Overtourism Discussion Elicits Denials, Spin and Occasionally an Insightful Idea
Photo Credit: The Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic. The city has become increasingly popular with tourists over the years, thanks, in part, to low-cost flights. Flickr / sergejf
Skift Take
Travel leaders are at least starting to admit there might be a problem with unmanaged mass tourism, but many are still in denial about the real reasons it has become such a big issue.
For years, few in the travel industry wanted to acknowledge the fact that tourism might actually have some drawbacks .
Governments, tourist boards and cruise lines were happy to pursue growth without thinking that their actions in certain destinations might have consequences.
Stories, though, began to emerge of angry locals protesting the ever-rising influx of visitors to their towns and cities, and slowly but surely they forced those in charge to finally address the issue.
At Skift, we’ve been way out in front on overtourism, documenting its impact in places like Iceland and we recently proposed a framework for a series of our possible solutions. Not all of them will be popular but they have potential.
Now, leaders of travel companies and some governments are belatedly starting to take notice, and at the recent World Travel Market London tourism bosses gathered to discuss the topic. As you’d expect there was a mixture of spin, denial, and the odd example of a forward
