Tourism is one of the world's biggest industries, with a global turnover of some $11 billion. It seems that we all want to get away from home. Millions travel abroad every year, and most of them choose to go to the same few places at the same time. Unless you have lived in a popular tourist destination, it's hard to imagine how traumatic the annual invasion can be. For years I lived in Cambridge, England, which, along with Stratford-upon-Avon, is a compulsory stop on the British tourist trail. For half the year, it was a delightful place to be. During the tourist season it became unbearable.
Local residents in these places are beginning to fight back. Venice, with 265,000 residents, is overwhelmed by 30 million visitors a year. Barcelona is banning new hotels. Vienna, Dubrovnik, Florence, and the Island of Capri are all pushing back, Amsterdam is asphyxiated, and the famous Dutch flower fields are trampled by hordes of people taking selfies among the tulips. The Greek Island of Santorini is sinking under the weight of tourists, and appealing for help. San Francisco is full and Machu Picchu is a mob scene. Even a tiny village called Khuzhir on the northern coast of Siberia has warned that it can no longer cope with the hordes of visitors. On Mount Everest there is a two-hour line to reach the summit in season. Closer to home, the National Park Service claims to be overrun by multitudes of visitors, from Yellowstone to the Statue of Liberty.
It’s a strange kind of crisis – a crisis of affluence and restlessness. Tourism, almost everyone agrees, is a kind of plague – but a plague without an antidote or a cure. There’s nothing wrong with the desire to explore new worlds and new civilizations. It’s just that absolutely everyone wants to do it and does it. I’ve done it myself, I confess. My wife and I have shoved through the crowds at the fabled ruins of Delos and Ephesus, and been almost suffocated by the mobs in Venice and Barcelona where the masses of people were so dense that we could scarcely see the pavement under our feet, let alone inspiring vistas of ancient architecture. Cruises and river cruises add a floating crowd of thousands that can pop up anywhere and swamp a place that was crowded enough already.
The plague of mass tourism may be self-limiting. The airlines and the government between them are engaged on a campaign to make travel so unpleasant that we will eventually choose to give up and stay at home. By that time, perhaps, everybody will have seen everything. Venice will sink into the Adriatic and nobody will notice. But no, here come the next generations, the Millennials and the Centennials, smartphones in hand, to see it all over again, and photograph it all over again. We can’t honestly begrudge them the same experiences that we had, and the same photographs that we took. What we need, what we really need, is a whole new planet.
Copyright: David Bouchier
