Overtourism: How to be a responsible tourist - The Global Story podcast, BBC World Service | BBC World Service

Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings. From the BBC  World Service, this is The Global Story.

2024 is expected to be a record-breaking year for  tourism, with more travellers going on holiday  

than ever before. Barcelona, Paris, Hawaii,  or Bali, they're all beautiful destinations  

that attract tourists from all over the world,  but they are also struggling with overtourism. 

Too many visitors in one place can have a  negative impact on those who live there, and  

it's also causing lasting environmental damage. So today we're asking how does this relentless  

rise in global tourism impact the people who  actually live in these sought-after locations?

And with me today is seasoned BBC TV  travelogue presenter Rajan Datar. You  

have been travelling now, I think Rajan, for 20  years or more, can I call you a lifelong roamer? 

You could try calling me a lifelong roamer, I  think I'd prefer to say, because roamer implies  

that I'm just drifting, whereas I think I'm doing  it for work, well I know I'm doing it for work. 

Hello and welcome to The Travel  Show from Bruges in Belgium. 

This is Uzbekistan. Look at this, simply stunning. 

So Raj, 2024 is going to be a huge year in  tourism. The numbers are expected to be massive.  

What kind of numbers are we talking about though? We are talking about $11.1 trillion contributed  

to the global economy by tourism, according to  the Tourism trade body, the World Travel and  

Tourism Council. We're talking about an industry  that is the third largest in the world. In total,  

330 million people are employed in  tourism and ultimately we're talking  

about a billion and a half tourists. It's maybe markets that people aren't  

expecting as well. I mean, India, China,  they're travelling extensively as well,  

saving up for these holidays of a lifetime. So the big change was in the early part of  

this century when the Chinese started exploring  the world, that has now been overtaken by the  

Indian outbound market, which is incredible. We're  talking about a population of 1.5 billion people,  

so that if even 0.5 per cent of them  travel or have the money to travel,  

that is still a huge number of people coming  into the market, adding to, by the way, adding  

to what is already a huge market. Was there a moment on a particular  

trip where you thought I'm becoming  really concerned about overtourism? 

Before the pandemic, tourism was reaching an  all-time high then, and there were murmurings,  

actually, and louder than that from  certain destinations, that 'hang on,  

we're being crushed here, we're being  overwhelmed by the amount of tourists'. 

But I thought the pandemic also meant  that people weren't travelling as much. 

Straight afterwards, they had what  they call 'revenge tourism'. People,  

actually quite a lot of people certainly in the  West had saved up quite a lot of money during  

Covid and they hadn't spent it on travel, they  hadn't spent it on anything and there was this  

real suppressed feeling of 'I need to get out',  because for a lot of people tourism has become,  

travel has become a virtual human right. What are some of the cities,  

the destinations that you would say are being  a bit crushed at the moment by too many people? 

Barcelona is the one that I really had personal  testimony of being there and seeing it change  

and I went first before the Olympics. Since  then it's been relentless. Local people,  

and we did a story for The  Travel Show that I work on,  

we did a story about locals complaining quite  a time ago, it could 10, 12, 15 years ago,  

we did that story because it was brewing. There  was a huge amount of resentment. The short-term  

rentals were rising. In other words, they were  more and more available for the holiday maker, 

which pushed up prices, which marginalised... If you're a young local person living in  

Barcelona, you can't find a place to rent? You can't find a place. And this is the  

common thread, by the way. It's  the edging out of local people. 

Pricing out of locals. Pricing out precisely. 

I mean there's been these big protests in  the Balearic Islands recently that has sort  

of dominated some of the headlines and  really brought attention to this issue.

What are some of the challenges they're facing  there? Because that's an industry where they  

also need young people to work, they need waiting  staff, they need bar tending staff. Absolutely. 

People to work in the hotels. I think there was a story on the BBC  

website not too long ago about for example a chef  who worked in a local hotel or restaurant who was,  

or is forced to sleep in his car. I call  it feeling like extras in your own movie,  

you know it's not, it's suddenly a city  that you love or an area that you love  

is completely taken over and obviously local  customers get squashed because tourists want  

their thing. They want what they're used  to, a nice latte, food wise, probably,  

you know, there's some demanding tastes from  tourists and if they can afford it, guess what,  

there'll be a restaurant for them there. It's sort of this notion of international  

good taste, isn't it, that exists everywhere now,  that can kind of muscle out things that are local. 

What about Austria? You had, I  know, an amazing trip to Hallstatt. 

It's a little town, 800 residents.  It's called a beautiful lake. I mean  

it's picture postcard perfect. It's  just beautiful. 800 residents and they  

have it during peak season 10,000 guests a day. Only 20 per cent of people who live there actually  

work in tourism there and so therefore they're not  all directly benefiting. There's one particular  

scenic spot where you can get such a perfect  selfie with the lake in the background that  

the locals or the mayor in fact tried to block  it for a while. That policy, it's catching, that  

policy was taken up on Mount Fuji not so long ago,  where they did the same thing, they stopped people  

from taking pictures of Mount Fuji from just in  front of a convenience store because it was... 

This is Fujikawaguchiko Very well said, yes. 

Our correspondent Shaimaa  Khalil actually went there.

You've probably seen this on your Instagram or  TikTok. This is the famous Mount Fuji Lawson,  

the social media money shot for millions of  visitors, but it's not going to be around for  

long. Residents here in Fujikawaguchiko  are fed up with tourists behaving badly,  

all to get the perfect shot of the  convenience store with a snow-capped  

volcano. As a desperate measure, the local  authorities are building a barrier to block  

the view. You can get a picture of Mount Fuji  from many places but social media has become  

a big pull for this particular spot. Well if I didn't have social media I  

wouldn't come here I wouldn't even  know that it existed this place.

So that's obviously been a big problem in Japan  as well for people who live near Mount Fuji but  

in Hallstatt, how much of the money made  in Hallstatt goes back into the community? 

Not very much money in some of these places stays  in those places. The local authorities will say,  

'yes, we're reinvesting money that we get from  parking or whatever into local facilities and  

resources', but actually a lot of it isn't.  That's called leakage, by the way, where a  

lot of the money that is made in these tourist  centres actually doesn't stay within the economy. 

Can I ask you about the environmental  damage that is done to some of these places,  

like somewhere like Bali? Yeah. 

There's really big issues around water scarcity. In many destinations, water is a big issue. I  

mean, I've talked to somebody who's in Kenya where  quite often you'll get tourists in luxury hotels  

pretty well competing with locals for water  when there is scarcity. Guess who wins, the  

luxury hotels. Local farmers in Kenya and in other  places are very suspicious of tourism because it  

actually can get in the way of them doing their  job. And sometimes, like in Kenya, where you have  

safari tourism, it actually means that some  farmers were evicted from their own farms so  

the land could be used for roaming animals. It's fair to say that there are some places  

that are doing well. They have come up  with some solutions and they're working. 

There are two sides to this. One is what  the local municipality does. The other  

one is what we can do as individuals. So  let's just start with what places can do. 

So in Venice, for example, they have  introduced this five euro admission fee. 

It's not much five euro. It's not much five euro. And I  

did talk to the deputy mayor in charge of tourism  and he said 'well the point isn't actually this  

at this stage to charge people and make money out  of it and dissuade them'. It's more for them to  

realise when the peak days are and when to avoid  it. They're collecting data by doing this because  

you have to actually go online and do this. And Raj, with that data that they're collecting  

in Venice, is the idea they'll then  encourage people to come midweek? 

Exactly that. And it spreads the burden. 

Not just midweek, but in what  they call the shoulder season. 

Exactly. So spring and autumn for  

us in the West. And that is another way of trying  to shift the weight of tourism. There is an issue  

with that, which I feel that you're about to come  to, which is school holidays. And that, obviously,  

unless that changes, unless most of the West  certainly stops having school holidays in July  

and August, at about the same time, then we're  always going to get that crush around that time. 

What about the move to encourage people to  go to similar destinations that are nearby? 

We went to Slovenia, and we went to a place called  Bohinj, and there, it's quite near Lake Bled,  

which is near Ljubljana, which is coming  there at the moment It's actually building up. 

I mean we I went in April and there are  quite heavy crowds there. So he's worried  

about even if there's spillover from Lake  Bled or even from places, other places,  

that they're going to get crushed as well.  So yes, you can definitely spread the love,  

you can have dispersal, but it's not necessarily  going to be the answer either if the next place  

along also then suffers in the same way. And I guess Raj that climate change is  

also having an impact on where people  are choosing to go? Southern Europe at  

the moment in the summer particularly is so hot. In Greece, in Greek islands as well, in Italy in  

Rome and in other destinations you had people  actually being evicted not evicted but being  

evacuated from the islands that they were staying  in, for example Rhodes, because of wildfires,  

because of actual danger to people. People were,  you know, the heat levels are getting horrendously  

extreme, which means that people are now looking  to do what's called 'cool-cationing', which means  

they're going to more, to cooler northern climes,  Slovenia is one example, northern Europe again.  

And that is becoming more attractive. And this  is not going to go away. This is climate change.  

And so this is going to completely shift the  map of where people will go in the future. 

Raj, what kind of travellers do these cities  want? Is it the sort of luxury traveller, the  

high spending traveller, and they want backpackers  to stay away? How does that kind of formula work? 

Well, the mantra is high value, low volume, that's  the big mantra in the tourism industry right now.  

Now, what does that mean? I think they want it  to mean yes, stays more than two or three nights.  

Yes, maybe takes public transport to come in.  Yes, eats locally. Yes, respects local culture. 

I mean, you're describing  quite a few backpackers here. 

Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Interestingly, I  talked to a professor of tourism quite recently,  

and he said, 'you know what?' He did a whole  survey, and I think it was in Cyprus. 'The  

budget traveller, the backpacker, actually, in so  many ways, make sure that there is less leakage,  

the term I used before, that most of the  money stays within the country and the local  

economy because they will stay in cheaper  places, they will take public transport,  

they will stay longer and they will not  use up the environment in such a way or  

they will not destroy the environment in the  way that sometimes a luxury traveller can do'. 

Did quotas work? If you've got an attraction as opposed  

to an actual destination then you can impose  quotas much more easily. Yes, quotas can work  

and they will be more and more common I think. I think going back to your thing about solutions,  

raising prices on things, on attractions can  probably be one technique. I mean there's  

something that that makes me feel a bit bad about  that because it means that people, you know... 

It's not accessible for some people. Yeah, it's not accessible for people and so  

it's outpriced. They're talking about 5,000  euro private tours of the Acropolis now. Now  

great if you can afford it, but if you've come  all the way from, I don't know, Japan wherever  

and you're not on a huge budget and suddenly you  realise you can't go there because of the crowds  

and you haven't got 5,000 euros. I'm not sure if that's good. 

Are we reaching peak tourism? There's no reason why it shouldn't  

go up. The issue is more whether they start taking  measures to limit the number of people travelling,  

certainly to certain destinations. I  think people anyway with selfie culture,  

and we haven't really talked about that, but it's  so important selfie culture that with that people,  

especially young people, are  looking to go to new places. 

I was in Venice recently and the Rialto  Bridge you had to queue for quite some  

time. Do you think that the selfie culture,  there can almost be an adverse reaction to  

it as well? People are like the Rialto  Bridge, 'I've seen that too many times'. 

I think that's definitely the case. I think that's  particularly true of younger travellers. They will  

want something that's different to what their  mates have done, you know you've seen one picture  

of Rialto Bridge and the view and with you on it  and so what, it's like people aren't going to be  

massively impressed. It slightly reminds me of  back in the day when I was a kid and they used  

to have Super 8 movies where they would show  you know 'guess what they went to Austria,  

they went to the Alps and they went to...' and  people have to crowd round and watch it. But then  

travel was much much rarer, today If everyone's  travelling, you've got to get the unique shot. 

It's the bragging rights to something. It's the bragging rights, absolutely. I mean,  

I went to Uzbekistan recently. I think  that will become a big tourist place  

soon because it's uncharted territory. It's  somewhere where people haven't been before. 

And this idea of dispersal that you've talked  about, we might be looking at dispersal literally  

from Western Europe all the way across to the  Stans or to Central Europe and the Caucasus. 

I can see that happening. Definitely, definitely,  yep, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, yep, the  

Stans, I mean, these places have got magnificent  histories and culture and architecture. Yes,  

go there, and they've got, I think, would love you  to be there. The problem is, here's the problem,  

suppose you've come from a long way away, you've  spent ages saving up this money for this trip of  

a lifetime. You're there for two weeks,  you come to Europe, you've got a Schengen  

visa maybe. Of course you're going to go to  the Eiffel Tower. Of course you want to see  

the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Of course you want  to see Venice. And who are we to stop them? 

And who are we to stop them? That brings me, I  think, to our final thought. You and I have both  

travelled a lot. It would be hypocritical of us  to say, at any point, you know, you can't travel.  

It is the most enriching, wonderful, amazing  experience. It's managing it going forward,  

that seems to be the big challenge. I'd be a hypocrite if I said to younger  

people who haven't travelled much anywhere in  the world or to people in emerging economies  

who only now can afford to travel, 'look,  don't travel because you're killing the world,  

you're ruining the earth', how can I say that? I mean, even for me, Raj, I'm from the bottom  

of the world, from New Zealand. We are raised to  believe that you must go out and see the rest of  

the world. It's part of growing up. It's part of  living your life. It's a cultural expectation. 

And I'm not going to deny that. It's absolutely  true. It is fantastic. Travelling the world is  

brilliant for all the obvious reasons. You grow  as a person. It has so many different beneficial  

effects on people, on culture, on relations  between different cultures and, you know,  

I wouldn't knock it. So I suppose what I would  say is please travel, please travel. But just  

watch how you travel, the way you travel. Just  be slightly more conscious of the host community. 

It's to have respect. Much  more respect. You are a guest.  

You're not entitled to this. You're a guest. But do travel. It is life changing. You just  

don't meet anyone who wouldn't say 'it changed my  life, my perspective, so many things from travel'. 

And we both are some of the  luckiest people on the planet. 

Indeed. Raj, it's been great  to have you. Thank you so much. 

Great to be here with you, Lucy. Thank you very  much for having me and good luck on your next  

journey. And you know what to do now. I do. I'll have my checklist. 

Thank you for watching. If you want  more episodes of The Global Story,  

you can find us wherever you get your podcasts.  Subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode  

and do let us know what you think about today's  episode in the comments section below. Goodbye.

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