Venice may be making headlines with the introduction of its entrance tax, but it is far from the only tourist destination facing the challenge of overtourism. While the number of travellers continues to rise year on year, the number of destinations visited remains the same. As a result, 95% of tourist flows are concentrated in just 5% of the world's submerged lands. This concentration has direct consequences for the destinations themselves, their environment and their inhabitants. Taxes, quotas, demarketing and stricter regulations are all ways in which destinations are responding to this problem without penalising the financial windfall that is tourism.
The list of destinations affected by overtourism is growing
Overtourism is a term we've been hearing a lot about in recent years. It's such a recurring theme that 74% of the French people surveyed by Evaneos claim to have heard of it. More than half of them even believe they know the precise definition. It's a phenomenon that 41% of them have already experienced, while 92% say they have experienced at least one of its practical effects, such as dirt due to high visitor numbers (84%), crowds that are too large (74%) or waiting times that are considered too long (71%).
In fact, according to this study, Venice is only the second city to have been hit hardest by overtourism. The Serenissima was beaten by Paris, which received 66% of the votes, with the Eiffel Tower (52%) and the Louvre (31%) perceived to be over-visited.
‘With two emblematic monuments in first and third place, Paris is the city most affected by overtourism according to the sample of people questioned,’ notes Laurent de Chorivit, co-CEO of Evaneos. He notes, however, that this perception on the part of the French ‘contrasts with visitor statistics, where the Eiffel Tower only comes seventh behind the Forbidden City, the Château de Versailles, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the Colosseum in Italy and the Taj Mahal in India’.
According to 89% of those questioned, overtourism in the City of Light is set to intensify during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Another major event taking place in the capital later this year is the long-awaited reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris on 8 December. Some people are already fearing that this emblematic site of the city, which welcomed almost 12 million visitors a year before the fire that ravaged it, will be saturated.
But France and Italy are...
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