special issue are a first step. We contest that open access academic research provides tested solution-based learning opportunities that add meaning and value to discussions and policy formation processes. The growing body of academic literature aiming to contribute to these societal challenges, however, is difficult to access by multiple stakeholders also struggling with overtourism. We argue that the primary challenge in overtourism is building a global toolbox of tested solutions that both policy planners and practitioners can use to prevent, mitigate, or adapt to undesirable impacts of tourism. We hope that the strategies identified in this special issue and future scholarly endeavors will be taken up and tested further by all stakeholders. In so doing, we see this as not just a scholarly challenge but a societal one.