Tourism Overdose

Phenomenon of mass tourism has been known from 1960s but globalisation, ease of travel, growth of new outbound tourism markets and digital and tech revolution led to its exponential growth. As a result, today popular tourist destinations are choking from the influx of tourists, who drastically deplete the destination “resources”, leaving natives with less to consume. The departure of mass tourism has celebrated the advantages for both tourists and destinations — it inaugurated the way to make travel cheaper, encouraged people to enjoy a good time in a larger group and vastly popularised the countries and destinations. However, the reality showed that tourism en masse is not all roses.
The positive aspects of mass tourism for local economies looked obvious. By bringing income and visibility and providing exposure to local cultures, mass tourism diminished barriers and suspicion and meant to be a manifestation of globalisation. But somehow the popular concept “to know means to love” failed to work for mass consumers of tourist product. Cultural decay and environmental degradation, conflicts with locals, rising crime and higher risk of terrorist attacks is the price many popular tourist destinations are paying today for the short-term benefits of selling themselves in bulk.
There is no sign the mass tourism will stop growing in the future. The World Economic Forum has recorded over 1,2 billion international arrivals in 2016 and the numbers continue to climb. Finding the sustainable ways to minimise the destructive potential of mass tourism is already a real challenge for the affected destinations.
Treating the causes, not symptoms
The roots of mass tourism lie in a consumerist culture of modern society. Characterised by the consumption of goods at a higher rate, consumerism became the hallmark of most modern economies where personal standards of living are valued by material possessions. Economy-wise, when the purchasing power of population is high, the economy is considered “doing well” as the prosperity of a nation is judged by the per capita income of its individuals. In a consumer society, once the new goods become old people simply replace them by newer ones and the repair is not an issue. Furthermore, in a consumer society, people tend to believe that money and material possessions grant them a taste to a better life. And in this vicious chase for individual material satisfaction respect for “the other” becomes secondary…
Consumption in the context of tourism refers to the purchase of good or service such as hotel rooms, and participation in activities, such as attendance of attractions. When tourism related product, highly standardised, packaged and inflexible, is distributed, sold and consumed in bulk for the purpose of maximising the profit of global travel agents, sooner or later the popular destinations will suffer from ill-effects of unregulated tourism influx.
In their urge to know the new lands and cultures tourists tend to “consume” the symbols and conceive their travel experience as a part of building their own identity. In the context of mass tourism, motivation of the trip is rarely or never being an exchange of experiences with the host population in a travel destination but rather a simple satisfaction of tourists’ demand. They arrive, they consume, they depart, without giving a thought to the chaos and waste they are living behind them. This way mass tourism becomes exploitive and irresponsible towards social and natural environment. These black and white photos of cruise liners in Venice by Gianni Berengo Gardin look really brutal and describe the seriousness of the problem better than words.
The gap between “what should be the cultural aspects of tourism” and “the realization of the intercultural exchange” lies at the root of tourism’s destructive potential, as has been identified by UNESCO some years ago. And that goes double for the mass tourism!
WHAT CAN BE DONE
Proper strategic planning, community involvement and participation are among the secrets to RESPONSIBLE and SUSTAINABLE tourism development.
Balance between preservation and development
How to keep the positive perception of the city and to make tourist consumption sustainable at the same time?

Restrictive measures such as setting the limits of acceptable use for particular sites, pricing policies and limitation of hotel growth are absolutely at place in order to stop immediate eradication of cultural and natural assets. Banning selfie-sticks in Milano or fountain loitering in Rome can be merely a short-term measure, but not a strategy. Combating the damaging effects of tourism while preserving the positive image of the destination can be a complex challenge which requires careful planning and collaboration between all city stakeholders.
Tourism will continue to bring income to the economy. It is a question of how to allocate and redistribute this income in a smart way to improve city’s liveability and to preserve the quality of life.
In destinations, policy makers need to take a leading strategic position to create a necessary infrastructure and institutional context for the development of innovative sustainable tourism products. This will provide the market support for the industry and create incentives for a sustainable tourist behaviour in the long run. Furthermore, local authorities can foster the sustainable market activities by giving preference to local travel agents in planning and ticketing of the local trips. This will be economically viable for both the travellers and the host cities.
Community Inclusion.
The collaboration with local community is particularly important. At the end of the day, the residents are the ones who enjoy the benefits or suffer from unwanted effects of tourism. In many cases, like in Venice, Amsterdam and Barcelona, these were the local inhabitants to raise the question with massive anti-tourism protests on the streets of their cities. Their impulsive behaviour triggered by unbearable situation has sent the signal to the authorities to start actually dealing with the situation.
Residents fully experience the burden of over tourism in their everyday life. In this regard, inclusion of local community in tourism planning, development and operations will allow to decrease the pressure while contributing to the community wellbeing and efficient use of human resources.
New role of DMOs
Today DMOs are much more than a point of sale of a destination, they are the legit members of city governance and have been given a power to facilitate and communicate the destination strategy leaning the balance in favour of responsible tourist behaviour.
Barcelona and Amsterdam are the great examples of how to implement it in practice. You can read about it here here and here
· The power of social media

Internet and social media gave DMOs an extraordinary ability to instantly influence visitors’ experience by appealing to their attitudes, behaviour and motivations. In the hands of DMOs, social media became a powerful tool to exchange the ideas, engage and educate their customers, both visitors and locals.
· Education and Knowledge
Accumulation of data, information and knowledge is another powerful competence of modern DMOs which can assist community, industry and policy makers in implementation of sustainable tourism development strategies. Giving visitors feedback, raising awareness about the consequences of their actions and also showing how they can contribute have a cumulative effect and help to break the social traps of unsustainable tourist behaviour.
In pursuit of sustainable tourism behaviour, modern DMOs need to understand their clients from experiential perspective: their sense-based desires and motives based on cultural diversity.
On the other hand, educating residents about the positive aspects of tourism is essential. If one day tourist will disappear from the city locals will be the first begging them to come back. Tourism keeps many culturally significant sites alive and well-maintained and supports local businesses. Tourists help locals to keep a fresh eye on the beauty of their own place which otherwise they have stopped noticing.
The marketing landscape is changing fast. Modern marketers are moving away from relying on demographics to understand its users, focusing instead on customer passions and aspiration. When dealing with mass tourism it is extremely important to know the profile of tourist segments to create the right incentives for sustainable consumption.
There are two types of people who travel: tourists and travellers and the main difference between the two is how they perceive their travel experience. Travellers are the ones who are ready to get out of their comfort zone in order to blend in with the host culture. While tourist follow the maps and stick to the mainstream routes, travellers follow their instincts and are not afraid to get lost. For them, getting lost means discovering beautiful things they might have never seen before. Strategy of stimulating travellers to share their positive experience from the journey and encouraging touristto make an effort to blend in with locals can be second to none. It will allow to earn some respect from the locals who, in return, might try to be more benevolent towards their “guests”. And the worst peace is always better than the best war.
