Among all the serious problems the world is facing now, one of them stems from a surprising source. I’m talking about excess tourism, or the problem of places having too many tourists. This has become a worldwide problem, affecting cities like Barcelona and Venice, as well as islands in Thailand and the Philippines. Travel is generally a very good activity, as the vast number of people who travel and the growing revenues of tourism worldwide would attest, not to mention blogs like mine that focus a lot on traveling. However, excess tourism causes major issues such as adversely affecting local people’s lives and damaging the environment.
In Venice, tourism is being blamed for pushing small businesses out of the city centre as more people open businesses like restaurants and souvenir shops catering to tourists rather than locals. In Barcelona, locals have taken to protesting tourists and even targeting tour buses as they blame tourism on lack of housing, rising rents, overcrowded public transportation. The Philippines have closed down Boracay, an island filled with beaches and resorts, for six months in April to try to clean up rising pollution while Thailand did the same with Maya Bay, where the backpacker film The Beach was filmed. But while you can close off small islands and beaches, you can’t do the same with cities. How can the problem of excess tourism be solved? I’d like to think there are a few ways the authorities and travelers can try.
While the world has become much smaller due to the power of the internet and the convenience of smartphones and the prevalence of flights, especially budget airlines, certain places often get a huge amount of travelers. In particular, these include, besides Venice and Barcelona, cities like Paris, Dubrovnik and Bangkok, as well as Bali and Phuket. Look at the most prolific travel blogs or travelers on Instagram, and you will see posts of these places flooding your feed.
So what can be done about this?
The tourism authorities of countries and cities need to try harder to promote lesser-known cities and attractions to visitors. For example, Indonesia came up with a “10 new Balis” campaign to promote 10 other tourist places that hopefully can be alternatives to Bali. Japan is “frantically encouraging tourists to get off” Tokyo and Kyoto because the country has been too successful in attracting tourists, who most go to those two cities.
Meanwhile, travelers should consider going to less famous destinations themselves. I try to do this on my travels such as when I chose Milan (it’s not an unknown city of course, but for travel, it’s not that popular) on my trip to Europe or Ipoh earlier this year.
Of course, you should visit famous cities (it’d be a shame to visit France and not go to Paris) but diversifying where you go would also be good. For instance, instead of Venice, consider Bologna, instead of Bali, consider Flores; and instead of Barcelona, consider Valencia. When you read a top 10 list of cities or places, aim for numbers 4,5,6 etc rather than the top 3.
Second is while saving money is good, sometimes we need to consider whether the money we spend is really going back to the community. AirBnb is considered a big problem since rather than homeowners renting out spare rooms, which was the original intent, you get firms or landlords buy up multiple properties specifically to rent out to tourists. This not only raises local property prices but also deprives locals of apartments to rent or buy. Keep in mind that while hotels and hostels need to pay business taxes, most AirBnb homes do not do this, thus limiting how much of your money goes into the local economy.
Third is people can consider traveling during shoulder or off-peak seasons. As an example, I visited a part of southern Thailand during the summer, which is the rainy season and thus the tourist off-season, so there were not much tourists which made it easy to enjoy the various places. Also, it didn’t rain much. Because tourist numbers are not so numerous during off-peak seasons, when you travel during this time you help provide local hotels, businesses and drivers with much-needed business whilst also helping alleviate high tourism numbers during the peak seasons.
You can read more good points about this problem from established bloggers here and here.
