Nickel and Diming Overtourism: Beware the Hands of Greed

by Robert McGarvey

From Paris to Athens, the Canary Islands to Rome, locals are in an uproar about overtourism – and public officials are responding. They are talking about stiff measures that will preserve the quality of life for locals and they want us to know they mean business.

Wink, wink.

Image created by Google’s Imagen3 AI tool

Consider: Venice has imposed a 5 Euro tourist tax this year and is likely to double it next year.

Barcelona grabs 50 cents to $2.40 per day per tourist.

The Netherlands charges 3 Euros per night.

Rome wants to collect 3 to 7 Euros per night.

Lots more European cities and countries are climbing aboard this gravy train because, what the hell, it’s free money. isn’t it?

But will it do any good for the aggrieved locals? There, friends, is the rub.

Many US cities have long imposed a kind of tourist tax in the form of a special tax on hotel rooms that often is >10% in many cities including Honolulu, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Some European cities do likewise including Amsterdam and Berlin.

And a bunch of countries – Mexico, Japan, and Belgium included – collect a tourist tax that’s usually under $10 per head.

Question: does any of this curb overtourism? Of course not. That was never the goal. Cities and countries have been hoovering up these nickels and dimes for years with zero noticeable curbing of tourism. Rather, the money is a kind of freebie for pols to spend as they wish.

Governments especially like these taxes and fees because it’s not locals – i.e., voters – who pay them but visitors who have no say in how the places are run and who is elected to office.

Sure, tourism interests warn that high fees will chase away tourists – there’s not a lot of evidence to support this warning but they make it anyway.

When a tax is no higher than a cup of coffee or a glass of wine it surely deters just about no tourists.

Which brings us to Bhutan, a country with a love-hate relationship with tourists because it’s a “developing economy” mainly based on agriculture and forestry so if it wants an infusion of big and easy cash it has to swing open its gates and attract more tourists who now pay around $100 per day for the privilege to enter and the government suggests that fee may be doubling.

Bhutan also caps its tourist count at 300,000 annually.

That is being serious about curbing overtourism.

Bhutan believes tourists are “happy” to pay the fees because the money helps Bhutan stay Bhutan and also pays for free healthcare and education for the populace.

Every country, island, city with hordes of tourists should look at Bhutan and seek to emulate it and that means imposing a steep fee on tourists and capping the numbers allowed. But that is tough medicine and entrenched tourism interests will howl because they will see this as their ox that’s gored. And politicians will listen to them and that’s why so much of the anti tourism talk is just talk.

Where Bhutan is serious, Santorini – just to point to one place – is not. It’s bursting with tourists – see this 2 minute Reuters video – and yet it is not prepared to take meaningful steps to significantly limit the blight. It is talking about a 20 Euro fee per cruise ship passenger. But the bulk of that money will go to Athens, with an unspecified cut going to Santorini to augment its infrastructure.

Similar is playing out in Bali, where overtourism is ruining the erstwhile “land of the gods” and so Jakarta has come up with a tourist tax of about $10 per head and you can bet little of that cash gusher will go to make life more livable for the Balinese. Incidentally, after petroleum Bali is Indonesia’s second biggest contributor of foreign exchange, bringing in $20 billion annually. Jakarta does not want to shatter that piggybank.

Overtourism is a pestilence but waiting for politicians and entrenched economic interests to cure it is a fool’s errand. Ain’t gonna happen. My advice continues to be to go where they aren’t and that means visiting overtouristed places in very low seasons (in the first two weeks of December Rome is usually vacant for instance) and to always seek to go where they aren’t (Paris may be overtouristed for much of the year but Marseille isn’t). Crowds are easy to avoid – if you want to.

As Yogi Berra probably never said, nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.