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Overtourism Becoming More Talked About Topic

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Overtourism was the focus of sessions at ITB Berlin and the World Travel and Tourism Council’s Global Summit earlier this year. It is also the focus of a new documentary released by activist travel company Responsible Travel. With the current global population at 7.6 billion and more than 1 billion international arrivals each year, there is reason to be concerned. Too much tourism can cause too much traffic, too much pollution, put natural attractions at risk, and, according to one expert, make a destination less competitive. As a baseball fan, of course this quote came to mind: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” (Thank you, Yogi Berra.)

At the Global Summit, according to Travel Weekly, travel industry leaders were invited by Salli Felton, CEO of the Travel Foundation, a British sustainable tourism charity, to have “a really frank discussion” exploring a white paper the WTTC had commissioned on overtourism. You can read the article with the discussion here, but here are a couple of quotes:

Adam Goldstein, Vice Chairman, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.: [The focus on overtourism] is the result of, I think, increasing wealth and income in the world revealing what might have been theoretical in the past but is actual in the present. There’s an extraordinary hunger on the part of almost everybody in the world to see the world, given the opportunity to do so. And so, what is the world going to do about the phenomenon that pretty much everybody would like to see the world if they could? And how are we going to prepare for a world like that?”

David Dingle, Chairman, Carnival U.K.: “The issue, though, still remains: How do we deal with the current hot spots? Perhaps overtourism could become a self-regulating issue over time. People may realize that going to places where the ecostructure, the society, is very fragile will cause damage. Can we actually inspire people to say, “Yeah, I shouldn’t go to that place too often because I have a responsibility as a human being, as a resident of this planet, to not go and spoil places?”

In the aforementioned documentary, “Crowded Out: The Story of Overtourism,” tourism hot spots such as Venice and Barcelona are addressed. In the film, Megan Epler Wood, Research Director at Harvard and Cornell, describes overtourism as a “global emergency” and believes “no one” has real control over tourism as it stands.

Professor Harold Goodwin of The Responsible Tourism Partnership states in the film that, “We need rebellious tourists and rebellious locals to achieve change. It won’t just happen without some degree of rebellion by tourists being turned off destinations and locals saying ‘enough is enough.’”

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