tourists go home!

on this week's anti-tourist protests in barcelona, spain

This week, protestors in Barcelona took to the streets to rally against mass tourism. The news spread widely showing footage of protestors squirting tourists with water guns and taping up exits from hotels, preventing guests from leaving.

Barcelona is one of the most visited holiday destinations in the world; Last year alone it received over 12 million tourists and is expected to rise again this year. These vast numbers unsurprisingly affect the prices and availability of housing and other amenities for residents.

Protestors are demanding the city to tighten restrictions on holiday apartment lets to manage the ever-increasing prices of properties. This is a prime example of the consequences of over-tourism playing out before our eyes.

Plenty of videos have cropped up on social media sparking debate. Who’s in the wrong? These tourists bring money and jobs to the city. These locals are being priced out of their homes.

Two things can be true at once.

If you’ve visited any popular tourist destination, you’ll have realised that central areas often lack the exact thing you’ve traveled internationally for.

In Athens, the beautiful Plaka area is full of gift shops selling Greek tea towels and olive wood chopping boards. After dark, Amsterdam’s center overflows with drunken hoards of stag dos, searching for weed, women, and beer. While living in London I would avoid Leicester Square and Picadilly Circus like the plague; Why is there a multi-storied M&M world? Who is that for? Certainly not a Londoner on their way back from the office looking for an overpriced bag of chocolate.

The issue is, that it turns the hearts of these cities into a playground — a commodified cultural-less void designed to part visitors with their cash. Local culture: Restaurants that serve regional dishes, community meeting places, cultural sites, and natural environments are sacrificed in the pursuit of profit.

And to add, many of these cities lack the infrastructure and size to handle mass numbers of tourists. Yes, I just mentioned London, but as with NYC, I would argue that their size allows them to absorb the blow of swathes of annual visitors. In comparison, Venice is literally sinking, it doesn’t need an additional cruise ship worth of people descending on its shores daily.

And how much of this income is directly funneled back into the local economy, aka, the people that actually live in these places?

In defense of tourists: I don’t think that it is your average visitor’s prerogative to ruin the places that they visit. And at the end of the day, why shouldn’t people be able to visit a country’s capital city? They are here to see the Acropolis, Basílica de la Sagrada Família, or Eiffel Tower, not to intentionally spite locals or destroy rental markets.

With that being said, I think that there are ways we can all consciously work to improve our travel habits and minimise our impact.

what can I do?

• Visit Second Cities - For example, fancy eating pasta del nata in Portugal’s sunny capital? Head to its second city Porto instead for a quieter experience — typically you’ll be able to get more bang for your buck in alternative cities too!

• Undertourism - Similarly to second cities, it’s great fun to research destinations that are similar but different from popular places. For example, if you’re looking for crystal blue waters and sun-soaked architecture, why not swap Croatia’s Dubrovnik for Slovenia’s Piran?

  

  piran — slovenia

• Accommodation - I hold my hands up guilty to this one, I’ve used AirBnB on multiple holidays including in Amsterdam. From now on I’ll be trying to find more sustainable options that are still within my budget — Homestays and traditional B&B’s were some of my fave accommodations while in South East Asia, and you often got to know the people behind the business which I really enjoy. Similarly with housesitting, I have a TrustedHousesitters membership which allows you to stay in people’s homes in exchange for caring for their pets. I could write a whole extra post on that but will mention that I had the chance to stay in Brighton for a week earlier this year and loved the experience. Hostels are super budget and minimise the number of tourists taking up flats in cities.

• Travel off-season - Some places can’t be replaced and that’s ok. I visited Athens in November and it was an incredibly pleasant experience. I was there to watch friends run the marathon but managed to combine it with seeing the historic sites and enjoying some delicious food. Visiting out of peak season helps to even out the flow of tourists and makes the whole tourism thing more enjoyable for everyone involved

• Experience don’t consume - A phrase I hear thrown around a lot is ‘I’ve done Thailand’ or ‘I did Venice last year’ And something about it rubs me up the wrong way. It suggests that destinations are things to claim and conquer and feels like another manifestation of our need to constantly consume — I’m not 100% sure what the actions to amend this are, but I would encourage you to think about what you’re choosing to do in destinations — are they experiences that deepen your understanding of a culture and country, or are you visiting crowded landmarks to take a selfie of yourself in front of it for Instagram? Just a thought.

  

  tourists taking selfies in venice

• Use your brain - Act respectfully, spend your money with local businesses, follow the cultural and social norms to the best of your ability, and don’t litter!!!!

• Pressure on government - One of the most impactful things is government-level intervention. Tourism taxes, laws restricting holiday lets, investing money into promoting sustainable tourism within the country, and prioritising locals’ access to cultural sites and amenities. Advocating for these things is beneficial for all!

I’m not a perfect tourist by any means. I fly and visit destinations for short breaks because I can’t afford slow travel. There are capital cities and popular hotspots that I’m biting at the bit to visit and I’ve already been to places that are experiencing overtourism.

However, this recent news has reinforced the moral responsibility of all of us who are privileged enough to travel internationally.

What are your thoughts? Let me know I’d love to discuss it!

by becca mae x