After related protests in Venice before in 2024, Barcelona occupants marched against tourists in July.
People of Santorini, Greece, lately expressed outrage after receiving a Facebook post that reportedly demanded that they stay home to make room for the thousands of tourists expected to travel during the busiest holiday season.
These are signs of overtourism: a scenario where visits exceed a location’s capability, making residents unhappy and tourists terrible. Regional governments have proposed hospitality taxes or entrance fees to increase the cost of travel and, in turn, reduce how many people show up.
Some researchers studying tourism have urged people to take vacations in remote or less developed nations in order to improve their economies. But, overtourism exists in the developing world also. Here’s what it looks like.
Go on a tourist-swamped area
Bali, the country’s largest holiday destination, accounts for roughly half of all international visitors to the island nation.
Although a major contributor to carbon pollution, which are expected to disproportionately harm poorer nations like Indonesia, is air travel is the most trusted way to get there. Approximately 15 million guests arrived in 2023 – close to their stage in 2019, before the crisis.
Bali’s tourism-dependent economy ( providing 61 % of regional GDP in 2019 ) was more or less frozen by Covid-19. However, for travelers who spent lockdown in places, the pandemic even left Bali, and especially the island’s remote parts, with a renewed brightness. Penglipuran, a traditional Balinese town in the northern mountains, was attracting thousands of visitors every day in July.
Encouraging people to visit poorer areas is risk people but in a different way than how individuals in , Venice , or , Barcelona , practice it. After all, streets and public transportation in wealthy European cities are stronger maintained.
The Bali bridges get busier every year due to the constant growth in visitors. On the island, there are approximately one-to-one ratio of vehicles to people, whereas public transportation use is still low. For six days before New Year’s Eve 2023, traffic prevented travellers from entering and leaving Bali’s aircraft.
In remote Bali, the hilly terrain, humid conditions and poorer public transportation mean citizens must concentrate on cars and scooters. The resultant pollution and noise degrade the agrarian experience. If the majority of Bali’s power is still produced from fossil fuels, switching these vehicles to work on electricity may not completely solve the issue. Nor would it split road overcrowding.
Tourists want to travel to numerous remote areas of Bali using a trustworthy means of transportation. Some people have rented cars or motorcycles because of the limited options, but poor customers laws have made it possible for misbehavior: visitors driving without tops or helmets or even licenses. In March 2023, the provincial government partially outlawed renting motorcycles for foreigners.
Residents of the island have worked for decades to transport tourists freely despite the island’s slog of visitors. In response to efforts to reduce overcrowding and vacation chaos, such as creating free shuttle bus services or public transportation for tour groups, local protests and the ire of vehicle hire companies have resulted in protests.
To go or not to go
Unchecked growth wastes the mutual advantages that hospitality may offer both residents and visitors. Also, neither people nor visitors should be prohibited from traveling, but should instead go properly.
A proposed railroad transportation plan that would link Bali’s airport to Seminyak and Nusa Dua, Bali’s most well-known neighborhoods, may help reduce road travel around the town center. Rural car rental companies may continue to operate in rural locations, but they could only serve customers on less busy roads.
Poor countries may be cautious about relying on tourism for the long term. The Indonesian government is looking at its options in at least different fields, including agriculture and the electronic market.
Bali, one of the poorest countries, has less training than wealthy nations to control the socioeconomic and environmental charges of overtourism. And finally, a bruised tourism sector contains the seeds of its own demise: declining economic quality, angry residents and, finally, fewer tourists.
Rama Permana is PhD Candidate in Sustainable Travel, Bournemouth University
This content was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original post.