The doorbell at Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house in Sintra, Portugal, is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope that, when pulled, rings a bell on the roof that lets him know someone is outside the mountainside mansion his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.
Pimentel has little to offer in this summer of “overtourism.” More than 3 million people visit the mountains and castles of Sintra each year, one of Portugal's richest regions for its cool microclimate and landscapes.
Travelers lingering in traffic outside the sun-drenched walls of Casa do Cipreste sometimes spot the doorbell and pull the string “because it’s funny,” he says. With his windows open, he can smell exhaust fumes and hear the sound of oversized tuk-tuk scooters. And he can sense the frustration of the 5,000 visitors a day who are forced to queue around the house to climb the single-lane curves to Pena Palace, the former residence of King Ferdinand II.
“I’m more isolated now than I was during the pandemic,” Pimentel, who lives alone and speaks softly, said in an interview this month on the porch. “Now I try not to go out. What I feel is anger.”
This is the story of what it means to be visited in 2024, the first year in which global tourism is expected to break records since the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of life on Earth. Wandering is booming, rather than flattening, fueled by the persistence of revenge travel, digital nomad campaigns and so-called golden visas, blamed in part for skyrocketing real estate prices.
Anyone who has been paying attention to this summer of “overtourism” knows the consequences that are worsening around the world: traffic jams in paradise. Testimonies from hotel workers living in tents.
Venice, Italy, in April became the first city in the world to charge a tax to day tourists Tourists can visit historic canals and other attractions on peak days. The measure is aimed at combating overtourism and mitigating the damaging impact that large crowds can have on some of the city's fragile sites, while also persuading some tourists to visit during less busy times of the year.
Elsewhere, “anti-tourism” protests have aimed to humiliate visitors while they dine or, as in Barcelona in July, spray them with water pistols.
The protests are an example of how locals are using the power of their numbers and social media to issue an ultimatum to destination leaders: Get this problem under control or we’ll scare away tourists who could spend their $11.1 trillion a year elsewhere. Real estate prices, traffic and water management are on every checklist.
“Play the violins,” you will complain, for people like Pimentel who are wealthy enough to live in places worth visiting. But this is a problem that does not only affect the rich.
“Not being able to get an ambulance or not being able to do my shopping is a rich person's problem?” said Matthew Bedell, another resident of Sintra, which has no pharmacy or grocery store in the town centre. Designated by UNESCO “These are not rich people's problems, in my opinion.”
The phrase itself generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their money stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overburdening infrastructure and making life significantly more difficult for those who live there.
It’s a hashtag that gives a name to the protests and hostility you’ve seen all summer. But look closer and you’ll find thornier issues for locals and their leaders, none more universal than the rising real estate prices driven by short-term rentals like Airbnb, from Spain to South Africa. Some places are encouraging “quality tourism,” broadly defined as greater consideration from visitors for locals and less drunken behavior, disruptive selfies, and other questionable choices.
“Overtourism is probably also a social phenomenon,” according to an analysis conducted for the World Trade Organization by Joseph Martin Cheer of the University of Western Sydney and Marina Novelli of the University of Nottingham. In China and India, for example, they write, crowded places are more socially accepted. “This suggests that cultural expectations about personal space and exclusivity differ.”
The summer of 2023 was defined by the chaos of travel itself: airports and airlines overwhelmed, passports a nightmare for travelers arriving from the United States. Yet by year’s end, signs abounded that the rush to COVID-19 revenge travel was accelerating.
In January, the United Nations tourism agency predicted that global tourism would surpass the records set in 2019 by 2%. By the end of March, the agency said, more than 285 million tourists had traveled abroad, about 20% more than in the first quarter of 2023. Europe remains the most visited destination. The World Travel & Tourism Council screened in April that 142 of the 185 countries analyzed would set tourism records, generate $11.1 trillion globally and account for 330 million jobs.
Money aside, there has been trouble in paradise this year, with Spain playing a leading role in everything from water management problems to soaring property prices and drunken tourist dramas.
Protests broke out across the country as early as March, when graffiti in Malaga reportedly urged tourists to “go home.” Thousands of protesters demonstrated in the Spanish capital Canary Islands Protesters humiliated and sprayed people presumed to be visitors as they dined outdoors on Las Ramblas, a tourist avenue.
In Japan, where tourist arrivals fueled by the weak yen are expected to hit a new record in 2024, Kyoto has banned tourists from some walkways. The government has imposed limits on climbing Mount Fuji. And in Fujikawaguchiko, a town that offers some of the best views of the mountain’s perfect cone, officials erected a large black screen over a parking lot to deter tourists from crowding the site. Tourists reportedly retaliated by cutting holes in the screen at eye level.
Air travel, meanwhile, has only gotten worse, 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 visits to crisis-hit areas including Greece and Vietnam, as well as areas facing water management problems in California, India and Thailand.
Destinations that are not yet in the ascendant have sought to capitalize on “de-tourism” campaigns such as Amsterdam’s “Stay Away” campaign aimed at young party-goers. The “Welcome to MonGOlia” campaign, for example, came from the land of Genghis Khan. Foreign tourist visits to the country jumped 25% in the first seven months of 2024 compared to last year.
Tourism is growing and changing so rapidly that some experts believe the very term “overtourism” is outdated.
Michael O'Regan, professor of tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, says “overtourism” has become a buzzword that fails to reflect the fact that the experience depends largely on the success or failure of crowd management. It is true that many events are not aimed at the tourists themselves, but at the leaders who allow the locals who should benefit to become the ones paying.
“There has been a backlash against the economic models on which modern tourism was built and the lack of policy response,” he said in an interview. Tourism “has come back faster than expected,” he admitted, but tourists are not the problem. “There is a global struggle to attract tourists. We can’t ignore it. (…) So what happens when we have too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research.”
Virpi Makela can describe exactly what is happening in her corner of Sintra.
New guests at Casa do Valle, her hillside bed and breakfast near the village center, call Makela anxiously because they don't know how to find her property amid Sintra's “disorganized” traffic rules that seem to change without notice.
“There is a pillar in the middle of the road that goes up and down and you can’t go forward because you damage your car. So you have to go down but you can’t turn around, so you have to go back on the road,” says Makela, who has lived in Portugal for 36 years. “People get so frustrated that they come to our road, where there is also a sign that says ‘authorized vehicles only’. And they block everything.”
No one disputes that Portugal's tourism boom needs better management. WTTC In April, the government predicted that the country’s tourism sector would grow 24% from 2019, create 126,000 additional jobs since then and account for about 20% of the national economy. Real estate prices are already forcing a growing number of people out of the housing market, driven up in part by a growing influx of foreign investors and tourists looking for short-term rentals.
In response, Lisbon announced plans to halve the number of tuk-tuks allowed to ferry tourists around the city and built more parking spaces for them after residents complained they were blocking traffic.
A 40-minute train ride west of the city, Sintra City Hall has invested in more parking outside the city and low-cost youth housing near the center, the city hall said. Sintra City Hall also said in an email that fewer tickets are now being sold for nearby historic sites. Pena Palace, for example, this year began allowing fewer than half of the 12,000 tickets a day it once sold.
It is not enough, say the residents, who have grouped together in the Sintra Association, which is asking the city hall to “give priority to the residents” through better communication. They also want to know the government's plan to manage the customers of a new hotel under construction, in order to increase the number of overnight stays and further limit the number of cars and visitors allowed.
“We are not against tourists,” the group's manifesto reads. “We are against the chaos that (local leaders) are failing to resolve.”
