A Thought on Overtourism In Europe

Recently, I read an article posted on Bloomberg: Opinion about the constant wave of tourists that keep visiting Europe. The locals and old establishments cannot handle millions of people in the summertime, with 1.4 billion visiting Europe last year, it's absolutely insane. I wanted to share my thoughts and opinion on this "epidemic" and I want to hear your thoughts as well.

Europe is fairly small, there is no denying that. There are 44 countries, but you normally find tourists in about 5 countries: England, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany. These countries have dealt with tourists for decades and they have now mastered surfing the wave of tourists from all over the world. But here is the issue, smaller countries, and cities, like Croatia, Iceland, and Ireland are seeing tourism rise due to Game of Thrones, social media, and just cheaper travel accommodations in general (cheaper airfare, hotels/hostiles, airbnbs, etc;), they cannot support these HUGE amounts of people coming to visit and overcrowd their iconic sceneries.

Banksy's piece in Venice. He has a video about it
on his Instagram too, check it out. 

But how do you deal with over tourism? Tourism is a huge economic benefit for a ton of these European countries, and the EU makes hundreds of millions of pounds each year. But as it is raking in money, it is also damaging old, unique landscapes and buildings. Take Venice, Italy for example, with small, tight canals, little boats are the only ones that can maneuver around easily without damaging the ancient infrastructure. Cruise ships have been popping up every week in Venice and the locals are pissed. Bansky (the famous, mysterious, and

anonymous street artist) even did a piece on Venice with a huge cruise ship ruining the look of the city. Remember that huge cruise ship smashing into a Venetian dock and smashing into a tourist boat, injuring several people? It went viral on Twitter and brought up the conversation on WHY cruise ships are in the small city of Venice.  Good, have these conversations. Conversations spark movements.

In my personal opinion, I believe that these older cities, like Venice, and Dubrovnik (Croatia for GOT), need to figure out a way to have tourism still accessible but to have LIMITS. Look at Santorini, Greece (Instagram Model Heaven), they have placed restrictions on how many people can get on the boats to the island each day, helping a little bit with the flow of Instabaddies going to take bikini pics.

The Blue Lagoon, Iceland

But this topic also brings up an environmental conversation too. In Iceland, there is huge traffic to waterfalls, and national parks, all to see iconic landscapes from TV shows and Instagram. I gotta admit, I have seen the Blue Lagoon (hot spring) all over Instagram and I have wanted to go myself. But when you hear about how tourists are swarming nature scenes, leaving trash behind and "accidentally" damaging the landscape, it's sad. This issue is happening in the US, too.

Horseshoe Bend, AZ

Horseshoe Bend is a beautiful bend in a canon on the Utah-Arizona border that became popular through Instagram. With Millions visiting every year, National Park Rangers
don't know how to handle it.

So we have damaging of old, unique structures, and damaging the environment, anything else? Oh yeah, hurting the culture in a city.

When I went to Poland last summer to visit family, I went to Old Town Krakow to see the sights and have some good food. I was shocked to hear that there are literally THOUSANDS of restaurants in Old Town. Just for the heck of it, my family and I went to a Mexican Restaurant. Why does there have to be a Mexican Restaurant over 6,000 miles away from Mexico? Tourism. The city of Copenhagen, Denmark has even banned the opening of new restaurants and bars and has attempted on spreading out its tourist to not making it so concentrated.

I believe that cities need to hold on to their original, and traditional cuisine. I shouldn't walk around Krakow and see a bunch of French cafes. If I wanted some French food, I would've gone to Paris or Nice. I want some pierogis gosh dangit. I completely understand that cities around Europe are diverse and have cultural groups appropriate to the area of shops and restaurants, but a lot of cities don't NEED these restaurants where locals won't even show their faces. In Berlin and Budapest, it's known as a local that you DON'T go into the main heart, it's filled with tourists in the restaurants and bars.

My concluding thoughts? Well, air travel is a lot cheaper now, which means that more and more people have the opportunity to see and experience new cultures. That is the positive I see. But the effects I listed above are sometimes not the greatest outcome, especially when you have millions of people showing up in the summer. How do you fix it? I don't think you can. The governments would have to place restrictions and regulations to help reduce the crowds, but as more Instagram models post more and more from ~new~ and ~aesthetic~ cities that cannot support huge crowds, it will create issues. Just like the cruise ships in Venice, we have to respect the antiquity of these European cities. The Main Center of Warsaw, Poland saw larger amounts of tourists last year and it had a hard time managing the amounts of people. Of course, it is not the same as Prague, but smaller cities have a hard time catching up.

I just think that we should all just chill out a bit. *gasp* Emilia, are you saying this as a sorta travel blogger yourself? Yes, that's because I would like these destinations like The Lourve (Paris. It had worker strikes because of how big the crowds were), The Anne Frank Museum (Amsterdam, rising populations each year visiting the SMALL building), and the local Venetians leaving Venice, to be preserved and for people to CHILL OUT on overwhelming and swarming these historical
places. Maybe not travel to Europe in the summer, save it for Christmas, stay and discover jewels in your hometown or travel to other parts of the country. I am sick and tired of hearing different cities around Europe being damaged by tourists. Did you know that there was an Ecuadorian man who carved his name into the Colleseum? Not cool man, not cool. (Also I'm not bashing on Ecuadorians, just this one dude. He actually ended up getting a fined over $20,000!) I also think Airbnb has a part to play because cheap AirBnB's allow more and more congestion into smaller cities. Several cities, like Amsterdam, have placed restrictions on how many Airbnb's there can be in a certain vicinity.

Thank you for reading this post. I want to keep the historical and ancient beauty of Europe to remain in shape with these overwhelming amounts of tourists, but there have to be some restrictions in place. Over a BILLION people visited Europe last year, that's absolutely bonkers!  Here is the article so you can read it for yourself:

Overtourism in Europe

Let me know your thoughts and opinions on this topic, I would love to hear them. If you are traveling to Europe later this year, please be smart and respectful when visiting. 

love,
yo girl emilia

P.S. If you are pretty interested in this topic, here are some other articles I read about this:
16 cities being hurt by tourism
15 places struggling with tourism