Here are five of Europe’s most overcrowded cities, resulting from overtourism, and what they’re doing to alleviate the problem:
1. Venice, Italy Home to about fifty thousand residents, Venice is one of the most-visited cities in the world, with about thirty million visitors per year. Overtourism, as well as climate change, is having such a negative impact on its environment that the United Nations has considered including it on the World Heritage in Danger list. Venice already has an overnight tax
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overnight tax:
tasa de pernoctación
for visitors based on the number of nights they stay and the number of stars their accommodation has. This year, it introduced a tax of €5 for daytime visitors, to be imposed on its busiest
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busiest:
más concurridos
days.
2. Barcelona, Spain In 2019, Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million residents, had over twenty million visitors, and now tourists are returning there en masse. The city already has an overnight tax for visitors, a limit on its number of hotel beds, and a moratorium on the construction of new hotels. Last October, it introduced a ban
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ban:
prohibición
on cruise ships docking
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to dock:
atracar
near its city centre and a reduction in the number of cruise ships at its other ports. This is in part because of pollution: one study found that one cruise ship can produce the same levels of nitrogen oxide a day as thirty thousand trucks
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trucks:
camiones
or 370,000 cars.
3. Amsterdam, Netherlands Amsterdam has about a million residents — and about a million tourists visit every month. The city has a liberal reputation, but its mayor, Femke Halsema, now wants to control tourist numbers and discourage
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to discourage:
disuadir
bad behaviour by banning sex work and marijuana from the city centre and relocating its red-light district elsewhere. The city has also decided to ban cruise ships from its main port, limiting the number of cruise passengers flooding
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to flood:
inundar
the city. They came in such numbers that local politician Ilana Rooderkerk had compared them to a “plague of locusts
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locusts:
saltamontes
.”
4. Bruges, Belgium As Dirk De fauw, mayor of Bruges, put it “We have to control the influx more if we don’t want it to become a complete Disneyland here.” This beautiful Belgian city has a population of about 120,000, but gets an astonishing
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astonishing:
asombrosos
eight million visitors a year. In response to overtourism, the city has stopped promoting day trips
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day trips:
escapada de un día (sin pernoctar)
, favouring long-term visitors instead, and reduced the number of cruise ships docking at its port from five to two a day.
5. Dubrovnik, Croatia Last year, the vacation rental agency Holidu named Dubrovnik the most overcrowded tourism destination in Europe — mainly thanks to the phenomenal success of the TV series Game of Thrones . The walled city
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walled city:
ciudad amurallada
, which has a population of about forty thousand, has become famous as one of the series’ filming locations and now receives over 1.5 million visitors a year. To alleviate the negative impact of tourism, it has introduced a Respect the City campaign and been pressed to take other measures, including banning climbing
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climbing:
trepar
on monuments or drinking alcohol near protected public spaces.
