Exclusive: YouGov polling across Europe suggests most countries are sympathetic to protests against overtourism
A third of people in Spain say their local area now has too many international visitors, according to a continent-wide survey that has found most people across Europe are sympathetic to protests against overtourism and back steps to combat it.
The YouGov survey comes after a summer of demonstrations and urgent warnings against the impact of mass tourism from Santorini to the Canary Islands, and measures aimed at reducing it announced from the Cinque Terre to Amsterdam.
The polling in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK found Spain was the country that felt most strongly about the phenomenon, with 32% of respondents saying there were now too many foreign travellers in their area.
So, another way to report this is;
Two thirds of people in Spain are happy with foreign tourists visiting their lovely country
*with the number of foreign tourists…
There is a difference between tourists visiting and too many tourists visiting.
but would they be happy with decreased revenue from fewer tourists visiting?
also:
At 28%, Spain was also the country where respondents were most likely to have a negative view of international tourists.
so maaaaaaaaybe this isn’t just about the quantity of tourists.
I’m sure the Venn diagram of those who would be happy with decreased revenue, who have a negative view of tourists, and who think there are too many tourists has a lot of overlap but is far from a circle. Tourists do bring in money, but they also do tend to trash the places that they don’t live more than the locals, and can drive out locals.
That number rose to 48% in Catalonia, the region that includes Barcelona, whose 1.6 million residents receive about 32 million visitors annually, and of which one local columnist said last month: “My city has been stolen from me, and I’m not getting it back.”
People in Spain also felt more strongly than others about the short-term holiday rentals sector, which is widely accused of removing accommodation from the local residential market and inflating rents to a point many residents cannot afford.
Here is an opinion piece for Hawaii that echos a lot of the complaints from Spain.
In the last few years, my family made the decision to move to Big Island, for many reasons. Although it is not the primary reason, I can’t deny that being “priced out” of Oahu was a contributing factor.
There are valid reasons for people to be opposed to the volume of tourism when it reaches extreme levels.
Too many tourists just means you need to raise hotel prices. Locals don’t pay for hotels.
Understandable complaint, but also a pretty good problem to have. The proposed solutions are workable and can generate extra revenue while also reducing the number of visitors.
1/3rd of Spaniards: Man wouldn’t it be nice to pay higher taxes so that we don’t have to exist with so many people who have a different culture than us?
This shit has been the same cycle for literally centuries. When times are good, locals hate tourism. When times are bad, the locals wonder where all the tourists money went.
In these “tourist economy” areas it’s easy to miss the fact that even if you don’t directly work in the tourist industry, there’s a ton of infrastructure and services which get propped up by that industry. I’ve been on both sides of this, as a local and a tourist, and most of the whining is privileged elitism. Every local knows how to avoid tourists, and every local has also been frustrated by something being closed in the off season. Connect those dots and stop complaining.
I’m sympathetic when this happens to a small village in south america or something, or even just a natural resource.
Europe has pulled far too much colonialistic bullshit to whine about tourism in their cities IMO. Your culture got into everything, you can live with other cultures too.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/15/amsterdam-party-tourists-online-quiz-city-tourism
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/20/thousands-protest-canary-islands-unsustainable-tourism
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/30/mayor-of-santorini-warns-of-overtourism-crisis-greece
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/sep/13/third-spanish-people-local-area-too-many-foreign-tourists-survey
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/23/were-not-anti-tourist-italys-picturesque-villages-struggle-to-cope-with-deluge-of-insta-visitors
