Many cities focused on tourist development and city marketing to keep their economies afloat during the financial crisis of 2008-2013, but the subsequent economic recovery saw a combination of growing visitor numbers, changing behavior patterns and price hikes, especially in real estate, that created the conditions for a 'perfect storm'. Anti-tourism protests have emerged and have even started to dominate the political debate in cities around the world, especially in Europe. Cities such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin and Lisbon have developed policies to mitigate the negative externalities of tourism growth for their residents. Jeroen Oskam's wide ranging work examines many of the most important issues in the debate on overtourism including:
- crowdedness and competition between tourists and locals in the use of city services
- displacement of services catering to locals by tourist amenities
- cultural or physical alienation
- protests against overtourism often associate the phenomenon with the presence of urban vacation rentals
- measures against overtourism, e.g. restrictions on short-term rentals, access restrictions, economic measures and reconducting tourist streams.
The Overtourism Debate presents differing positions around justifying tourism growth versus preventing gentrification and to 'return' the city to its residents. Chapters give insights on the future evolution of the phenomenon, propose policies and strategies, and identify underlying mechanisms of the massification of travel, in a pandisciplinary work that will appeal to scholars of Tourism, Geography, Urban Planning, Law and Economics. But besides this impact on cities, professionals and scholars in the tourism industry should consider how unlimited tourism growth affects the quality of the tourist experience: can 'overtourism' deplete the attractiveness of cities and destinations, just as overfishing or deforestation have harmed their respective industries? Besides their simultaneous emergence in the last decade, Airbnb and other platforms also generate the most visible interference of tourist activity in residents' lives. Airbnb can at most be seen as a catalyst of excessive tourist pressure - as market leader in low cost accommodation - but not as its cause: the growth of tourism is due, simply put, to wealth increases in global middle classes, accelerated by the rise of low-cost travel. Cities have instigated measures against overtourism, e.g. restrictions on short-term rentals, access restrictions, economic measures and reconducting tourist streams. The success of these measures has been limited, as had been predicted by experts.
The academic debate in this book spans multiple disciplines, such as Tourism, Geography, Urban Planning, Law and Economics. The approaches are equally varied: while many Tourism scholars try to save or justify tourism growth, Urban Planners may preferably seek to prevent gentrification, to minimize tourism externalities and to 'return' the city to its residents. The purpose of this book is to include the different positions in the debate; to give insight in the potential future evolution of the phenomenon; to propose policies and strategies and to identify underlying mechanisms of the massification of travel.
