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Hello, I'm Lucy Hockings. From the BBC
World Service, this is The Global Story.
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2024 is expected to be a record-breaking year for
tourism, with more travellers going on holiday
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than ever before. Barcelona, Paris, Hawaii,
or Bali, they're all beautiful destinations
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that attract tourists from all over the world,
but they are also struggling with overtourism.
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Too many visitors in one place can have a
negative impact on those who live there, and
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it's also causing lasting environmental damage.
So today we're asking how does this relentless
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rise in global tourism impact the people who
actually live in these sought-after locations?
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And with me today is seasoned BBC TV
travelogue presenter Rajan Datar. You
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have been travelling now, I think Rajan, for 20
years or more, can I call you a lifelong roamer?
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You could try calling me a lifelong roamer, I
think I'd prefer to say, because roamer implies
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that I'm just drifting, whereas I think I'm doing
it for work, well I know I'm doing it for work.
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Hello and welcome to The Travel
Show from Bruges in Belgium.
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This is Uzbekistan.
Look at this, simply stunning.
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So Raj, 2024 is going to be a huge year in
tourism. The numbers are expected to be massive.
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What kind of numbers are we talking about though?
We are talking about $11.1 trillion contributed
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to the global economy by tourism, according to
the Tourism trade body, the World Travel and
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Tourism Council. We're talking about an industry
that is the third largest in the world. In total,
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330 million people are employed in
tourism and ultimately we're talking
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about a billion and a half tourists.
It's maybe markets that people aren't
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expecting as well. I mean, India, China,
they're travelling extensively as well,
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saving up for these holidays of a lifetime.
So the big change was in the early part of
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this century when the Chinese started exploring
the world, that has now been overtaken by the
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Indian outbound market, which is incredible. We're
talking about a population of 1.5 billion people,
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so that if even 0.5 per cent of them
travel or have the money to travel,
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that is still a huge number of people coming
into the market, adding to, by the way, adding
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to what is already a huge market.
Was there a moment on a particular
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trip where you thought I'm becoming
really concerned about overtourism?
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Before the pandemic, tourism was reaching an
all-time high then, and there were murmurings,
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actually, and louder than that from
certain destinations, that 'hang on,
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we're being crushed here, we're being
overwhelmed by the amount of tourists'.
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But I thought the pandemic also meant
that people weren't travelling as much.
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Straight afterwards, they had what
they call 'revenge tourism'. People,
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actually quite a lot of people certainly in the
West had saved up quite a lot of money during
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Covid and they hadn't spent it on travel, they
hadn't spent it on anything and there was this
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real suppressed feeling of 'I need to get out',
because for a lot of people tourism has become,
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travel has become a virtual human right.
What are some of the cities,
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the destinations that you would say are being
a bit crushed at the moment by too many people?
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Barcelona is the one that I really had personal
testimony of being there and seeing it change
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and I went first before the Olympics. Since
then it's been relentless. Local people,
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and we did a story for The
Travel Show that I work on,
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we did a story about locals complaining quite
a time ago, it could 10, 12, 15 years ago,
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we did that story because it was brewing. There
was a huge amount of resentment. The short-term
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rentals were rising. In other words, they were
more and more available for the holiday maker,
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which pushed up prices, which marginalised...
If you're a young local person living in
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Barcelona, you can't find a place to rent?
You can't find a place. And this is the
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common thread, by the way. It's
the edging out of local people.
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Pricing out of locals.
Pricing out precisely.
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I mean there's been these big protests in
the Balearic Islands recently that has sort
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of dominated some of the headlines and
really brought attention to this issue.
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What are some of the challenges they're facing
there? Because that's an industry where they
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also need young people to work, they need waiting
staff, they need bar tending staff. Absolutely.
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People to work in the hotels.
I think there was a story on the BBC
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website not too long ago about for example a chef
who worked in a local hotel or restaurant who was,
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or is forced to sleep in his car. I call
it feeling like extras in your own movie,
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you know it's not, it's suddenly a city
that you love or an area that you love
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is completely taken over and obviously local
customers get squashed because tourists want
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their thing. They want what they're used
to, a nice latte, food wise, probably,
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you know, there's some demanding tastes from
tourists and if they can afford it, guess what,
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there'll be a restaurant for them there.
It's sort of this notion of international
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good taste, isn't it, that exists everywhere now,
that can kind of muscle out things that are local.
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What about Austria? You had, I
know, an amazing trip to Hallstatt.
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It's a little town, 800 residents.
It's called a beautiful lake. I mean
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it's picture postcard perfect. It's
just beautiful. 800 residents and they
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have it during peak season 10,000 guests a day.
Only 20 per cent of people who live there actually
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work in tourism there and so therefore they're not
all directly benefiting. There's one particular
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scenic spot where you can get such a perfect
selfie with the lake in the background that
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the locals or the mayor in fact tried to block
it for a while. That policy, it's catching, that
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policy was taken up on Mount Fuji not so long ago,
where they did the same thing, they stopped people
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from taking pictures of Mount Fuji from just in
front of a convenience store because it was...
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This is Fujikawaguchiko
Very well said, yes.
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Our correspondent Shaimaa
Khalil actually went there.
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You've probably seen this on your Instagram or
TikTok. This is the famous Mount Fuji Lawson,
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the social media money shot for millions of
visitors, but it's not going to be around for
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long. Residents here in Fujikawaguchiko
are fed up with tourists behaving badly,
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all to get the perfect shot of the
convenience store with a snow-capped
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volcano. As a desperate measure, the local
authorities are building a barrier to block
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the view. You can get a picture of Mount Fuji
from many places but social media has become
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a big pull for this particular spot.
Well if I didn't have social media I
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wouldn't come here I wouldn't even
know that it existed this place.
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So that's obviously been a big problem in Japan
as well for people who live near Mount Fuji but
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in Hallstatt, how much of the money made
in Hallstatt goes back into the community?
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Not very much money in some of these places stays
in those places. The local authorities will say,
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'yes, we're reinvesting money that we get from
parking or whatever into local facilities and
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resources', but actually a lot of it isn't.
That's called leakage, by the way, where a
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lot of the money that is made in these tourist
centres actually doesn't stay within the economy.
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Can I ask you about the environmental
damage that is done to some of these places,
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like somewhere like Bali?
Yeah.
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There's really big issues around water scarcity.
In many destinations, water is a big issue. I
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mean, I've talked to somebody who's in Kenya where
quite often you'll get tourists in luxury hotels
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pretty well competing with locals for water
when there is scarcity. Guess who wins, the
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luxury hotels. Local farmers in Kenya and in other
places are very suspicious of tourism because it
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actually can get in the way of them doing their
job. And sometimes, like in Kenya, where you have
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safari tourism, it actually means that some
farmers were evicted from their own farms so
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the land could be used for roaming animals.
It's fair to say that there are some places
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that are doing well. They have come up
with some solutions and they're working.
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There are two sides to this. One is what
the local municipality does. The other
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one is what we can do as individuals. So
let's just start with what places can do.
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So in Venice, for example, they have
introduced this five euro admission fee.
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It's not much five euro.
It's not much five euro. And I
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did talk to the deputy mayor in charge of tourism
and he said 'well the point isn't actually this
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at this stage to charge people and make money out
of it and dissuade them'. It's more for them to
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realise when the peak days are and when to avoid
it. They're collecting data by doing this because
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you have to actually go online and do this.
And Raj, with that data that they're collecting
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in Venice, is the idea they'll then
encourage people to come midweek?
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Exactly that.
And it spreads the burden.
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Not just midweek, but in what
they call the shoulder season.
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Exactly.
So spring and autumn for
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us in the West. And that is another way of trying
to shift the weight of tourism. There is an issue
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with that, which I feel that you're about to come
to, which is school holidays. And that, obviously,
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unless that changes, unless most of the West
certainly stops having school holidays in July
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and August, at about the same time, then we're
always going to get that crush around that time.
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What about the move to encourage people to
go to similar destinations that are nearby?
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We went to Slovenia, and we went to a place called
Bohinj, and there, it's quite near Lake Bled,
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which is near Ljubljana, which is coming
there at the moment It's actually building up.
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I mean we I went in April and there are
quite heavy crowds there. So he's worried
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about even if there's spillover from Lake
Bled or even from places, other places,
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that they're going to get crushed as well.
So yes, you can definitely spread the love,
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you can have dispersal, but it's not necessarily
going to be the answer either if the next place
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along also then suffers in the same way.
And I guess Raj that climate change is
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also having an impact on where people
are choosing to go? Southern Europe at
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the moment in the summer particularly is so hot.
In Greece, in Greek islands as well, in Italy in
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Rome and in other destinations you had people
actually being evicted not evicted but being
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evacuated from the islands that they were staying
in, for example Rhodes, because of wildfires,
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because of actual danger to people. People were,
you know, the heat levels are getting horrendously
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extreme, which means that people are now looking
to do what's called 'cool-cationing', which means
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they're going to more, to cooler northern climes,
Slovenia is one example, northern Europe again.
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And that is becoming more attractive. And this
is not going to go away. This is climate change.
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And so this is going to completely shift the
map of where people will go in the future.
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Raj, what kind of travellers do these cities
want? Is it the sort of luxury traveller, the
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high spending traveller, and they want backpackers
to stay away? How does that kind of formula work?
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Well, the mantra is high value, low volume, that's
the big mantra in the tourism industry right now.
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Now, what does that mean? I think they want it
to mean yes, stays more than two or three nights.
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Yes, maybe takes public transport to come in.
Yes, eats locally. Yes, respects local culture.
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I mean, you're describing
quite a few backpackers here.
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Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Interestingly, I
talked to a professor of tourism quite recently,
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and he said, 'you know what?' He did a whole
survey, and I think it was in Cyprus. 'The
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budget traveller, the backpacker, actually, in so
many ways, make sure that there is less leakage,
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the term I used before, that most of the
money stays within the country and the local
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economy because they will stay in cheaper
places, they will take public transport,
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they will stay longer and they will not
use up the environment in such a way or
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they will not destroy the environment in the
way that sometimes a luxury traveller can do'.
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Did quotas work?
If you've got an attraction as opposed
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to an actual destination then you can impose
quotas much more easily. Yes, quotas can work
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and they will be more and more common I think.
I think going back to your thing about solutions,
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raising prices on things, on attractions can
probably be one technique. I mean there's
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something that that makes me feel a bit bad about
that because it means that people, you know...
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It's not accessible for some people.
Yeah, it's not accessible for people and so
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it's outpriced. They're talking about 5,000
euro private tours of the Acropolis now. Now
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great if you can afford it, but if you've come
all the way from, I don't know, Japan wherever
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and you're not on a huge budget and suddenly you
realise you can't go there because of the crowds
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and you haven't got 5,000 euros.
I'm not sure if that's good.
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Are we reaching peak tourism?
There's no reason why it shouldn't
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go up. The issue is more whether they start taking
measures to limit the number of people travelling,
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certainly to certain destinations. I
think people anyway with selfie culture,
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and we haven't really talked about that, but it's
so important selfie culture that with that people,
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especially young people, are
looking to go to new places.
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I was in Venice recently and the Rialto
Bridge you had to queue for quite some
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time. Do you think that the selfie culture,
there can almost be an adverse reaction to
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it as well? People are like the Rialto
Bridge, 'I've seen that too many times'.
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I think that's definitely the case. I think that's
particularly true of younger travellers. They will
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want something that's different to what their
mates have done, you know you've seen one picture
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of Rialto Bridge and the view and with you on it
and so what, it's like people aren't going to be
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massively impressed. It slightly reminds me of
back in the day when I was a kid and they used
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to have Super 8 movies where they would show
you know 'guess what they went to Austria,
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they went to the Alps and they went to...' and
people have to crowd round and watch it. But then
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travel was much much rarer, today If everyone's
travelling, you've got to get the unique shot.
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It's the bragging rights to something.
It's the bragging rights, absolutely. I mean,
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I went to Uzbekistan recently. I think
that will become a big tourist place
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soon because it's uncharted territory. It's
somewhere where people haven't been before.
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And this idea of dispersal that you've talked
about, we might be looking at dispersal literally
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from Western Europe all the way across to the
Stans or to Central Europe and the Caucasus.
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I can see that happening. Definitely, definitely,
yep, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, yep, the
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Stans, I mean, these places have got magnificent
histories and culture and architecture. Yes,
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go there, and they've got, I think, would love you
to be there. The problem is, here's the problem,
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suppose you've come from a long way away, you've
spent ages saving up this money for this trip of
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a lifetime. You're there for two weeks,
you come to Europe, you've got a Schengen
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visa maybe. Of course you're going to go to
the Eiffel Tower. Of course you want to see
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the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Of course you want
to see Venice. And who are we to stop them?
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And who are we to stop them? That brings me, I
think, to our final thought. You and I have both
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travelled a lot. It would be hypocritical of us
to say, at any point, you know, you can't travel.
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It is the most enriching, wonderful, amazing
experience. It's managing it going forward,
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that seems to be the big challenge.
I'd be a hypocrite if I said to younger
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people who haven't travelled much anywhere in
the world or to people in emerging economies
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who only now can afford to travel, 'look,
don't travel because you're killing the world,
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you're ruining the earth', how can I say that?
I mean, even for me, Raj, I'm from the bottom
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of the world, from New Zealand. We are raised to
believe that you must go out and see the rest of
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the world. It's part of growing up. It's part of
living your life. It's a cultural expectation.
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And I'm not going to deny that. It's absolutely
true. It is fantastic. Travelling the world is
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brilliant for all the obvious reasons. You grow
as a person. It has so many different beneficial
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effects on people, on culture, on relations
between different cultures and, you know,
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I wouldn't knock it. So I suppose what I would
say is please travel, please travel. But just
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watch how you travel, the way you travel. Just
be slightly more conscious of the host community.
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It's to have respect. Much
more respect. You are a guest.
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You're not entitled to this. You're a guest.
But do travel. It is life changing. You just
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don't meet anyone who wouldn't say 'it changed my
life, my perspective, so many things from travel'.
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And we both are some of the
luckiest people on the planet.
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Indeed. Raj, it's been great
to have you. Thank you so much.
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Great to be here with you, Lucy. Thank you very
much for having me and good luck on your next
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journey. And you know what to do now.
I do. I'll have my checklist.
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Thank you for watching. If you want
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00:17:05
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