When one sun lounger lines up seamlessly with the next in the Italian seaside resort of Bibione, when hundreds of people push past each other to visit the Trevi Fountain in Rome or the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, when hotels and restaurants in Croatia and Greece are fully booked, then they are The days of unrestricted freedom of travel inevitably return. But what we experienced in a number of holiday destinations this summer is also the revival of a phenomenon that many people thought was outdated by the pandemic: mass tourism.
“In many areas of tourism, we are now back to the level of 2019 when we look at the tourism key figures,” says tourism researcher Markus Pillmayer from the Munich University of Applied Sciences in an interview with stern. Problems such as mass tourism already existed back then, but the way we deal with them has just changed. The expert is primarily alluding to the many actions by locals against mass tourism in their homeland that have become public in the past few months:
Bali launches tourist guide to curb disrespectful behavior among holidaymakers. In Mallorca there are more and more drinking-free zones and party bans in order to limit drinking tourism and protect residents. Amsterdam released an advertising campaign against British partygoers because they are causing more and more hustle and bustle in the city center. Venice is planning an entry fee for day tourists, Croatia is working on a tourist tax, and more and more holiday destinations are setting caps for visitors.
This is just a small selection of the measures that have recently been taken to combat mass tourism. What they all have in common: They are a cry for help. Residents of tourist hotspots are resisting the masses of travelers who populate their homes in summer. Many of them had the faint hope that the pandemic would create a new awareness of travel, that things wouldn’t go back to the way they used to be.
Instead, we are well on the way back to old times: According to a forecast by the “Federal Competence Center for Tourism”, the volume of travel to and from Germany could already reach pre-Corona levels in 2023. According to the international airport association ACI, the airline industry is already recording 95.5 percent of the number of flights in 2019. And despite inflation and war, people’s desire to travel has not stopped. On the contrary: surveys repeatedly confirm the great interest in traveling.
And for many people, vacation means going to their favorite travel destination. For Germans this is mainly in Spain, Italy, Greece or Turkey. Anyone who books a trip there in high season usually knows that it will be crowded and, if in doubt, stressful. And yet, many of us don’t think about trying another destination. “In science we call this the awareness-attitude gap. This means that I know that my behavior is wrong or at least questionable, but I do it anyway.” Anyone who has always flown to Mallorca will continue to do so for the time being, true to the motto: “It will be fine.”
But it is also true that mass tourism is a complex phenomenon that has many causes. Pillmayer names what he sees as the defining factors: “On the one hand, people globally have more money available for travel. On the other hand, many countries have strictly limited time windows in which international travel is possible.” Carlo Speth, travel expert from the online portal “Urlaubspiraten” also sees the vacation times as a cause: “In Spain and Italy, for example, people can travel especially in July and August, which they also like to do domestically. That makes the vacation spots popular also fuller.”
Speth is therefore certain: we need a European solution for mass tourism. “Spain, Italy and Turkey will continue to be the high performers. “This is not only because they are very popular holiday destinations, but also because these countries have the capacity to accommodate large crowds,” says the industry expert. And that’s exactly where you have to start.
Tourism researcher Pillmayer also sees it this way: “The problem in many places that are affected by mass tourism also lies in communication with and the involvement of locals.” It’s about taking the residents with you when decisions are made about the local tourist infrastructure, instead of ruling over their heads. However, there is no blanket solution to mass tourism. “In one case you can actually regulate the flow of visitors via price, in the next it is a quota or other visitor management in the form of digital control.”
However, both experts agree on one point in particular: How mass tourism will develop in the future also depends on the consumers – us travelers. It’s not a question of whether we travel, but rather how we travel. “I think it’s also about creating awareness about consumption. As a traveler, you should ask yourself how you can give something back to the locals,” says Speth. Even with a package holiday, you can make a contribution to local added value by choosing local providers.
What we must not forget, despite all the justified criticism of overcrowded places, is the conflict for many local people. Tourism is often a key economic sector that communities cannot or do not want to do without. “Avoiding a destination completely because there are too many tourists cannot be the solution,” concludes Pillmayer. Instead, tourists need to be made more aware of the world they visit. This is the only way we can approach a more respectful treatment of the locals and the environment. And this is urgently needed.
Tourism researcher Pillmayer makes one thing particularly clear in an interview with stern: “We shouldn’t be naive: mass tourism will always exist in some form.” However, it is in the hands of providers, governments and also us travelers ourselves how exactly this form of tourism will affect our global coexistence in the future.
Sources: Munich University of Applied Sciences, Federal Tourism Competence Center, Airport Association ACI, Urlaubspiraten
