The doorbell at Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he loves it. It’s a long rope that, when pulled, rings a bell on the roof, letting him know when someone is outside the mountainside mansion his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.
There’s little in it for Pimentel during this “overtourism” summer.
Passers-by, idling in the stopped traffic outside the sun-washed walls of Casa do Ciprist, sometimes spot the bell and pull the cord “because it’s fun,” they say. With the windows open, they can smell car exhaust and hear the “tuk-tuk” sound of the oversized scooters, named for the sound they make. And they can sense the frustration of the 5,000 visitors a day who are forced to queue around the house on a crawl-up single-lane switchback to get to the Pena Palace, once a retreat of King Ferdinand II.
“I’m more isolated now than I was during COVID,” the soft-spoken Pimentel, who lives alone, said during an interview on his porch this month. “I try not to go out anymore. What I feel is this: anger.”
This story explores what travel holds in 2024, the first year that global tourism is expected to set records since the coronavirus pandemic halted much of life on Earth. Wanderlust is on the rise rather than stabilising, thanks to revenge travel, digital nomad movements and so-called golden visas, which are partly blamed for a surge in housing prices.
Anyone paying attention to “overtourism” this summer season is familiar with its growing consequences around the world: traffic jams in paradise. Reports of hospitality workers living in tents. And “anti-tourism” protests aimed at shaming visitors while they dine – or, as in Barcelona in July, pelting them with water pistols.
The demonstrations are just one example of locals using their numbers and the power of social media to give destination leaders an ultimatum: Manage this issue better, or we’ll scare away tourists — who could spend their $11.1 trillion a year elsewhere. Accommodation prices, traffic and water management are all on the checklist.
You might like to play the violin for people like Pimentel, who are wealthy enough to live in places worth visiting. But this is more than just a problem for rich people.
“Is it a rich people’s problem to not be able to find an ambulance or get your groceries?” said Matthew Bedell, another Sintra resident. There is no pharmacy or grocery store in the center of the UNESCO-designated district. “I don’t think it’s a rich people’s problem.”
What exactly is ‘overtourism’?
The phrase commonly describes the point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents, and instead damage historic sites, destroy infrastructure and make life 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 a little deeper, and you’ll find even more vexing issues for locals and their leaders, ones that are far more universal from Spain to South Africa than inflated housing prices fueled by short-term rentals like Airbnb. Some locals are encouraging “quality tourism,” generally defined as more considerateness toward residents by visitors and less drunken behavior, disruptive selfie-taking and other questionable choices.
“Overtourism is arguably also a social phenomenon,” according to an analysis written for the World Trade Organization 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 spaces are more socially acceptable. “This suggests that cultural expectations of personal space and expectations of exclusivity differ.”
The summer of 2023 saw travel chaos — airports and airlines were crowded, passports were a nightmare for travelers arriving from the U.S. Yet by year’s end, there were signs that Covid-19 was fueling a revenge travel spree.
In January, the United Nations tourism agency estimated that worldwide tourism would be 2% higher than the record set in 2019. The agency reported that by the end of March, more than 285 million tourists had traveled internationally, up nearly 20% compared to the first quarter of 2023. Europe remained the most visited destination. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimated in April that 142 of the 185 countries it analyzed would set records for tourism, generating $11.1 trillion globally and creating 330 million jobs.
Money aside, there have also been troubles in paradise this year, with Spain playing a leading role in everything from water management problems to skyrocketing accommodation prices and incidents involving drunken tourists.
Protests broke out across the country in early March, when graffiti in Malaga reportedly urged tourists to “go home.” Thousands of demonstrators in Spain’s Canary Islands demonstrated against visitors and construction that was disrupting water services and driving up housing prices. In Barcelona, protesters shamed and sprayed water on people perceived to be visitors dining outdoors on the tourist Las Ramblas.
In Japan, where tourist arrivals were expected to hit a new record in 2024 because of the weak yen, Kyoto banned tourists from entering certain streets. The government placed 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 installed a huge black screen in a parking lot to prevent tourists from crowding the site. Tourists apparently retaliated by punching holes in the screen at eye level.
Meanwhile, air travel has gotten even more miserable, as the US government reported in July. UNESCO has warned of potential damage to protected areas. And Fodor’s “No List 2024” urged people to reconsider visiting afflicted hotspots, including destinations in Greece and Vietnam, as well as areas with water management problems in California, India and Thailand.
Not yet popular places tried to take advantage of campaigns to “attract tourists” such as Amsterdam’s “Stay Away” campaign, aimed at getting young men to party. For example, the “Welcome to Mongolia” campaign started in the land of Genghis Khan. In the first seven months of 2024, visits to that country by foreign tourists increased by 25% compared to last year.
In fact, tourism is growing so fast and changing so drastically that some experts say the term “overtourism” itself is outdated.
Michael O’Regan, a lecturer in tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that “overtourism” has become a buzzword that does not reflect the fact that the experience largely depends on the success or failure of crowd management. It is true that many protests are not against tourists themselves, but against leaders who allow locals to benefit, but become paymasters.
“There’s been a backlash against the business model that modern tourism is based on, and there’s been no response from politicians,” he said in an interview. He said tourism “came back faster than we expected,” but the problem isn’t tourists. “There’s a global fight for tourists. We can’t ignore that. … So what happens when we have too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research.”
Visitors vs. Being Visited
Virpi Makela can tell you exactly what happens in her corner of Sintra.
Guests visiting Casa do Vale, his bed-and-breakfast place perched on a hill near the village center, call Makaela in anguish because they can’t figure out how to find his property amid Sintra’s “chaotic” traffic rules, which change without notice.
“There’s a pole in the middle of the road that goes up and down and you can’t go forward because it ruins your car. So you have to get down somehow but you can’t turn back, so you have to go off the road,” says Makela, who has lived in Portugal for 36 years. “And then people get so frustrated that they come onto our road, which also has a sign that says ‘Only authorized vehicles can go.’ And they block everything.”
There is no denying the idea that Portugal’s tourism boom needs better management. The WTTC predicted in April that the country’s tourism sector would grow 24% this year from 2019 levels, create 126,000 more jobs since then and contribute almost 20% to the national economy. Rising housing prices were already pushing people out of the property market in droves, driven by an 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 transport tourists in the city and create more parking spaces for them, after residents complained that the tuk-tuks were obstructing traffic.
The municipality of Sintra, a 40-minute train ride to the west, has invested in more parking spaces outside the city and in affordable youth housing closer to the center, the mayor’s office said.
More than 3 million people each year visit the hills and castles of Sintra, long one of Portugal’s most affluent regions, for its cool climate and views. Sintra City Hall also said in an email that fewer tickets are now being sold to nearby historic sites. The Pena Palace, for example, is allowing less than half the 12,000 tickets sold per day this year.
That’s not enough, say residents, who have formed an organization called Cusintra, which is challenging City Hall to “put residents first” with better communication. They also want to know what the government plans to do to manage guests at the new hotel being built to increase the number of overnight stays, and put more limits on the number of cars and visitors.
“We are not against tourists. We are against the chaos that (local leaders) cannot resolve,” the group’s manifesto says.
