UK Government Doesn’t Think It Has an Overtourism Problem
Photo Credit: Tourists in London. The city is the third most popular in the world in terms of numbers of visitors. Flickr / Petras Gagilas
Skift Take
It might be true that London isn't in the same boat as Venice or Prague, but there are plenty of areas finding it difficult to balance the demands of tourists and locals.
While plenty of European countries are wrestling with overtourism and how best to manage visitor numbers, the UK government doesn’t think it has a problem.
In the first 10 months of 2017, 13.4 million people visited the UK on holiday, a 13 percent rise compared with the previous year. The attractive exchange rate enticed plenty of these visitors thanks to the pound's fall after the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
Speaking at an event in London Tuesday, Rebecca Stewart a senior policy advisor on tourism at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, said it was important to talk about overtourism but it wasn’t yet something the UK has to overcome.
“These days n
