Overtourism Protests Get Uglier: But What Are They Really About?
by Robert McGarvey
Joe Brancatelli is right in his column last week where he says overtourism is real and we have seen the enemy and he be us.
But I’ve been tracking this issue for some time and have come to believe there are two strands to overtourism. You know the first: the sheer masses of humanity that converge on Santorini, Venice Italy, Bali. parts of Rome, etc.
My advice has been to avoid these places and I’ve thought that for decades, starting back with my determination never to go near Times Square unless I was going to a Broadway or off Broadway show and even then I grumbled about the throngs. I have been to Santorini, a quarter century ago, and it was crowded then but it’s a lot more crowded today and wonderful as it was I am not going back. Nor am I going back to Bali, enchanting as I found it in the late 1990s.
This kind of overtourism, I’ve come to believe, is self fulfilling. People see lots of pix of friends on Facebook or Instagram and they think, I gotta go there too – and they do. This 10/24 Washington Post story vividly makes my point: ‘It’s Disneyland’: Fall foliage destinations overrun by leaf-peepers.” The subhead elaborates: “Fueled by Instagram, crowds of seasonal tourists pack roads and trails in New Hampshire, Vermont and Virginia.”
Lemmings don’t actually follow lemmings but people do.
Understand this however. there’s another strand to the overtourism protests across Europe, from Greece to the Canary Islands, and it’s more poignant. These protests aren’t about crowds, they are about brutal economics and that dollars and cents reality impacts residents not just in the hottest hot spots but places where an influx of tourists is resulting in higher costs of living for the locals.
Writing in the Harvard International Review, Umang Vinayaka says: “The overarching reasons behind the protests are similar across Europe: inaccessible housing, excessive pollution, scarce essential services and resources, and a general lack of adequate infrastructure.”
On an October Sunday in Madrid, for instance, somewhere between 22,000 (government estimate) and 150,000 (organizers’ estimate) protested along the Gran Via, shouting that housing is a right, not a business (“La vivienda es un derecho, no un negocio”). Their anger was not directed at tourists per se but rather at property owners whom they claim are removing apartments from traditional rental marketplaces and turning them into short term rentals via Airbnb and Booking.com.
I’m not sure the math supports their belief. There appear to be around 210,000 short term rental units in Spain, a county with 48 million people and around 25 million housing units which would make the short term rental units >1% of the available stock.
What is true is that Spain has a real housing shortage, new housing is not coming on line as fast as needed, and prices for the existing stock are soaring. The cost of housing has risen 42% in 10 years, double the increase in incomes.
But what’s the cause? Tourism – or other macroeconomic issues in the Spanish economy? And similar applies to Italy, Greece, and the many other European countries that are protesting overtourism but I believe the real problem isn’t tourists but the lack of affordable housing.
Similar is true in the United States, by the way. In Phoenix where I live there is a grave lack of affordable housing that contributes to the city’s growing homeless population. Here there aren’t anti tourist demonstrations and where towns have cracked down on Airbnb it’s because some units were used as raucous party venues and laws were enacted to curb that. The problem here is that builders just aren’t building affordable units, period.
But back to Europe and the protests: a reality is that tourism is crucial to the economies of Spain, Greece, and Italy, for instance. There’s a painful absurdity to the protests in the Canary Islands where 35% of GDP and 40% of jobs derive from tourism. But, yes, the protesters are protesting in pain as many simply cannot afford a decent life in the Canary Islands.
Which leads to Greece where recently hospitality workers have been protesting as their unions say they simply cannot survive on what they are paid.
Similar is happening in the United States where Unite Here hotel workers are striking because, they say, they can’t live on what they are paid.
Meditate on two words. Income inequality. It just keeps growing. The rich get richer. And now the poor are howling ever louder.