Eoghan Corry: Why tourists aren't that welcome any more

Secondly, these protests are not going to go away anytime soon and will increase in frequency, and perhaps intensity, in the near future.

In some cases residents are just fed up of dealing with the crowds, the noise, the litter, and the traffic. In other cases, it is ideological opposition to the damage recreational travel is doing to the environment.

Many of this year’s protests have been triggered by other factors which have nothing to do with tourism at all. They stress the inability of the local politicians to manage shortages and the pressure that tourists put on infrastructure, particularly housing, roads, water, and other services.

So far, these protests have created more noise than annoyance.

Tourists are not changing their booking patterns as yet. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs is monitoring the situation and has not issued any advice to be vigilant. But one incident could change that.

Signs have been erected in resorts telling tourists they were not welcome. Facilities have been vandalised. Yachts and aircraft have been spattered with paint.

Last Saturday, protesters squirted water at tourists in Barcelona. If the water guns of Las Ramblas boulevard are replaced by paint guns, the tour operators and tourists themselves will rethink.

For tourism departments, who have spent decades and millions of euro trying to attract visitors, having a movement aimed at convincing tourists to stay away is very bad news indeed.

The term overtourism is less than 10 years old but the problem is an old one.

Cities are not museums. Most of them were built for defence, to keep armies out, hostile or not. Not all of them enjoy the prospect of fame or of being too crowded.

There have long been complaints from residents of towns where large crowds congregated, whether for pilgrimages, old-fashioned “taking the water” spa treatments, or the agricultural fairs which left streets and neighbourhoods spattered in animal excrement.

The best-known phrase in the tourism industry, ‘Venezia non è Disneyland’, has been adopted by protesters everywhere. Venice led the way in 2018 by putting pedestrian gates on its busiest streets. In 2021, it banned cruise ships. This year, Venice  tested a day trip charge for admission to the city. None of these measures have curtailed the number of visitors.

Two other picture postcard cities quickly joined the movement. Barcelona and Dubrovnik also have a rich maritime history, a heritage that spawned their tourism industry in the first place. Amsterdam shared their fate as a cruise ship destination. All of them have moved to curtail cruise ship visitors.

Something entirely different has happened in the Canary Islands and the Balearics. When the phrase overtourism first appeared, it referred to destinations that were not necessarily designed for tourism and could not cope with the numbers of visitors they received. This summer saw the opposite — cosmopolitan tourist towns protesting against the industry on which their economy depended.

The concerns of a tourist travelling abroad, are much the same as those at home: Safety and security. They fear the pickpockets of Las Ramblas rather than water pistols.

Irish visits to Spain are on course to come close to 3m in 2024, having passed 2.5m last year.

Onshore, those tasked with the management of fragile environments or infrastructure were among the first to face the problem.

Interaction with human hands and breath has destroyed or damaged some of the great artefacts of civilisation. Climbing on monuments is now banned by most countries. Flash cameras are banned.

Places designed for defence or for burial are not conducive to crowds. 

The Great Pyramid of Giza has two separate entrance tickets, one to climb to the entrance and another, limited in number, to crawl through the tiny shaft to the inner chamber.

In Ireland in 1995, a cap of 650 visitors a day was put on the real Newgrange and a replica constructed on the other side of the Boyne. Newgrange will never again be subjected to the 1,700 visitors it endured one day in 1985.

Similarly, a replica cave has been constructed in Lascaux in France and dozens of other places that became overloaded, victims of their own fame and the curiosity that lures us all to travel.

Time slot systems are now common for major attractions, such as the Acropolis in Athens. In Asia, Thailand and the Philippines both introduced six-month bans on their most overrun beaches and entire islands.

Replicas work well. Tourists are not great at telling a modern fake from the real thing. Iconic Instagram stars of tourism are fabricated or rebuilt, often controversially in the pre-tourism age by well-meaning academics — the library at Ephesus, the “original” Newgrange itself, and parts of the Great Wall of China, all reconstructed.

The emergence of an internet market for short-term tourist rentals — led by but not confined to Airbnb and Vrbo — has fired up a new debate.

It is easy to go online and count the quantity, quality, and affordability of short-term rental accommodation (tens of thousands) and make a comparison with long-term accommodation (about one tenth the number, on average).

Those protesting against tourism in Barcelona were directing their message at the local politicians who have left them in need of short-term rental accommodation, rather than the tourists who filled their streets.

Solving a housing crisis takes years of navigating complicated planning, construction, and financial hurdles. Shutting down tourism rentals is being touted as an overnight solution, and proving too attractive an option for politicians to resists, in Barcelona and now all of Spain.

It is too early to tell whether the elimination of tourism rentals will lead to an increased supply of living accommodation.

Elsewhere, including Ireland, the business of managing short-term accommodation has been taken over by housing rather than tourism regulators.

Irish tourism 

Our holiday home market is in danger of being shut down by misguided notional political quick fixes.

In the hotel sector, planning files are being filled by a growing number of objectors who think tourism is not necessarily a good thing. This is a big change. 

In poorer economic times, tourism brought vital income to the towns and villages and especially the farmer’s wives who invented the B&B movement of rural Ireland. Killarney was ridiculed and envied with equal passion because of its success and international reputation.

Irish tourism is lopsided. Five counties get 70% of our inbound tourism: Dublin, Galway, Cork, Kerry, and Antrim. Of those who visit the highly successful Wild Atlantic Way, 80% tour the section that extends south of Galway city to West Cork, while just 20% head north towards Sligo and Donegal.

In recent times, as visitor numbers to the Cliffs of Moher outpaced the ability of the facilities there to cope, some of the surrounding attractions bemoaned the arrival of day trippers from Dublin via the new motorways of the noughties, and asked for the bus companies to spread the love.

Narrow roads such as that around the Ring of Kerry are barely able to handle the summer traffic. Farmers struggled to bring their silage home past cavalcades of day trippers.

West Clare opted out of a mention in the Tourism Ireland promotion inspired by the Star Wars films so as to avoid the tourist rush to Skellig Michael and Malin Head.

What to do? 

Tourist boards have responded to the problem in the two ways they best know how, by suggesting dispersal and seasonality.

For much of northern Europe, the tourist season is over after 10 weeks. Hotels are empty or indeed closed for the rest of the year. Try finding an open restaurant along the famed Wild Atlantic Way in February.

Dispersal is more complicated, because Granard is never really going to be Galway.

In theory, mass tourism can be moved to places that need it more — to Tarragona rather than Barcelona, to Puglia rather than Rome, to Istria rather than Dubrovnik, and to anywhere along the Adriatic coast instead of Venice.

Many have taken to this idea with enthusiasm. A so-called trend for 2024 is the emergence of duplicates, or “dupes,” the alternative which is cheaper and less invasive. But the trend is more prominent in internet lists than in the marketplace. Nobody wants to see your Instagram photographs of the village next door.

Tourism protests, as far as we can tell, are largely directed at the pressure on infrastructure like rental accommodation, transport, and public utilities that tourists bring when they unpack their baggage. Longer term, the ideological argument is most interesting and engaging. The economic muscle given to communities by inbound tourism helps build the considerable resources needed to address climate change.

Sustainability means different things in Africa than it does in Europe or North America. The World Travel and Tourism Council figures show that tourism accounts for nearly 3% of the world’s GDP and that one in five new jobs are generated by tourism.

Even in the global north, tourism matters when it comes to dispensing wealth. Carcassonne and Lourdes would be dirt poor villages without tourism. Cutting off this income could make tackling the crisis of climate change more difficult, not less.

• Eoghan Corry is a travel writer

Busy destinations try to curb tourist behaviour

ITALY: Rome has restricted access to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. 

A no-selfie zone has been imposed in Portofino, a prohibition on flip-flops or sandals on the paths above the Cinque Terre (five villages in Liguria), on eating snacks on four central streets in Florence, on sitting on Rome’s Spanish Steps, or on building sandcastles on a beach in Eraclea.

SPAIN:  Walking 'naked or half-naked' has been prohibited through the streets of Calvià or Palma de Mallorca and its beach.

PORTUGAL: Unauthorised ball games and playing loud music prohibited on beaches, as is camping outside campsites.

CROATIA: Dubrovnik has initiated a luggage drop-off system to minimise the noise of wheeled suitcases. Compulsory lockers are planned by the city.