Article on Overtourism

I have a suggestion for all overtouristed areas. Ban picture taking! I'm sure there are a lot of folks who won't go if they can't get that perfect Instragram shot. I mean what's the fun if you can't brag to your friends.

We were on the ground in Spain for 7 days this month. We respectfully enjoyed the sites and museums we visited. Didn't take one photo of ourselves. I am constantly amazed by the tourists who appear to be at sites just to get a photo of themselves at the site. They don't even look at the site. They just take a photo (or 80) and then look at their phone to see if they got a good one, and then move on. IMHO, that's part of what's driving overtourism and giving tourism a bad name. It's not the people, like us, who are respectful and are genuinely interested in the history, purpose, and meaning of a site. People like us have always been traveling. That kind of tourism is not new. I wish this Instagram craze never started.

sibdaisy, I hear you. We take maybe one or two pics at various sites we visit as it's fun to look at years later and spurs memories, but that takes maybe 30 seconds. The worst part is seeing how young we were lol. What happened?

One of our favorites is in front of the Thomas Jefferson statue in Paris, because to me that was somewhat surprising.

But heck, whatever floats peoples' boats. My mantra is, "You do you." However, my heart goes out to people who are having their quality of life diminished by too many tourists, including those who get drunk and act stupid, or otherwise are disrespectful in various ways. It makes us all look bad.

Well, I’m sorry to say but picture taking is not what bothers the locals and is not why they are protesting against overtourism. What bothers the locals is real estate prices going up in city centers so they can no longer afford to live there, it’s neighborhood stores being replaced by stores selling souvenirs or Nutella pancakes or other things aimed at tourists etc etc etc.
Curiously the ones complaining about tourists taking photos seem to be other tourists…

Dutch-traveler, thanks for the insight. Housing is an issue here in the States as well, with the average home price being $422,000. Yowzah! Average rental is $2,100 per month.

Without going into a long rambling stream of consciousness about the subject, it got me thinking.

How do people feel about going to a large European city and just sacking off really important sites (British vernacular?) like that really historic place or the must see museum, in favour of just doing something else to avoid the other tourists? Is it absolutely crucial you go to the really popular place that everyone else goes? What if you've been to Barcelona many times and never been inside The Sagrada Familia? Is that sacrilege?

GerryM, for travelers who have been saving for years for a "trip of a lifetime," it would be difficult to miss those must-see sites as it may very well be their one and only chance. It's truly a luxury to be able to visit a city multiple times, where straying off the beaten path would be more likely. I'll admit having no desire to revisit, say, Versailles after losing a few pounds of sweat on our last visit, along with the stinky, sweaty crush of humanity inside the palace.

I suppose it is the different way a European might travel that makes it easier for me to do that. Places that I've been to a bunch like Barcelona and Amsterdam, plus a handful of other places, are familiar to me for reasons other than the big hitter tourist sites. Having the time off work because of statutory holiday regulations and the money to do it from quite a young age made Europe a lot smaller for me and other Europeans like me.

Sounds like in many instances it's a problem the scale of which has been defined by the minority of the population in a lot of places.

Not sacrilege, but obviously daft.

Yeah I get what you're saying, it's a really important part of Barcelona. For me it's never really been a high priority. Most of the good memories I have of Barcelona are of smaller things. People I've met, music I've heard, the sound of the swifts flying around in the narrow streets at dawn.

Sagrada Familia's great, but I'm not always up for waiting in line to see something great, or craning to see an artefact ten-deep in front of a glass case at a museum. Some things might be too busy or touristy for it to be worth it to me, even it's a supposed must-see.

The pictures make me glad to be staying home in the summer.time heat of Austin. TX.. I

I am fortunate that I can travel in the fall and spring.but Lisbon was still very crowded late October last year. I did go to Sintra and that too was crowded but not anything like the pictures. However because of the crowds, I walked some but made no attempt to take the bus that goes from the center to the Sintra Palace. It pained me to miss it but I was unable to walk up to the Palace.

Overtourism is also occurring in the United States. Friends went to Gatlinburg, TN recently and told me how crowded it was. I was shown pictures of the crowds, just walking around. My friends did not go to Dollywood because it was so crowded everywhere that they gave up even though Dollywood was one of the reasons for the trip. .

And there recently was a tourist from a European country that did some abuse to an American treasure. I can not remember any of the details for now.

We are an overpopulated world and it is not just that. We are an affluent overpopulated world and we have all discovered travel.

Something is going to have to be done to manage the crowds but what? I am thinking something like visas to enter overvisited cities such as Lisbon . Only so many people are allowed in per day. You do not have a visa, you do not come in. Each city can decide for itself how many visitors they can comfortably manage. Just throwing out an idea.

GerryM, as sites become more crowded, I become more particular about which blockbuster sites I choose to visit. Instead of visiting five well-known sites, for example, I might pick just a couple and balance it with more off the beaten path options. I begin to ask myself what I really want to see instead of just mindlessly visiting places because they are common bucket list places.

Of course, some places are so iconic -- the Colosseum in Rome or the Great Pyramids of Giza -- that I couldn't imagine skipping them on a first visit, even with almost unbearable crowds. There are a lot of other popular sites, though, where I would consider alternatives, or would at least consider timing my visit to avoid crowds.

I spent a lot of time in western Turkey last year and noticed that a lot of sites were popular, not because they were the best sites but because they were a convenient stop for tours or cruises. Pamukkale/Hierapolis was an absolute tourist circus, but Aphrodisias, which I found a more interesting site, was almost deserted. Sagalassos, one of my favorite sites, has very few tourists because it is a pain to get to.

As places become more crowded, I go to more effort to seek out those less convenient sites.

How do people feel about going to a large European city and just
sacking off really important sites (British vernacular?) like that
really historic place or the must see museum, in favour of just doing
something else to avoid the other tourists? Is it absolutely crucial
you go to the really popular place that everyone else goes?

"Next ..."

I see you're another fan of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band...

I was just trying to put across something else to think about with my posts above. For sure, the overtourism thing has been done to death on here and in the media recently. I thought the idea of skipping the big sites in a city an interesting one, something different to talk about apart from the housing crisis exacerbated by short term rentals.

I've never been to Athens, but I can imagine going for the first time and not going to The Acropolis quite easily. I have a Greek ex who grew up in Athens so I know a little without having been there. I could easily spend a week in Exarcheia with the anarchists and communists, barely see another tourist, but still have experienced Athens. I'm not sure how much that outlook would change if was travelling across The Atlantic to do that. Probably not that much from my own point of view.

I was fortunate to be born and raised in Alaska, one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The majority of the people I've met who have been to Alaska do so on a cruise. Why? The state is so big and there's so much to see? Why limit oneself to the Inside passage? (shrug emoji inserted here). I think because it's easy, people don't have to do a lot of research, they don't know what they don't know. The same can be said for most people visiting Europe-or really any destination on Earth. The benefit of visiting AK is that you won't find too many places overcrowded, unless you're on cruise ship in the Inside Passage ;)

(btw-I'm headed to Barcelona in a few weeks-wish me luck! We prefer the convenience of hotels over Airbnbs, though)

GerryM there are still so many great places to visit, even in the summer. Certainly if there is some icon of travel that has been eating at you for years and and you want to see it, then you must. Nothing will substitute. But as part of that or even as a travel style for all travel, there are more favorable places if the intent is to see, experiece and learn.

Its not just the numbers of travelers, its the density of the tourism. Prague is a good example of a very dense tourism situation. the vast majority of the tourist never leave Old Town and the Castle districts. Thats an area the size of DisneyLand and the density of the tourism is about equal to DisneyLand. Dont get me wrong, I love DisneyLand and Prague is very okay, but dont be surprised at what you find.

Then some cities like London and spread their tourist out over a very large foot print and the result is a few hot spots but generally speaking not always a crowd of tourists. Paris does this to a certain degree as well. Rome, not so much. Dont argue that there is a lot they dont see, I know, but the trend amoung the majority of the tourists doesnt take advantage of the options. They are there to see specific things and they wouldnt go wandering back streets even if they did have the time.

Not all major tourist cities are suffering from the onslaught of tourism and so there is no push back or animosity or water guns or signs saying go home. Major tourist cities, not "second cities". My city ranks tied for the 20th most visited in Europe (one count, but there are so many ways of counting it ... who really knows?). Thats more than Porto or Liabon and not much less than Venice. No animosty against tourists, a few hot spots around town but nothing exceptional or serious, with maybe one exception (Vaci utca) plenty of personal space to walk and stop and take a selfie. And I doubt its unique amoung the top 20 visited cities. To be honest, I suspect of the top 20 visited cities maybe 5 have issues that a tourist may even notice or not enjoy becasue of the tourist numbers. In other words, mabye there isnt an overtourism problem in Europe, maybe its in a small handfull of cities. And even then, since the locals havent done much about it, in most places, is it their problem or is it the problem of the tourist not finding what he imagined he would find?

So if you want to come and take a selfie for your Instagram account, here is a map of where to stand: https://shewandersabroad.com/budapest-instagram-spots/

JS, that's right. Alaska is on our bucket list, but it's expensive. We're trying to figure out whether to fly in and drive on our own, or leave all of those stressors to a cruise or tour group. I know, the latter is even more costly. We just need to determine the logistics of it all and figure something out that will work within 7-10 days due to work and family commitments. Due to limited budgets and time, many tourists can only do a "taste" of a place without much immersion into it.