Around the world, over-tourism is emerging as a big problem. The overwhelming influx of tourists causes significant hardships for local residents and destinations
The growing problem of over-tourism across the globe!Archna DattaRecently, thousands of residents of Barcelona in Spain, protested against tourism, urging tourists to ‘go home’, waving placards and squirting water guns at outdoor diners, averring that tourists increased prices and put pressure on public services in Spain’s most visited city. Not, only Barcelona alone, Venice also introduced a five euro entrance fee to dissuade day-trippers from crowding into the city’s limited space and public resources.
Japan, too, has put up a giant screen to block views of Mount Fuji to discourage tourists from gatherings at the iconic spot. Closer home, in Chikamaguluru, Karnataka, police resorted to a special drive at tourist destinations to curb the unruly behaviour of visiting tourists.Now, people have been travelling for centuries, and have traditionally been welcomed to visit countries. While, in India, the spirit of ‘atithi devo bhava’, treating guests as Gods, prevailed. Over the years, travel as tourism, has turned into one of the most important economic sectors. The ease in global air connectivity and people’s increasing craze for exotic visits, adventure and leisure in the internet-connected world, created an unprecedented rise in the number of tourists, which, eventually, evoked a ‘tourist phobia’, an aversion and social rejection among the locals, as happened in Spain, and elsewhere.
In 2019, when, 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals were recorded, a hike of 4% from the previous year, the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) called for managing ‘such a growth of tourists responsibly to best seize the opportunities that tourism can generate for communities around the world’. While, tourism has been described as ‘the excessive growth of visitors in areas where residents suffer negative consequences such as permanent changes to their lifestyles, denial of access to civic amenities and damages in their general well-being’ (Milano et al., 2019).
It has a social dimension too that ‘impairs the place-person interrelationships and induces changes in residents’ attitudes towards tourism’ (Gössling et al., 2020). Over tourism, also makes urban life ‘more tense and stressful’ and for women ‘a concern for safety in public space’.( Maja Hristov,Nebojša Stefanovic , Nataša Danilovic Hristic, Serbia, 2021). However, the present-day discourses predominantly veer around the issue of sustainability (Gowreesunkar & Thanh, 2020), as tourist hotspots are mostly located in sensitive ecosystems.
Water, a precious natural resource, gets seriously misused by the tourism sector affecting the water cycle of the area. In Zanzibar, an average household consumes a little over 93 litres of water per day, while, the average consumption per room in a guesthouse is 686 litres, 7 times more, which in a luxurious 5-star hotel room, rises to 3,000+ litres of water per day. Spain, an important producer of vegetables and fruits for Europe, struggles over water utilisation in two competing economic sectors, tourism and agriculture( Water Equity in Tourism, 2012). While, a 2022 study said that in case of water scarcity, women are the most affected ones, as it worsens their daily life tasks.