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.
I didn’t say there aren’t valid reasons, my point was that there will be drawbacks that people may not be thinking about when responding to a simple poll. Especially people who don’t directly depend on tourist revenue, but likely benefit indirectly.
That mentality is largely the result of overtourism though.
Spain is a country of under 50 million people which has over 70 million foreign tourists visit every year.
The US is 330 million people but only has 50ish million foreign tourists.
So imagine that the US has roughly 8x as many tourists per year (to match per capita) and imagine that a huge portion of these tourists were mostly coming from much richer countries and had the mentality of ‘let’s let loose in a cheap party spot’.
Just about everyone is in favor of some tourism, it’s just currently completely out of control in much of southern Europe. The numbers just completely dwarf just about anywhere else.
Too many tourists just means you need to raise hotel prices. Locals don’t pay for hotels.
How many people don’t give a fuck tho?
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.
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 used to live in NYC. Anytime someone complained about tourism, I always wonder why they even live in NYC.
I’m sorry, but this is completely backwards with regards to the situation in Spain or many other poorer european countries. I’m much more familiar with the situation in Croatia, but this applies to most of southern Europe (including Spain).
Yes, the countries take in a sizable portion of their gdp from tourism, however this is generally at the expense of the average citizen. Tourism is notoriously bad at distributing any wealth it provides, while the average person living in these places gets all of the negative side effects. Tourists are generally coming from richer countries (USA, Germany, UK etc) and able to/used to paying much higher prices. So the local economy shifts to focusing exclusively on tourists (it’s where the money is) and locals get all of the negative externalities (inflated rents, inflated prices, crowding, poorly behaved tourists) with very little benefit.
Local and national governments focus exclusively on further investments in tourism (since it’s such an ‘important’ part of the economy!) at the expense of other investments (education, non-tourist infrastructure) which would be more beneficial to the overall population.
Not to mention, compared to just about anywhere else in the world, the number of tourists in Europe is absolutely overwhelming compared to locals. Croatia is a country of under 4 million people, but gets over 20 million visitors a year! The average salary is somewhere around $1000 A MONTH, so it’s no surprise that so much of the country is instead focused on the needs of tourists who can easily spend $1000 a week…
This isn’t the same situation as a tourism hotspot in the US, for instance (where I’m originally from). Yes, wages vary geographically in the US, but not nearly to the same extent. The areas often grew around tourism rather than being a normal functional city where families have been living for centuries before very recently turning into what is essentially a theme park which is largely unaccessible to natives.
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?
It doesn’t have anything to do with living with different cultures, we just want to be able to pay rent
You think that’s gonna be eaiser to fix by chasing out tourists and losing income your city is going to try an regain elsewhere (that means from you), or by reigning in the real estate market and shit like air bnb? I promise you the people raising your rent aren’t tourists.
Imagine your town/city starts completely catering to people from richer countries coming there to get completely wasted and intentionally act crazy… that’s what happened to a huge portion of Spain.
Tourists are not culture. They’re a zombie plague.
I promise you, if you move there, learn Spanish and start working for a local company, you’ll learn that people there are extremely welcoming to foreigners.
But if all you want is an Instagram shot in the same spot as the other 16 million people who visited just this year a city of 1.6m, and an “authentic” paella (you won’t get an authentic one, trust me, but you’ll be told it is and you’ll keep bragging about it to your colleagues once you return from your vacay, even though the thing you tried tastes nothing like what a paella should taste, digression end), then you bring a negative cultural value. You’re an annoyance, and a one that’s not worth whatever financial benefit it brings.
One could also argue that most of your financial contribution goes to making hotels and landlords richer, and nobody really needs that.
So, I’m with people of Barcelona who paint “fuck you tourists” on their walls.
I’m sure it’s at least that percentage that feels the same in our small mountain town in the southern Appalachian mountains.
Could it be that the world is beautiful and worth exploring, and the ability and means to travel has never been as accessible?
Too many people!
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
