SINTRA, Portugal (AP) — Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s doorbell is hard to find, but he likes it that way: a long string that, when pulled, rings a literal bell on the roof, letting people know someone is outside the mountainside mansion his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.
In this summer of “overtourism,” such opportunities are few and far between for Pimentel.
Travelers stuck in traffic outside Casa do Cipreste’s sunlit walls sometimes spot the bell and pull its cord—”for fun,” he says. With the window down, you can smell car exhaust and hear the “tuk-tuk” sound of the oversized scooters for which it’s named—and the frustration of the 5,000 visitors a day who are forced to queue around the house on the tightly curving, single-lane road that leads up to Pena Palace, the former summer home of King Ferdinand II.
“I feel more isolated now than I did during the pandemic,” the quiet Pimentel, who lives alone, said in an interview on her balcony this month. “I try not to go out now. What I feel is anger.”
This is the story of what it means to visit in 2024, the first year in which global tourism is expected to set a new record since the coronavirus pandemic brought much of life on Earth to a halt. Far from leveling off, wandering is soaring, fueled by lingering revenge travel, digital nomad campaigns and so-called golden visas that are blamed for soaring house prices.
Anyone paying attention to “overtourism” this summer is well aware of its escalating effects around the world: traffic jams in paradise; reports of hospitality workers living in tents; and “anti-tourism” protests aimed at shaming tourists for dining out — or, as in Barcelona in July, spraying them with water pistols.
The protest was an example of locals using their numbers and the power of social media to deliver an ultimatum to destination leaders: Manage this problem better or you’ll scare away tourists who might otherwise spend $11.1 trillion a year elsewhere. Housing prices, traffic and water management are all on the checklist.
Some might grumble, like Pimentel, that playing violin for people wealthy enough to live in places worth visiting is a big deal, but this isn’t just about the rich.
“Is it a rich person’s problem that they can’t call an ambulance or can’t get groceries?” asked Matthew Bedel, another Sintra resident, who has no pharmacies or grocery stores in the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage site. “To me, these don’t seem like rich people’s problems.”
First of all, what exactly is “overtourism”?
The phrase itself generally represents the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents and instead harm them by degrading historic sites, straining infrastructure, and making life significantly more difficult for the people who live there.
It’s a hashtag that gives a name to the protests and hostility seen all summer. But look a little deeper and you’ll find that for locals and their leaders, from Spain to South Africa, the problem is more universal than inflated housing prices driven by short-term rentals like Airbnb. Some places are encouraging “quality tourism,” generally defined as visitors being more considerate of residents and reducing drunk behavior, annoying selfies, and other questionable choices.
“Overtourism can also be viewed as a social phenomenon,” says an analysis written for the World Trade Organization by Joseph Martin Chia of the University of Western Sydney and Marina Novelli of the University of Nottingham. In China and India, for example, crowded places are more socially acceptable, they write. “This suggests different cultural expectations regarding personal space and exclusivity.”
The summer of 2023 was marked by the chaos of travel itself: airports and airlines were overwhelmed, and passports were a nightmare for travelers from the U.S. But by the end of the year, signs were rife that a COVID-19 tit-for-tat travel surge was accelerating.
The United Nations Tourism Organization predicted in January that global tourism would surpass the 2019 record by 2%. The organization reported that more than 285 million tourists had traveled internationally by the end of March, about 20% more than in the first quarter of 2023. Europe remained the most visited destination. The World Travel and Tourism Council predicted in April that 142 of the 185 countries analyzed would break tourism records, generating $11.1 trillion worldwide and creating 330 million jobs.
Aside from money, there have been problems in paradise this year, with Spain taking centre stage on everything from water management issues to soaring house prices and drunken tourist mayhem.
Protests had already erupted across the country in March, with tourists reportedly scrawling graffiti in Malaga saying “Fuck you, go back to your country.” In Spain’s Canary Islands, thousands of protesters demonstrated against tourism and construction that are straining water services and inflating house prices. In Barcelona, protesters hurled insults and splashed water on people they thought were tourists dining outdoors on the busy Ramblas.
In Japan, where tourism numbers were expected to hit a record high in 2024, fueled by a weak yen, the city of Kyoto banned tourists from certain alleys. The government limited the number of climbers on Mount Fuji. And in Fujikawaguchiko, one of the towns with the best views of Mount Fuji’s perfect cone, leaders installed big black screens in parking lots to prevent tourists from crowding together. Tourists appear to have fought back by cutting holes in the screens at eye level.
Meanwhile, air travel is becoming increasingly disastrous, a U.S. government report said in July, UNESCO has warned of potential damage to protected areas, and Fodor’s No List 2024 urges people to reconsider visiting affected hotspots, including areas of Greece and Vietnam and areas with water management issues in California, India and Thailand.
Less popular spots have tried to capitalize on “anti-tourist” campaigns like Amsterdam’s “Stay Away” campaign, which targeted young party-goers, or the “Welcome to Mongolia” campaign, which called out the country from the land of Genghis Khan. In the first seven months of 2024, foreign tourist visits to the country increased 25% over last year.
In fact, tourism is growing and changing so rapidly that some experts say the term “overtourism” itself is outdated.
Michael O’Regan, lecturer in tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that “overtourism” has become a buzzword that fails to reflect the fact that the visitor experience depends heavily on successful crowd management, and that many of the protests have not been directed at the tourists themselves, but at leaders who are leaving local people who stand to pay the price for the benefits they are meant to reap.
“There’s a backlash against the business model that modern tourism is based on, and politicians are not responding well,” he said in an interview. Tourism has “recovered faster than expected,” he acknowledged, but the problem isn’t the tourists. “There’s a global battle for tourists. You can’t ignore that. … So what happens when there are too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research.”
Visitors and Visitees
Virpi Makela can explain exactly what is going on in her area of Sintra.
Confused guests staying at her bed and breakfast, Casa do Valle, on a hillside near the village center, call her, unsure how to find her amid Sintra’s “chaotic” traffic rules, which seem to change without warning.
“There’s a pillar in the middle of the road that goes up and down, and if you don’t go forward it will destroy your car, so you have to get off somehow, but you can’t turn around, so you have to go back down the road,” said Makela, who has lived in Portugal for 36 years. “Then people get so annoyed that they come onto our road, where there is also a ‘authorized vehicles only’ sign, and they block everything off.”
No one disputes the idea that Portugal’s tourism boom needs better management. The WTTC predicted in April that Portugal’s tourism sector would grow 24% this year compared with 2019, adding 126,000 jobs since then and accounting for about 20% of the national economy. Rising house prices are already pushing more people out of the property market, partly due to a growing influx of foreign investors and tourists seeking short-term rentals.
After complaints from residents that the tuk-tuks were causing traffic congestion, the city of Lisbon announced plans to fight back by halving the number of tuk-tuks ferrying tourists around the city and increasing parking spaces for them.
In the city of Sintra, a 40-minute train ride to the west, city authorities are investing in building more parking spaces outside the city and affordable housing for young people near the center, the mayor’s office said.
More than three million people visit Sintra’s mountains and castle every year. Traditionally, Sintra has been one of Portugal’s wealthiest regions, with its cool microclimate and scenery. Sintra City Hall also said in an email that it was selling fewer tickets to nearby historic sites. Pena Palace, for example, began allowing fewer visitors this year than half the 12,000 tickets it previously sold per day.
Residents have formed a group called QSintra to urge city hall to “put residents first” by improving communication, but they say that’s not enough. They also want to know about guest management for a new hotel being built to boost capacity, and the government’s plans to increase limits on the number of cars and visitors allowed.
“We are not against tourists,” the group’s manifesto reads, “we are against chaos that (local leaders) cannot solve.”
