Tourism officials across Europe are implementing new strategies to manage visitor numbers and ease local tensions, following a summer of protests in 2017. In Barcelona, activists targeted tourist buses, while Venice saw marches against cruise ships and rising rents. Some Spanish cities displayed graffiti telling tourists to 'go home'.
At the ITB travel convention in Berlin, representatives from Dubrovnik, Barcelona, and Amsterdam shared solutions. Zurab Pololikashvili, secretary general of the World Tourism Organisation, stated: 'Someone said there is no overtourism, only undermanagement.' He emphasised the need to improve governance of tourist flows, particularly in urban destinations.
Spain has introduced an online ticketing system for the Alhambra palace, offering pre-booked slots to its 2.7 million annual visitors. Italy's Cinque Terre is trialling a similar system with capped entry cards and a real-time app to avoid bottlenecks. Venice, Amsterdam, and Dubrovnik are also nudging visitors away from crowded areas.
Dubrovnik's mayor, Mato Franković, said a new arrangement to stagger cruise ship arrivals should ease overcrowding in the old city, which previously saw over 10,000 visitors at once. Santorini is limiting cruise passengers to 8,000 per day, while Venice is working towards a ban on cruise ships in its lagoon by 2021.
Justin Francis, founder of Responsible Travel, warned that the 'overtourism crisis' may worsen before improving. He noted that in 2017, there were 1.3 billion tourist arrivals worldwide, half in Europe, with over two-thirds visiting just 20 countries. He added: 'The world's a very big place, and the absolute numbers of tourists are manageable, but not if we all want to go to the same places at the same time.'
