Yet more discussion about the wisdom and folly of tourism taxes. This time the debate in the Netherlands was kicked-off with an announcement from the Municipality of Amsterdam that it wants to levy “the highest tourist tax in the world” by 2031. Well, almost. The Sustainable Development Fee levied in Bhutan is currently $100 per person per night – comfortably above the Amsterdam proposed level of around €25 per person. If we discount the tiny Kingdom of Bhutan, however, and o

The coalition agreement for the new Municipal government in Amsterdam has set out plans to‘fight overtourism’. The basic weapon to be employed is raising the tourist tax, already the highest in the world, to dizzying new heights. The tax on tourist accommodation will be increased from the current 12.5% of the room rate to 16% in 2027, and then by a further 1% every year until it reaches 20%, ‘so that visitors contribute more to the city’. Other measures to try and curtail the

Walking through the Eixample in the centre of Barcelona one encounters an interesting exercise in bottom-up critique of urban speculation and touristification. A series of posters erected at the bottom of Passeig Sant Joan by the Associació de Veïns i Veïnes de la Dreta de Eixample - (Residents Association of the Right of the Eixample) provides a stark example of the effects of speculation and tourist pressure in the centre of Barcelona. Density of tourist beds in the Eixamp

December 11th marks 40 years since the launch of the campaign ‘Barcelona, posa’t guapa’ (Barcelona, make yourself beautiful). This urban renovation programme coincided with the preparations for the 1992 Olympic Games, the event that propelled the city onto the world stage. At that point, the writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán recalled that the city was like “a sunken Titanic”. (in Ferrer Viana, 2001: 16)17. The Barcelona, posa’t guapa campaign had two main elements: renovating

A new twist on the local-tourist debate in Amsterdam is marked by this ironic sticker appearing in the city centre. Tensions around the growing number of ex-pats in the city have been rising as housing shortages have sharpened and populist anti-migrant sentiment has grown. Amsterdam is particularly popular as an ex-pat destination because of the widespread use of English, the open and tolerant nature of the city and the varied cultural scene. Officially, the city is still ope

One of the common strategies to deal with the challenges of touristification in destinations such as Barcelona has been to push for ‘quality tourism’. The idea is that fewer tourists can generate just as much economic benefit, as long as they spend more. Alongside attracting tourists who stay longer and spend more, Barcelona’s strategy now aims to spread tourism throughout Catalunya, easing pressure on the city itself. Quality tourism? Recent figures indicate that tourist arr

In their efforts to stem the tide of tourists, cities often forget that they have usually been at the forefront of tourism development and promotion. One of the effects of this legacy is that many cities are trying to cut down the numbers of visitors while the number of hotels is growing. This is because it takes years for new hotels to get a licence, so there is usually a reservoir of new hotels waiting to open, even when a city tries to implement a ‘hotel stop’, as Amsterda

At a recent Tourism Society webinar we discussed the increasingly contentious concept of overtourism. One of the issues with overtourism is it suggests that the number of tourists is to blame for a range of problems experienced in cities such as Venice, Barcelona or Amsterdam. These include rising prices, housing shortages and overcrowding. But given the complexity of contemporary urban environments it seems unlikely that tourism can be the root of all these problems. It is

Tourists currently seem to be the people everybody else loves to hate (at least when they are not travelling themselves). Protests...

A recent exchange reported in the Guardian encapsulated the differing views of ‘tourism’ from the perspective of the tourists and the...

A number of widely publicised cases of tourists defacing ancient monuments in Italy has shed light on the continuing debate around the...

The Canary Islands were shaken this weekend by a wave of protests about mass tourism, which reverberated as far as London and New York....

As reported previously in this blog, since the pandemic gave way to a new flood of tourism arrivals in Barcelona, the city has been...

Before the pandemic, Barcelona distinguished itself as the anti-tourism capital of Europe, with burning tourist busses and locals...

The city of Amsterdam recently reported that measures taken to reduce the number of Airbnb properties have been successful, with a...