As the term ‘overtourism’ makes its entry into the Le Robert dictionary, debate around the subject continues to grow. It's a topic that takes on even greater importance during the summer season, when visitor numbers multiply and are concentrated in popular international tourist destinations. But what if overtourism is just a buzzword that hides a completely different reality: the difficulty of managing ever-increasing tourist flows in areas that are not growing? Tourists are also aware of this challenge, with 61% trying to avoid destinations that are too busy, according to Phocuswright. This is a challenge that professionals are trying to address through a variety of solutions, from quotas to taxes to the use of new technologies.
Is overtourism just a media issue?
While some people loudly denounce overtourism and its negative impact on the environment and local communities, others claim that it is not an issue at all. Like Jean Pinard, former director of the Occitanie Regional Tourism Committee, who described Jean-François Rial's comments on the subject on LinkedIn as ‘disgustingly cynical and classist’.
This was a virulent response to the CEO of Voyageurs du Monde, who explained that ‘overtourism is the mortal enemy of tourism’, with ‘more and more travellers all tending to do more or less the same thing’.
In a world where the ‘Instagramability’ of places is dictating the holiday choices of more and more travellers (42% according to eDreams Odigeo), it's hardly surprising that tourist flows are increasingly concentrated in the same place. This phenomenon is already causing problems in major tourist destinations such as Barcelona, Amsterdam and Venice, but is all the more problematic in smaller sites that are not designed to accommodate so many visitors at once.
Social media are normalising the idea of visiting overexposed and already crowded sites simply in the hope of getting the perfect photo to post. ‘People feel compelled to capture and share their own photos of iconic places, leading to crowded conditions that diminish the experience for everyone,’ explains Tatyana Tsukanova, Research Associate at EHL.
This is what happened to a small Japanese town that was overrun by tourists trying to take a photo of Mount Fuji with a Lawson's supermarket in the foreground, a symbol of contemporary Japan. Hordes of people in search of the perfect photo for Instagram prompted the local authorities to erect a high opaque net to mask the view. However, just one week after its installation, the tarpaulin has already been pierced by a dozen small holes.
And this...
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