Somewhere between the water pistol attacks in Barcelona, the hunger strike in the Canary Islands, new fees in Venice and cruise ship restrictions in Greece, it’s become clear: locals in many of Europe’s most popular destinations are sick of tourists.
“We saw a lot more protests and a lot more people going on the street saying, ‘Enough is enough. Go away, tourists,’” said Sebastian Zenker, a tourism professor at Copenhagen Business School.
Protesters held one of the season’s most high-profile demonstrations in Barcelona in July, wielding water guns and forcing bewildered tourists to flee from restaurant patios. Residents carried signs saying “Mass tourism kills the city” and “Tourists go home” and told reporters that locals could no longer afford to live there. A manifesto published by advocacy groups asked the city to reduce the number of cruise terminals, cut back airport activity, ban short-term vacation rentals and stop using public money to promote the city to visitors.
Global tourism this year is expected to fully recover from the pandemic, according to U.N. Tourism; international arrivals reached 1.5 billion in 2019. And while destinations around the world have struggled with the influx, the angst is especially high in Europe this summer. Spain alone saw more than 53 million visitors through July of this year, a 12 percent increase from 2023, according to official tourism statistics.
Rachel Dodds, a professor in the hospitality and tourism management school at Toronto Metropolitan University, said she had warned that tourism would “come back worse than ever” after the pandemic lull, especially in destinations that didn’t rethink their approach.
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