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Locals in Andalusia, another Spanish destination popular with international tourists, have also voiced their exasperation with mass tourism. “I dream of retiring, renting out my apartment and leaving Seville,” Francisco Martinez, the president of Ancha la Feria neighborhood association, told daily newspaper El País about the invasion of terraces in the historic city centre. “The city centre might be good for drinking a beer, but it has become an aggressive and unbearable place to live.”
Seville’s conservative mayor José Luis Sanz announced in February that a plan was underway to charge an entry fee to the Plaza de España, a major attraction particularly popular with tourists visiting the Andalusian capital.
“We are planning to close the Plaza de España and charge tourists to finance its conservation and ensure its safety,” he wrote on X. He accompanied the news with a video showing broken tiles and balustrades, and street vendors niched in its alcoves and sitting on the staircases.
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Authorities in Venice, Italy have launched a pilot program to charge day-trippers a €5 entry fee to be able to stroll along its famous canals on busy days. The measure was deemed insufficient by most residents, who would have preferred to limit the number of visitors per day to successfully protect the city. Peru, for example, adopted a measure to limit access to Machu Picchu to 2,500 visitors per day.
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Venice on April 25, 2024 became the first city in the world to introduce an access payment system for some tourists. © Marco Bertorello, AFP
Other European cities, such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands, have opted to increase the tourist tax. The Dutch capital confirmed it was hiking its tourist tax on hotel rooms to 12.5 percent of their price for all visitors. The city, which is actively working to prevent the kind of tourism that compromises quality of life for its residents, has also tightened its regulations to curb tourism linked to cannabis consumption, and now prohibits the construction of new hotels.
‘They take our homes while they live in the Maldives’
In the Athenian district of Metaxourgeio in Greece, locals are inscreasingly frustrated with the presence of tourists. “They take our homes while they live in the Maldives. And we give them tzatziki and togas,” said a resident.
Companies in this bohemian district are transforming buildings into coworking spaces to accommodate digital nomads – a growing sub-category of people who travel and work remotely. The total number of short-term rentals in Athens has soared by almost 500 percent in less than a decade.
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FOCUS © FRANCE 24
To slow down the phenomenon of mass tourism, Greece has started raising taxes and doubling the minimum required investment for the golden visa. Yet the government is hesitating to adopt more stringent measures.
“We have to take into account the needs of the entire population, both renters and owners,” said Harry Theoharis, Greece’s former deputy minister of national economy and finance. He added that while he was convinced further measures were necessary, further research was also needed to avoid taking measures that would destroy the market.
The “beach towel revolt” in Paros, in the Cyclades region of Greece, emerged as an combat against the privatisation of the island’s beaches. “We are concerned about the dispossession of the beaches of Paros by companies that exploit part of the coastline,” wrote the collective, which was born on Facebook a year ago.
As a key stop for Greek cruises, the island of Santorini sees hordes of tourists flood its hotels, beaches, and restaurants every year. Out of the 32.7 million people who visited Greece last year, about 3.4 million, or one in ten, visited the island which has just 15,500 inhabitants.
In the narrow streets of the town of Oia, locals put up signs urging visitors to respect their homes: “RESPECT… It’s your holiday… but it’s our home.”
According to the Hellenic Ports Association, 800 cruise ships brought along 1.3 million passengers in 2023. With parts of the island on the verge of being saturated, authorities are considering imposing restrictions.
Read moreOn Santorini, anger over cruelty towards ‘tourist donkeys’
‘Not against tourists’
France has not been left behind when it comes to mass tourism. Its authorities are especially worried about how to handle the millions of visitors concentrated in a few sites like Paris, Mont-Saint-Michel, and the Calanques National Park, near Marseille.
Some 1.5 million tourists come to Étretat on the northern coast of France every year to visit the famous cliffs, sometimes putting their lives in danger to take pictures for social networks.
“The nature of tourism has changed over the last ten years. It’s Instagram tourism that’s not at all interested in the surrounding area,” said Brigitte Cottet, President of the Association of Residents of the old town of Annecy, in an interview with the radio station France Bleu last May.
Japan recently reacted against this type of tourism when the authorities of the small town of Fujikawaguchiko, near Mount Fuji, built panels of mesh netting to cover a particularly sought-after view of the stratovolcano. The initiative aimed to hide the panoramic view from tourists deemed too uncivil by the locals.
Beyond the tensions between tourists and residents, mass tourism often leads to environmental degradation. In Étretat, the trampling of the coasts causes accidents, erosion and the destruction of biodiversity; in Venice, cruise ships landing in a shallow lagoon cause enormous damage; on Mount Everest, overcrowding causes monstrous pollution, with the Nepalese army evacuating 11 tons of waste and four corpses from the “roof of the world” and two other Himalayan peaks this year.
Workers segregate waste materials retrieved from Mount Everest to recycle in Kathmandu in this photograph taken on June 12, 2024. © Prakash Mathema, AFP
While there is no universal solution, authorities know that they must act with caution. Tourism remains a force for good in most areas, a fact many discontented people, particularly in Spain, are aware of: “We are not against tourists, but against the type of tourism that pushes us out.”
This article is adapted from the original in French.
Source link : https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240729-tourists-go-home-mass-tourism-exasperates-locals-in-spain-and-elsewhere-in-europe
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Publish date : 2024-07-29 17:24:39
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