COVID RESTRICTIONS – A BOON TO ADDRESS OVER-TOURISM

 

 

Tourists have not returned to most of the trendy tourist spots after the COVID-19 lockdown but Venice is different. After being mauled brutally by the pandemic Italy is opening up and Venice is perhaps the first plac

e to attract maximum crowds of rebound tourism. The gondoliers in their straw hats and striped shirts are doing brisk business, St Mark's Square is thronged with crowds, and pavement cafes are packed with tourists sipping glasses of chilled prosecco.

After a difficult two years, which started with devastating acqua alta floods in late 2019, tourism is returning to Venice with a vengeance, with hotels reporting healthy occupancy rates, the narrow streets pulsing with visitors and the city celebrating the 1,600th anniversary of its founding in AD421.

But Venice does not want to suffer the curse of over-tourism and so is fighting back. Venice's leaders believe that they have come up with a solution: to build airport-style turnstiles that will enable the authorities, for the first time ever, to close the city to visitors when the numbers become overwhelming. Venetians feel that their city cannot continue to have such huge numbers of tourists. Venice is a small and very delicate city. The number of visitors must be compatible with Venice's size. If there is no room, you won't be able to come in. As the planet recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, the Venetians are of the opinion that destinations like Venice need to forge a new model of tourism and so installing turnstiles at six major entry points to the city is planned. The fact that Venice is surrounded by water will help with implementing the system.

To come to Venice, you will have to make a booking. Visitors who stay at least one night in a hotel in Venice will be granted the QR code automatically on the basis that they will already have shelled out for the overnight tariff that is levied by the city. Only tourists with this special app and a QR code will be able to pass through the turnstiles. But anyone wanting to visit Venice just for the day - as millions of people from all over the world have done over the years - will have to have the app and the QR code on their phone and this will cost €3 per person during the low season but €10 per person during busy periods such as Easter and summer months.

Though it will cost much more to implement this system that they hope of earning from it but it will save the city of over-crowding and disappoint many tourists whose shoestring budget does not allow them to book a hotel in the city! Based on the flow of tourists during normal times, before the pandemic, the turnstiles will be in operation for around 90 days a year.

With the turnstiles and cap on numbers, Venice is delivering a clear message - in place of day trippers who spend little during their lightning visits, the World Heritage destination wants people to stay a while. The Venetians would like to see tourists who want to experience Venice and not just dash to St Mark's Square and leave. The message is loud and clear - come to Venice, but take your time, slow down and enjoy the intoxicating experience. Don’t just tick destinations in your travel list, feel the city, enjoy the culture and the cuisine, the sights and the sounds, the narrow lanes and the wide lagoons.

Venice is not the only place which has fallen victim to over-tourism in the past, i.e. in the good old pre-COVID days. Hallstatt in Austria, Santorini in Greece, Dubrovnik in Croatia, Barcelona in Spain, Kyoto in Japan, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, certain touristy places in Iceland, Thailand and Peru and even the Mount Everest were severely threatened by bulging tourist numbers.

Hallsatt, Austria

The village, tucked beside a lake and in the shadows of the Salzkammergut mountains, saw its first spike in popularity back in 2006 when it featured in the South Korean show Spring Watch. Soon after, it was marketed across Asia as one of Europe's top tourist destinations. With a population of 780, Hallstatt saw a steep rise in visitors from China, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and South Korea after this. Ten years ago it received just 100 visitors a day but in pre-COVID hay days Hallstatt receives over 1 million visitors per year! What is worse is that many visitors seriously think it to be a theme park and not a village where real people live, much to the annoyance of the locals.

The village has also become prohibitively expensive for locals, as supermarkets and convenience stores prioritize souvenirs over fresh fruit and vegetables. Others have complained that tourists have entered their homes without permission.

The village earned UNESCO World Heritage status back in 1997, at a time when it was visited by a manageable stream of walkers and enthusiasts of Bronze Age history; Halstatt is home to a 7000-year-old salt mine, the oldest in the world, but just before the Covid outbreak the popular tourist destination was simply sick of over-tourism.

Machu Picchu, Peru

This iconic ruin is beginning to fall victim to its own success, as are so many heritage-listed sites around the world. Tourist numbers have been capped on the Inca Trail for some time now, but recently measures were put in place to limit overcrowding at Machu Picchu itself, with visitors forced to stick to strict time slots. Still, this place is heaving.

Barcelona, Spain

One of Europe's great destinations is also overrun with tourists, as visitors pour in from cruise ships and tour buses and every other mode of transport daily. The city is struggling to cope: hotel accommodation is full, Airbnb is affecting rental prices for locals, traffic is clogged and pavements are packed. Time to give the city a chance to recover and Covid gave just that. Now when tourists return the city has to plan controlling their numbers.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

The insane popularity of Game of Thrones the series has translated into insane popularity for Game of Thrones the locations. The most popular sites in Croatia, Iceland and Spain are battling with the sheer number of people arriving thanks to their on-screen stardom.,557 people live in the Old Town, down from 5,000 in 1991. Dubrovnik in Croatia benefitted maximally from this popularity. Cruise ships are another key cause of over-tourism in Dubrovnik, disgorging thousands of tourists each day. In 2017, the city received 742,000 passengers on 538 ships!  Over-tourism alienates and drives out local people. In Dubrovnik today, just 1,577 people live in the old town, down from 5,000

Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto is a relatively small city, with only 1.5 million inhabitants, and yet it plays host to more than 50 million domestic and international visitors annually. That, clearly, is going to have an effect, and already the city has had to introduce measures to stop littering and prevent tourists from hassling geikos (the local term for geishas). Restaurants and bars are also struggling to look after their regular customers while dealing with the tourist influx.

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Amsterdam has a population of around 800,000, and yet receives nearly 20 million visitors a year. Again, that has an effect: in 2019 the last florist at the city's famed Bloemenmarkt shut up shop, blaming tourist groups for crowding out his customers. The Dutch tourist board has also now stopped actively promoting the Netherlands as a destination, turning its focus instead to managing the tourists already coming. 

Santorini, Greece

The statistics bear this out: the Greek islands are among the world's top 10 destinations to post on Instagram - up there with Marrakesh, Tulum in Mexico, Amsterdam, Positano and Bali. You will find yourself trapped on an island full of Instagrammers, intent on spoiling all that is sacred about the summer holiday in the pursuit of social media "likes". The problem is magnified in the iconic caldera-view villages of Oia and Imerovigli, where residents have erected signs asking people not to use drones and reminding them that, "This is our home". But who is listening? Farmers in the lavender fields of Provence resorting to putting up banners reading "Please respect our work" to deter the selfie-tourists (it did not). Beautiful places like this, and Santorini, are victims of their own success

The romance of travel has been eroded by the pandemic. It is no longer easy, no longer cheap, and no longer carefree. There's little fanfare or excitement involved in going to the airport to catch a flight but if you have to fit into a PPE kit and sit in the middle seat even that little excitement vanishes in thin air and you are sweating profusely inside the stupid kit with your face shield in front of your mask getting fogged again and again. Now it's a chore, something you have put yourself through to get to where you're going, a battle of overhead space and over-zealous seat reclining and barging at the carousel. If on top of all this you reach your dream destination only to find that your dream is shared by millions of others and you are left jostling for space to catch a glimpse of your picture postcard location, that is bad news!

Let us hope that when the tourism industry eventually opens up post COVID, it succeeds in restricting tourist numbers not only to protect the delicate destinations from overcrowding but also to make tourism safe for tourists!  While tourism is a source of livelihood for many, over-tourism is like killing the goose that lays the golden egg.