Southern Europe is sick of tourists

Rome, Barcelona and Athens have had it with holidaymakers.
While the Covid-19 pandemic provided a welcome respite to many locals from the hoards of travelers flying in, troublesome tourists are once again getting on their nerves.
So much so, that locals and activists have been hitting the streets in various cities across Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece, some armed with water guns and stickers telling rowdy visitors to go home.
Protestors say over-tourism drives up housing prices, accelerates gentrification and makes already-stretched water supplies more scarce. In drought-stricken urban centers like Barcelona, tourists consume considerably more water than the average resident. In parched Sicily, a number of cities have started to turn away tourists due to water scarcity.
Governments, for their part, are less inclined to implement durable measures. For many EU countries, especially those in southern Europe, tourism is a key pillar of their economy: 11.3 percent for Croatia, and between 6 and 8 percent for Portugal, Greece, Spain and Italy, according to an analysis by Allianz.
After the pandemic all but halted tourism for two years, people eager to travel embarked on so-called “revenge tourism” — reaping back the trips they had missed out on.
In part due to tourism, Spain, Portugal, and Greece — long the laggards among Europe’s big economies — outperformed the rest of the EU in 2023. While GDP across the bloc rose at 0.5 percent, the economies of Portugal, Greece and Spain all posted rates above 2 percent.
“What we are seeing in the media is what we started to see even before the pandemic,” Sandra Carvão, director of market intelligence, policies and competitiveness at the United Nations’ tourism agency told POLITICO.
“Already then, we saw a movement and protests against tourism in destinations, and we see them returning,” she said.
Toward the end of July, around 20,000 anti-tourism activists gathered in Palma de Mallorca, demanding a change to a tourism model they say is harming Balearic Islands, whose main three isles are Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza.
In 2023, the total number of tourists on the islands rose to 14.4 million — an overwhelming amount for the islands that have a year-round total population of around 1.2 million residents.
In Barcelona, activists sprayed foreign visitors with water pistols at a smaller-scale protest. Spain’s tourism minister condemned the action, saying that they did not represent the country’s culture of hospitality. In streets and public spaces across Spain, stickers and graffiti referencing “guiris,” a mildly derogatory colloquial term for tourists who have trouble respecting local laws and culture.
Similar anti-tourism protests have taken place this summer in cities across Spain, including in Madrid, Malaga, Granada, and Alicante. Outside of Spain, tourist hotspots like Portugal, Italy and Greece have been experiencing protests of various degrees.
Cities have been fighting over-tourism with fines, fees and bans — to varying degrees of success.
Some have implemented smaller rules to deter tourists: no selfies in areas of the Italian city of Portofino, no sitting on the Spanish steps in Rome, no large cruise ships in Croatia’s Dubrovnik or Greece’s Santorini, and no flip-flops in Cinque Terre.
In Venice, authorities introduced a symbolic €5 entry fee to limit the number of tourists. The measure, however, backfired, instead fomenting further protest from locals who claimed the city has been transformed into a theme park.
Some are betting bigger: Barcelona’s mayor announced in June that the city will shut down short-term apartment rentals to tourists by 2028, in a bid to avoid the worst of Europe’s burgeoning housing shortages. In the past decade, the Canary Islands, alongside the cities of Berlin and Lisbon have approved similar measures.
According to Carvão, a successful tourism strategy needs to focus on the balance of economic, social and environmental impact and has to take into account the level of demand as well as the carrying capacity of the destination (in terms of the size of the city, infrastructure, or resources).
Carvão cited Amsterdam as an example of a city on a good path to getting tourism under control.
The city, which has gained a reputation as Europe’s party capital, banned smoking weed in its red light district, and launched a stay-away campaign targeting young, rowdy British men only visiting to party. Most recently, it also announced a ban on the construction of new hotels.
In contrast to other destinations clamping down on travelers, some have chosen a more open approach: Copenhagen is offering rewards to encourage climate-friendly tourist behavior. Those who ride a bike, take public transport, or collect trash in the city might earn anything from a complimentary cup of coffee to a free entrance to a museum.
“The strategy needs to be a compound of three aspects. You need data on movement, the governance of actively listening to the residents, and the third one is a combination of different policies,” Carvão said.