Thoughts on Locals protesting against tourists

I was in Rome for 7 nights and Barcelona for 3 nights in mid June. My niece, 16 yo nephew and I witnessed no hostility toward ourselves or any other tourists. We stayed in a convent/hotel in Rome and a hotel in Barcelona (so no experience with short term rentals.) Hotel and restaurant staff, taxi drivers, tour guides, and shopkeepers were patient and cordial. Trips planned for Hungary and Austria in December, London in January, and Spain in March. Do not anticipate any issues but not going to the hot spots of discontent. Love Europe and all that travel there entails, except of course the long flight over.

Different places struggle with different aspects of tourism.

Bologna is getting on the tourist map but they are a bustling university town that doesn't really need tourists and they are sometimes seen as clogging the markets that are just the local markets everyone uses. I did see (and photograph) some All Tourists Are Bastards graffiti in Bologna but that was the extent of any ill will I witnessed.

Venice continually struggles with day trippers from cruise ships that put a huge burden on Venice's creaky infrastructure and then storm back out. I've heard people say that they hesitate to go to Venice because of these kinds of stories but if you are spending the night (or especially several nights) then that is what the city wants. The city depends on tourism and they want/need visitors but they want over night stayers who rent rooms, eat in restaurants, and shop rather than trip in, clog everything, buy a gelato after taking 100 selfies and leave.

In Barcelona I felt everyone was very welcoming and patient but I also understand that the Park Güell was just their local park until the government promoted the heck out of it during the Olympics and now we need tickets to get into the core of it because it's a tourist destination. As a local I would resent the loss of a great historic local park too.

In many places I think the issues are either the number of outside visitors distorting the locals experience and outsiders not doing things "correctly" often in ways that seem rude or disrespectful. There's not much you can do crushing crowds except not go or go in the real off season or stay overnight in places that get crushed by day trippers crowds. I think a fair amount of this in Italy is the result of cruise ships. They don't really have a connection to the local places they serve and they can dump a shocking number of people in a short period of time. (I am generally anti-cruising so this may color my opinion, I realize.)

I know that in Barcelona much of the anti-tourist rhetoric I heard was about people using the buses incorrectly and not following the proper etiquette. I know that in Italy they speak disdainfully of American tourists who "Come in, say nothing, touch some stuff them walk out." But again this is etiquette - you greet the shopkeeper when you enter the store, look around in a larger place, ask for help if you're looking for something, compliment their store and say goodbye when you leave. Italians love to talk and even if your Italian is terrible if you say nothing they will make assumptions so instead say some things badly and make a connection.

Outside of some graffiti - either anti-tourist or anti-American politics - I haven't witnessed any anti-tourist activities or protests on the part of the locals. I understand that sometimes people will become upset with a particular faux pas or behavior on the part of a particular tourist - deserved of not - but nothing organized or personal. I think some research and being sensitive to where you're going and your effect on that place and just doing your best with the language and local customs goes a very long way.

I live in a tourist city - which is thankfully large enough to accommodate most of them but we do rant against the tourists as crowds at the beach swell and drivers don't know where they're going. I have seen bumper stickers locally that say "Why do they call it tourist season if we're not allowed to shoot them?" but no one is actually talking about taking any doing anything to the tourists beyond complaining about them the same as every other year.

My $.02,
=Tod

"No snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible."

Well said @miuccia as I don't often think as much about non-American tourism where it is a struggle to get all the way "over there" especially from the west coast.

I was in Paris for the first time in a several years and was shocked how 'unforeign' it felt. English menus appeared auto-magically and most if the French struggle was gone. And honestly I really missed it but I attributed it to the ease of travel from England. Same is certainly true for Bologna where it is seen as an undiscovered weekend get away from other areas like England while some of the locals would rather than you didn't. In northern Italy like Verona and Lake Garda area much of the tourism is German and I was often mistaken for German before American. The Italians felt a lot of Germans took advantage during Italy's economic crisis to buy vacation homes around Lake Garda and not all of them are happy about the German influx.

And it's not just Europe since some Hawaiian islands have suffered from lack of water and want tourism to stop or slow but there are entire industries and economies built on the tourists while locals are suffering water restrictions.

Globalization means more people with money and cheaper, faster travel means more of them will go places. In theory interest will hopefully become more broad but Europe is the current focus and they are bearing the brunt of this new world.

Being one of those snowflakes I think the best we can do is be aware of the impact we're having and do best to minimize the bad impact and maximize the good. As Rick has always said "be a temporary local" and spend your money locally, not on chains especially international ones, and try to fit in with local customs and language as much as you can. Minimize waste and impacts where you can.

It's not that different from what I try and do living at home honestly in some ways, but travel always throws these things into sharper relief. And I guess that's why some of us keep doing it.
=Tod

What hostility toward tourism? Every hotel owner, restaurant owner, or shop owner or taxi/limo driver, or anybody involved with tourists (which are the people you will come in contact with) will love to have you. The only Italians who complain about too many tourists are government employees or retired people or students who couldn’t care less about the money tourism brings since they live on the shoulders of others (taxpayers or parents) and therefore they don’t have to worry about losing their income and not being able to earn money to feed their family.

Regarding the city ordinances enacted to limit AirBnB by the City Council of Florence, it’s just to protect the hotel lobby against the competition. If Florentines have abandoned the city center of Florence or Venice is because it’s very inconvenient to live in places where you can’t use your car. Just like American families, Italians also like the idea of going shopping to big stores for less and be able to bring the goods home by car and be able to carry to the apartment without having to carry them through dozens of stairs since those old buildings lack elevators. The exodus from the city center of Florence started long before the advent of AirBnB. The population of locals inside city historical centers has been declining since the 1980s, when the internet didn’t even exist. It’s not convenient to live in historical centers in old buildings that lack the amenities people like to have nowadays and with all the ZTL restrictions. And making any kind of improvement to those old buildings is costly. Much cheaper to get out of the city center and buy a new house (with a garage and elevator). I have a lot of friends who grew up in the city center of Florence and inherited the house downtown from their parents. They all moved out of the center, or even out of the city, and now rent their ancestral home where they grew up to tourists. Also because if you rent a place to a local resident and that resident stops paying rent, it takes years (not months) and thousands of euro in legal costs to evict them. Much safer to rent to tourists on short term rentals, if you have the fortune to have your property located in a tourist area. All others often keep the extra house empty, or rent to university students, whom they know will eventually leave, for fear they may not be able to evict a bad tenant.

99.9% of the time "the countries" are not protesting, only a minority population in a city.

The only Italian city that is making news for AirBnb restrictions is Florence. And they didn't ban them, they just quit issuing new licenses.

Won't work, but does get them a pat on the back.

Roberto is only partially right - in Florence there was an exodus of locals from central zones since a long time, as old homes are not practical for modern life. But the transformation of residents' homes into B&Bs is now eating out also the semicentral and periferic zones, driving residents out of their homes even when the homes are perfectly fit for modern life. As it is more profitable to rent to tourists than to residents, the prices are driving away residents - but from all the city, not only the center.
A very destructive behaviour is partying all the night long. Residents need to sleep as they will have to be at their desk the next morning. This is the area where friction is more likely to develop. Another source of friction, limited to a few alleys, but strong enough to trigger a municipal regulation, are people sitting on home doors to eat their take-away lunch. In a few case, the refuse to stand up and let people pass through their own doors to enter their homes led to brawls.
As for sitting on monuments' stairs, it should be a question of decency. If you can read Italian, there are a lot of stone plaques around Florence, put from 15th to 17th century, explaining that making noise, littering, playing football and practicing prostitution within a given distance from a church will result in corporal punishment. Nobody wants to cane tourists (even if in a few extreme cases it would be well deserved), but churches should be respected. Try to sit on the steps of a Russian church, and babushkas will come out to order you up.

Let's also remember how dependent so many places are these days on tourist dollars, and how just a few years ago during the pandemic people in the travel industry were moaning about how there were no tourists.

Careful what you wish for!

Phred, industry people are always moaning. And considering the tourism prices are going up at a pace four times the average inflaction, they have little cause for moaning now. There is a new phenomenon, being discussed on newspapers these very days: foreign tourist have driven prices so high that Italians can no more afford to have holidays in the places where they have always been.

Another thing to think about, do not believe all people work in tourism, or in tourist-related industries. The general collectivity pays the price for overtourism (think about garbage collection or extra traffic), including those that do not profit at all, or just in the most marginal way, from tourism presence.

Phred is correct. Be careful of what to wish for. During the pandemic there were zero tourists and everybody in the tourist trade moaned and cried for (and obtained) cash compensation (called “ristori”) from the government, courtesy of the generous abundance of paper and ink at the European Central Bank, which printed Euro like there was no tomorrow. Some people who depend on tourism may be stupid enough to complain about “over tourism”, since it’s fashionable to complain about tourists nowadays, but then in those years when tourists don’t arrive in great numbers they complain about their business being down, and even use that excuse to dodge taxes even more. It happens every time.. “Li conosco I miei polli” (I know my chickens), we say in Italy.