Too many people, not enough management: A look at the chaos of 'overtourism' in the summer of 2024

SINTRA, Portugal (AP) — The doorbell to Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope that, when pulled, rings a literal bell on the roof that lets him know someone is outside the mountainside mansion that his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.

There's precious little of that for Pimentel during this summer of “overtourism."

Travelers idling in standstill traffic outside the sunwashed walls of Casa do Cipreste sometimes spot the bell and pull the string “because it's funny," he says. With the windows open, he can smell the car exhaust and hear the “tuk-tuk” of outsized scooters named for the sound they make. And he can sense the frustration of 5,000 visitors a day who are forced to queue around the house on the crawl up single-lane switchbacks to Pena Palace, the onetime retreat of King Ferdinand II.

“Now I'm more isolated than during COVID,” the soft-spoken Pimentel, who lives alone, said during an interview this month on the veranda. “Now I try to (not) go out. What I feel is: angry.”

This is a story of what it means to be visited in 2024, the first year in which global tourism is expected to set records since the coronavirus pandemic brought much of life on Earth to a halt. Wandering is surging, rather than leveling off, driven by lingering revenge travel, digital nomad campaigns and so-called golden visasblamed in part for skyrocketing housing prices.

Anyone paying attention during this summer of “overtourism” is familiar with the escalating consequences around the world: traffic jams in paradise. Reports of hospitality workers living in tents. And “anti-tourism” protests intended to shame visitors as they dine — or, as in Barcelona in July, douse them with water pistols.

The demonstrations are an example of locals using the power of their numbers and social media to issue destination leaders an ultimatum: Manage this issue better or we'll scare away the tourists — who could spend their $11.1 trillion a year elsewhere. Housing prices, traffic and water management are on all of the checklists.

Cue the violins, you might grouse, for people like Pimentel who are well-off enough to live in places worth visiting. But it's more than a problem for rich people.

“Not to be able to get an ambulance or to not be able to get my groceries is a rich people problem?” said Matthew Bedell, another resident of Sintra, which has no pharmacy or grocery store in the center of the UNESCO-designated district. “Those don’t feel like rich people problems to me.”

What is ‘overtourism,’ anyway?

The phrase itself generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefitting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overwhelming infrastructure and making life markedly more difficult for those who live there.

It's a hashtag that gives a name to the protests and hostility that you've seen all summer. But look a little deeper and you'll find knottier issues for locals and their leaders, none more universal than housing prices driven up by short-term rentals like Airbnb, from Spain to South Africa. Some locales are encouraging “quality tourism,” generally defined as more consideration by visitors toward residents and less drunken behavior, disruptive selfie-taking and other questionable choices.

“Overtourism is arguably a social phenomenon, too,” according to an analysis for the World Trade Organization written by Joseph Martin Cheer of Western Sydney University and Marina Novelli of the University of Nottingham. In China and India, for example, they wrote, crowded places are more socially accepted. “This suggests that cultural expectations of personal space and expectations of exclusivity differ.”

The summer of 2023 was defined by the chaos of the journey itself — airports and airlines overwhelmed, passports a nightmare for travelers from the US. Yet by the end of the year, signs abounded that the COVID-19 rush of revenge travel was accelerating.

In January, the United Nations' tourism agency predicted that worldwide tourism would exceed the records set in 2019 by 2%. By the end of March, the agency reported, more than 285 million tourists had travelled internationally, about 20% more than the first quarter of 2023. Europe remained the most-visited destination. The World Travel & Tourism Council projected in April that 142 of 185 countries it analyzed would set records for tourism, set to generate $11.1 trillion globally and account for 330 million jobs.

Aside from the money, there's been trouble in paradise this year, with Spain playing a starring role in everything from water management problems to skyrocketing housing prices and drunken tourist drama.

Protests erupted across the country as early as March, when graffiti in Malaga reportedly urged tourists to “go f——— home.” Thousands of protesters demonstrated in Spain's Canary Islands against visitors and construction that was overwhelming water services and jacking up housing prices. In Barcelona, protesters shamed and squirted water at people presumed to be visitors as they dined al fresco in touristy Las Ramblas.

In Japan, where tourist arrivals fueled by the weak yen were expected to set a new record in 2024, Kyoto banned tourists from certain alleys. The government set limits on people climbing Mount Fuji. And in Fujikawaguchiko, a town that offers some of the best views of the mountain's perfect cone, leaders erected a large black screen in a parking lot to deter tourists from overcrowding the site. The tourists apparently struck back by cutting holes in the screen at eye level.

Air travel, meanwhile, only got more miserable, the U.S. government reported in July. UNESCO has warned of potential damage to protected areas. And Fodor’s “ No List 2024 ” urged people to reconsider visiting suffering hotspots, including sites in Greece and Vietnam, as well as areas with water management problems in California, India and Thailand.

Not-yet-hot spots looked to capitalize on “de-touristing” drives such as Amsterdam's “Stay Away” campaign aimed at partying young men. The “Welcome to MonGOlia” camapaign, for example, beckoned from the land of Genghis Khan. Visits to that country by foreign tourists jumped 25% the first seven months of 2024 over last year.

Tourism is surging and shifting so quickly, in fact, that some experts say the very term “overtourism” is outdated.

Michael O'Regan, a lecturer on tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that “overtourism” has become a buzzword that doesn't reflect the fact that the experience depends largely on the success or failure of crowd management. It's true that many of the demonstrations aren't aimed at the tourists themselves, but at the leaders who allow the locals who should benefit to become the ones who pay.

“There’s been backlash against the business models on which modern tourism has been built and the lack of response by politicians," he said in an interview. Tourism “came back quicker than we expected,” he allows, but tourists aren't the problem. “There's a global fight for tourists. We can't ignore that. ... So what happens when we get too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research."

Of visitors vs being visited

Virpi Makela can describe exactly what happens in her corner of Sintra.

Incoming guests at Casa do Valle, her hillside bed-and-breakfast near the village center, call Makela in anguish because they cannot figure out how to find her property amid Sintra's “disorganized" traffic rules that seem to change without notice.

“There's a pillar in the middle of the road that goes up and down and you can’t go forward because you ruin your car. So you have to somehow come down but you can’t turn around, so you have to back down the road,” says Makela, a resident of Portugal for 36 years. “And then people get so frustrated they come to our road, which also has a sign that says `authorized vehicles only.' And they block everything.”

Nobody disputes the idea that the tourism boom in Portugal needs better management. The WTTC predicted in April that the country's tourism sector will grow this year by 24% over 2019 levels, create 126,000 more jobs since then and account for about 20% of the national economy. Housing prices already were pushing an increasing number of people out of the property market, driven upward in part by a growing influx of foreign investors and tourists seeking short-term rentals.

To respond, Lisbon announced plans to halve the number of tuk-tuks allowed to ferry tourists though the city and built more parking spaces for them after residents complained that they are blocking traffic.

A 40-minute train ride to the west, Sintra's municipality has invested in more parking lots outside town and youth housing at lower prices near the center, the mayor's office said.

More than 3 million people every year visit the mountains and castles of Sintra, long one of Portugal's wealthiest regions for its cool microclimate and scenery. Sintra City Hall also said via email that fewer tickets are now sold to the nearby historic sites. Pena Palace, for example, began this year to permit less than half the 12,000 tickets per day sold there in the past.

It's not enough, say residents, who have organized into QSintra, an association that's challenging City Hall to “put residents first” with better communication, to start. They also want to know the government's plan for managing guests at a new hotel being constructed to increase the number of overnight stays, and more limits on the number of cars and visitors allowed.

“We're not against tourists,” reads the group's manifesto. “We're against the pandemonium that (local leaders) cannot resolve."

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Associated Press reporters Helena Alves in Lisbon and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report. Laurie Kellman writes about global affairs for AP's Trends + Culture team. Follow her at http://x.com/APLaurieKellman