Skift Take
The intense media coverage of overtourism during high summer season makes sense, but putting the onus on travelers to solve it misrepresents the deeper issues at play.
It's summertime, and media outlets around the world are suddenly fixated on overtourism. While the topic has long since entered the mainstream, not a day goes by lately without a legacy media outlet weighing in.
A glance at the recent headlines would make it seem as though it's a problem that has sprung up in the last two weeks, rather than in the last decade.
Overtourism is a complex phenomenon that has implications for the climate, infrastructure, housing markets, and politics at both the national and local level. It's also the shared responsibility of countless sectors of travel: aviation, hospitality, cruise, and destination marketing, to name a few.
You wouldn't necessarily know that reading some of the season's hottest takes, which are often framed around putting the onus on the travelers themselves, rather than fully taking into the scope the scale of the overtourism dilemma.
"Too many people want to travel," points out The Atlantic. "If seeing the world helps ruin it, should we stay home?" asks The New York Times. And the Washington Post reminds readers, "You can avoid being one of them." The overtourists, that is.
Some
