Restrictions on cruise ships, limiting the use of tables in restaurants and charging for taking photos: the measures of cities to curb “mass tourism”

There are certain images that appeared during the confinement by the Covid-19 which marked a before and an after and, one of them, is to see the canals of Venice again with clear water, fish and even dolphins. Closing the borders has restored biodiversity in a city that has become an icon of mass tourism.

Pero luego que la OMS declarara el fin de la emergencia sanitaria global por el Covid-19, el llamado “turismo de masas” no solo ha vuelto a revolucionar la vida de los residents de Venecia, sino también la de los habitantes de otros atractivos turísticos in the world. And it is that the The explosion of global tourism after the pandemic years has been felt. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), 235 million tourists traveled abroad in the first half.

But this phenomenon revealed a negative effect of tourism: the impact of travelers on cities and regions s, which sometimes exceeds the limits of empathy with the inhabitants, underlines the Brazilian newspaper O Globo. To deal with this situation, measures have been adopted, ranging from limiting access to large tourist groups to selling tickets.

In Spain, for example, the city of Barcelona has adopted a controversial unofficial measure according to which prohibit people from sitting alone in certain restaurants at certain times, such as lunch. Many terraces in the Catalan capital already reject the possibility of simply ordering a drink if you don’t ask for a tapa to accompany it. In many cases, the outside tables are only set for lunch or dinner (which pays the most).

Also time is controlled at the table. According to the Xataka store, there have been several cases of establishments with terraces in Barcelona that have even started to time customers: from 40 minutes at a local tapas restaurant 60 minutes at a pizzeria . On other occasions, the locals warn with posters fixed to the windows that the rooms cannot exceed 40 minutes.

In July, a famous sausage shop even announced that it would charge 5 euros to tourists who enter the store just to take pictures notes the Rio de Janeiro newspaper.

Also in Spain, in Santiago de Compostela, the creation of a “tourist tax” which would be levied on accommodation is under debate and the “Code of good practices” has been approved, with 12 recommendations for visitors. In Madrid, meanwhile, restaurants in the Spanish capital have informally embraced something that goes against the city’s culture: require reservations and limit the hours of use of tables, that is to say the end of the endless lunches and dinners of the people of Madrid. Similarly, the port of Palma, the largest and most important of the Balearic Islands, has started limiting the number of cruise ships that dock there to just three per day between 2023 and 2024, in order to control the number of tourists disembarking. .

In the same spirit, in July, the town hall of Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, voted to restrict the docking of large ships in the city thus closing its main cruise terminal. The city, which has one of the largest cruise ports in Europe, wants to put an end to mass tourism in search of sex and drugs.

In addition, a campaign was launched in March aimed at a specific target audience: young people (mainly English) who choose Amsterdam forspend a weekend full of alcohol and drugs , in the famous bachelor parties. The warning is clear: “stay away”. ‘A long weekend in Amsterdam can produce bad memories’, ‘the desired escape to the famous party capital could lead to inescapable convictions’, are some of the threats hanging over offenders . The authorities also limited bar opening hours and they banned the use of marijuana on certain downtown streets. Amsterdam attracts an average of over a million tourists each month, surpassing its population by just over 800,000.

The City Council of Venice, Italy, is studying a entrance fees to the old town and the small islands , said O Globo. The “contribution di accesso” would be applied in 2023, but it has been postponed. The city has banned cruises in 2021, but the measure has not yet been implemented for logistical reasons.

In the Kingdom, for its part, the government has approved a law which determines the registration of short-term residences, which allows the impact on the communities to be analysed. In London, the rule limits the number of nights a residence can operate as Airbnb or similar per year to 90.

A similar phenomenon occurs in Germany, points out O Globo. Thus, in Berlin, one tries to avoid the increase in rents creating rules and accommodation limits per season while in Munich the withdrawal of buses from historic centers and the creation of incentives for the stay in less popular neighborhoods and promotion of city attractions outside of high season.

In 2021, Paris won a major legal battle against Airbnb after a court ordered the company to pay a fine of eight million euros for publishing more than 1,000 short-term rental ads without the proper files. The French capital’s city council has vetoed the opening of new rental apartments in areas with high tourist concentrations to protect original residents.

Tours of the Acropolis of Athens, the most popular archaeological site in Greece, will have a limit of a maximum of 20,000 daily from September and will be subject to varying hourly entry limits, the Greek government announced in early August.

Different numbers of visitors will be allowed each hour during the site’s opening hours, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Half of the Acropolis’ pedestrian traffic currently arrives between 8 a.m. and noon, Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said. Under the new system, 3,000 people will have access from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., 2,000 in the next hour, and the numbers will vary for the rest of the day. The new entry limits will be implemented on a trial basis from September 4 and will come into force definitively from April 1, 2024.

Popularized after being the setting for the HBO series Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, the city of Dubrovnik, Croatia, is today prohibits the transit of luggage in some tourist places in its historic center and to study more measures of this type.

At the same time, in Indonesia, the Governor of Bali, Wayan Koster, has proposed establishing a quota system, which would mean that foreign tourists register their trip a year in advance . “We will no longer accept mass tourism. We will limit the number of tourists by implementing a quota system. If there is a quota, people will have to line up. Those wishing to come next year can register now. This is the system we want to apply,” Koster explained.

On the other hand, it also analyzes possibility of introducing a new tax for foreign visitors, with which he would help “to finance a series of measures and to prevent Bali from being known only as a cheap destination. Cheap destinations attract cheap tourists who tend to cause a lot of trouble,” said Ida Bagus Agung Partha Adnyana, chairwoman of the Bali Tourism Board.