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 Datta Recently, 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.
One tourist produces from 1 to 12 kg of solid waste per day when visiting a new place, depending on factors like location, the type of accommodation, personal preferences, and the character of the stay. If the present trend continues, there will be an increase of 251 per cent in solid waste production because of tourism by 2050 ( UNEP). Cruise ships are among the top polluters, and their raw sewage affects the coral reefs.
Sewage from Mexico's tourism industry threatens the Caribbean coast, and the Mesoamerican Reef has already lost 80 per cent of corals to pollution. In 2023, Santorini Island in Greece, which has a population of fifteen thousand, received around 800 cruise ships, which caused a layer of pollution around the caldera. Notwithstanding, tourism is an economic powerhouse. The Travel & Tourism sector (T&T) witnessed a boom in 2019, accounting for 10.5% of all jobs (334 million), and 10.4% of global GDP (US$ 10.3 trillion).
In India, in 2019, the T&T sector was worth about $194.3 billion, added 6.8% to the GDP and employed 40 million people. By 2033, the tourism industry is slated to represent 11.6% of the global economy. While, women comprise 54% of the workforce, but, they are mostly in lower-skilled, lower-paid and often in informal employment (UNWTO). Now, some cities have gone for new or revised taxation, fines, etc, to de-market tourism.
However, tourism de-growth cannot be considered a remedy, which can push tourism-dependent local economies into crisis, as happened in Myanmar’s temple city, Bagan, where people suffer to make ends meet for want of visitors, as the country is deep into civil wars.While, regenerative tourism as an antidote, was mooted in 1987 in the Brundtland Report, which set the tone for ‘building back better’, going beyond the concept of ‘not damaging the environment’.
The UN called for a holistic understanding of living systems in the entire tourism ecosystem, as everything is inter-connected, the government, private sector, voluntary sector, and the communities’.
The tourism industries should also operate in a new way by discarding the ‘make-use and dispose’ linear extractive model and fit themselves into a circular economy model of ‘reuse/no waste’, the world body urged. Isn’t it high time for the burgeoning tourism sector to follow the path of regeneration, and herald an era of intergenerational equity, without compromising the planet for future generations?
(The author is former Director General, Doordarshan, All India Radio)
