op/ed
Mary Donné
The Impacts of Increasing Tourism
W
ith its medieval walls, 13th-century cathedral, and cobbled streets, my hometown of York, England attracts a lot of tourists, estimated at around seven million each year. Traditionally, tourists have been very welcome, not least of all because they spend approximately £600m ($754m USD) annually in York alone. Presumably, this is a good thing because this money is put back into the local economy. But it doesn’t always work that way, which (among other issues) has led to a backlash directed towards tourists evident in both local and national media over the last few years. Regarding tourism in England and other developed western countries, the arguments against mass tourism are generally twofold. First, certain visitors arriving in historic cities for weekend breaks are stereotypically loud and badly behaved. They stay in cheaper hotels and spend their money in chain bars and clubs, many of which are not locally owned. In fact, this issue became so significant that a few years ago, the Irish police took matters into their own hands and began implementing a zero-tolerance attitude towards criminal or disruptive behavior of drunken groups of stag and hen (bachelor and bachelorette) parties that
16 | Everywhere Magazine October/November 2019
arrived in Dublin each weekend, courtesy of budget airline flights. The authorities in Amsterdam have taken a similar approach, and York is seeing the start of the same. Of course, implementing this sort of policing costs public money, and there is an argument that the main beneficiaries of this sort of tourism — the big hotel and hospitality chains — should be the ones financing the “clean up” operation required. Second, older and wealthier groups who travel en masse clog up large swathes of tourist attractions. Anyone who has recently tried to get anywhere near the Mona Lisa or the Trevi Fountain will know firsthand how this can detract from the experience of locals and other visitors. In fairness, this group does usually spend their money locally, preferring independent guest houses and food establishments. But the sheer volume of these tourists brings disadvantages too; in a small medieval city like York (or just about any other old city in Europe), they take up a lot of room, particularly on public transport and in shops and cafes. This increase in tourism has very real environmental impacts: in the past two years, flights between UK airports and China alone have increased threefold. Just think of all that air pollution!
