Introduction: Overtourism: An Evolving Phenomenon

This is a prepublication version of the introductory chapter in Milano, C., Cheer, J. M., & Novelli, M. (Eds.). (2019). Overtourism: Excesses, discontents and measures in travel and tourism. Abingdon: CABI. https://www.cabi.org/bookshop/book/9781786399823 Please cite as: Milano, C., Cheer, J. M., & Novelli, M. (2019). Overtourism: an evolving phenomenon. In C. Milano, J.M. Cheer and M. Novelli, Overtourism: excesses, discontents and measures in travel and tourism, Abingdon: CABI, pp. 1-17. Overtourism: An Evolving Phenomenon Introduction As a constantly evolving phenomenon, tourism remains subject to new social practices, changing utilities, variable and at times conflicting stakeholder needs and transformational trends. No matter how these manifest, historically, the primary objective of destinations has been to increase visitation. Consequently, models and measures of tourism success around the globe have mirrored this focus with destination development campaigns firmly aimed at stimulating growth in visitation, tourist spend and investment. Between 1960 and 2017, the world population raised from 3,032,160.40 to 7,530,360.15, which represents around 148% (World Bank, 2018), concomitantly, between 1950 and 2017, tourist increased from 25 million to 1,323 million, which equated to an astonishing 5,192%, (UNWTO, 2017; 2018). Collectively, these trends signal fertile grounds for global mobility and demand for travel. The term overtourism, the focus of this book, is a neologism, but not necessarily a new concept. It is undoubtedly a complex phenomenon associated with the liveability of a place, the wellbeing of residents, visitor experience and the extent to which stakeholders 1 have a direct or indirect involvement in tourism (Bellini et al., 2016; World Travel & Tourism Council, 2017; Milano, 2018; Postma, 2013). The term, overtourism has since been defined variously – here, it is described as the excessive growth of visitors leading to overcrowding in areas where residents suffer the consequences of temporary and seasonal tourism peaks, which have caused permanent changes to their lifestyles, denied access to amenities and damaged their general well-being (Milano, Cheer and Novelli, 2018). Although generally perceived as a recent occurrence associated with popular European cities, overtourism can have inadvertent effects at all destinations and their resident communities if the balance between optimal and excessive development is ruptured. Indeed, the pressure and dependence from tourism on local communities has been closely examined since the 1970s by scholars (Doxey, 1975; Boissevain, 1979; 1996; Williams, 1979; Butler, 1980; O’Reilly, 1986) and multilateral organisations (UNWTO, 1983), all of whom have collectively questioned the limits to tourism growth and destination carrying capacities. Numerous theories and conceptualizations have described the potentially disruptive occurrences that stem from tourism such as the antagonism that can arise between local residents and tourists within a tourist destination (Doxey, 1975), the tourism product life cycle and destination decline (Butler, 1980), tourism saturation (World Tourism Organisation, 1983), tourist carrying capacity (O’Reilly, 1986), among others. Tourism studies have also focused on the critical dualistic relationship between tourism and development (De Kadt, 1979; Burns and Novelli, 2008), tourism and imperialism (Nash, 1989; Turner and Ash, 1975), tourism and colonialism and neo-colonialism (Bruner, 2009). Without explicitly referring to overtourism, while the aforementioned discourses were already steeped in 2 the adverse impacts tied to the rapid growth of the sector, the currency of the debate concerning overtourism is underpinned by contemporary phenomenon including. These included: neoliberal urban change processes, new mobility paradigms, and the emerging resurgence of tourism related urban social movements alongside the social unrests that have been driven by the popular media hype which has helped the term become mainstream and global. Key emergent themes Neoliberalism and urban perspectives - Within urban analyses, the change in the use of the city has been marked by the leap from embedded capitalism to neoliberalism (Harvey, 2007). In this context, and as manifest in popular cities around the globe, tourism assumes a key role in transformational processes. Tourism urbanization (Mullins, 1991) is a part of the symbolic change where cities have become a playground (Fainstein and Judd, 1999), within processes of continual growth and where urbanbased social problems (Molotch, 1976) are associated with tourism and gentrification practices (Gotham, 2005; Gravari-Barbas and Guinand, 2017). In this sense, it is clear that processes of gentrification and the ensuing debate in urban studies are closely aligned to the overtourism discourse. In cities built for consumption (Mullins, 1991), urban tourism plays a key role in sustaining capitalistic economic systems in situ (Fletcher, 2011). The relationship between the city and tourism has been the subject of categorization into an array of typologies, namely: the resort city, the tourist-historic city, and the converted city (Fainstein and Judd, 1999). The evolution and transition from a ‘city that 3 lives with tourism’ to a ‘tourist city’ is situated along a continuum and importantly, constituting the basis of some of the most complex dynamics underlined by what is often an unplanned influx of visitors. Tourists draw from services that first and foremost are designed for residents and once this exceeds acceptable carrying capacity, service provision shifts toward meeting visitor priorities, leaving residents with no choice but to rely on services designed for tourists (D’Eramo, 2017). It is this transition within the production of contemporary tourist spaces that the debates on overtourism emerge - as political and economic undertakings tied to neoliberal processes, where cities become tourist destinations designed to fuel tourism system expansion. Mobility paradigm – Global population growth is unprecedented on the back of unprecedented affluence, well-being and connectivity. Mobility studies help to conceptualize and evidence these new mobilities as exemplified in the so-called ‘end of tourism’ (Hannam, 2009) - not just due to changing mobility paradigms only, but also to the blurring of frontiers between tourists and migrants (O’Reilly, 2003) and the decline of structural dichotomies, dualisms, and binary oppositions. Ordinary/extraordinary, home/away and work/leisure have characterized a critical turn in tourism studies as seen in the “shift from a synchronic to a diachronic perspective, involving a change of emphasis from permanence to flux, from being to doing” (Cohen and Cohen, 2012, p. 2180). The blurring of boundaries and merging of identities in the modern age is underlined by temporary residents, commuters, digital nomads, international students and myriad mobile identities that shape contemporary societies and mobile world systems. Notably, Foucault’s (1973) ‘medical gaze’, later employed in tourism by Urry (1990), feed into the complexity that makes up the ontology of mobilities and the so-called 4 mobility turn helps restructure the linear order of spatiality and temporality (Urry, 2000; 2007; Cresswell, 2006; Hannam, Shelley and Urry, 2006; Hannam, 2008; 2009) and feed the performative studies (Edensor, 2001; 2007; Jóhannesson, 2005). In this context, acknowledging tourism mobilities is fundamental in order to comprehend that tourism is made, shaped and performed through different forms of mobilities (Sheller & Urry, 2004). In addition, the tourism-related mobility paradigm requires critical analysis, given the dominant Anglo-American-Eurocentric scholarly tradition in tourism (Doering and Duncan, 2016; Hall, 2015) that possibly overwhelms other equally important empirically grounded debates. In this context, it is necessary to locate overtourism as an evolving phenomenon, temporally and spatially, in the age of the mobility paradigm. Social movements - In urban settings where overtourism is prominent, social movements play a key role in inflating the social media bubble and provoking ensuing debates, malaise and/or social unrest. The evidently fierce disapproval of tourism by social movements in popular tourist cities in Europe have their roots in Southern European environmental activism in the 1970s that has served to intensify the criticism of and opposition to excessive tourism development (Kousis, 2000). This contributed to the scene in the 1990’s in countries such as Spain, Greece, Malta and France, where adverse reactions against Fordist approaches to tourism mass production became prominent (Boissevain, 1996). Similar experiences played out in rural Latin America where discontent and social movements intensified against tourism development related where environmental issues specifically linked to climate change, dominated as in Costa Rica (Cordero Ulate, 2015). In Mexico and Central America processes of dispossession, displacement, labour exploitation and tourism real-estate speculation underlined 5 resistance to tourism’s expansionary tendencies (Hiernaux, 1999; Bonilla and Mortd, 2008; Blázquez and Cañada, 2011; Cañada, 2010; Sosa and Jiménez, 2010). More recent researches (Colomb and Novy, 2016; Milano and Mansilla, 2018; Sequera and Nofre, 2019), outlined that across a number of varying contexts, tourism expansion has become the subject of vehement protests and formidable resistance in tourist cities, and where social movements are at the fore of such activism this might generate a multiplier effect (Monterrubio, 2017). In essence, the current media-led exposé of overtourism is characterized by outrage, sensationalism and hysteria, undoubtedly newsworthy, highlighting the interrelationship between the massive presence of tourism alongside the protestations of social movements beseeching that local wellbeing must be prioritized. Despite the historical criticism of the tourism development paradigm, characterized as leveraging growth tied to stakeholder covetousness, this decade has seen the emergence of social movements rejecting such expediency and self-interest, introducing anti tourism narratives in public platforms and through political agendas. This has led to the touristification of social movements and intensified tourism activism (Milano, 2018), and in so doing, defines overtourism through the lens of protest and resistance against tourist cities being turned into playgrounds for tourists, while at the same time relegating local wellbeing. As a consequence, overtourism and tourismphobia emerged as buzzwords in 2017, and have since morphed into what for the most part, is a sensationalist and oversimplified media narrative decrying the impacts of tourism (Koens, Postma and Papp, 2018), but not always addressing issues dispassionately and with objective detail regarding the real drivers at work. Indeed, the roots of overtourism are typically tied to excessive and 6 poorly planned tourism growth, as well as the increasing demand for mobility, leisure and extraordinary experiences. Far from being the golden hordes in the pleasure periphery described by Turner and Ash (1975), the new mobile masses exemplify the current challenge of contemporary and complex societies framed by hypermobility and unprecedented affluence. Tourism mobility has historically led to concentration of visitors in some of the most popular destinations, leading to overcrowding, and not only in urban spaces. The majority of overvisited places today represent predictable global tourist hotspots (Judd, 1999), while in the 1950s, D’Eramo (2017) outlined that just fifteen destinations were visited by 98% of international tourists. In 2007, visitation to the same fifteen destinations had decreased to 57%, characterizing the rapid expansion of global tourism beyond established world destinations, and signalling that the world peripheries are steadily becoming touristic. Hobsbawm (1998, p. 2) observed that ‘somewhere on the road between the globally uniform coke-can and the roadside refreshment stand in Ukraine or Bangladesh, the supermarket in Athens or in Djakarta, globalization stops being uniform and adjusts to local differences, such as language, local culture, or, for that matter, local politics’. Within the tourism experience, and as a response to aforementioned global trends, local culture embodies the allure of Otherness so vital in stimulating visitation. In this sense, the desire for authentic experiences and for ‘living like a local’ while on holidays is met by the reinvention of ‘localhood’ as the latest frontier for the staging and performance of authenticity in contemporary tourism (Russo and Richards, 2016). 7 In this context, overtourism should not only be associated with the volume of tourists, but also with the exploitation of local resources. To better understand this, the rural studies paradigm may help: for instance, in sectors such as fishing and farming the suffix ‘over’ is appended to highlight excessive and unsustainable extraction, often associated with the use of terms like over-farming and over-fishing. Based on the use and consumption of local resources and common goods, tourism could also be considered an equivalent extractive industry, having repercussions on the natural environment and on local livelihoods and wellbeing. With respect to this, contemporary critical tourism studies have always acknowledged rights to the ‘commons’ (Hardin, 1968) and access to the provisions of local goods, and when it comes to overtourism in urban settings, the contest for space and ensuing gentrification are emblematic (Gotham, 2005; Liang and Bao, 2015; Gravari-Barbas and Guinand, 2017; Cócola-Gant, 2018), as is water inequity and wider political ecology concerns (Cole, 2012; Cole and Browne, 2015), local resident housing (Cócola-Gant, 2016; Blanco-Romero, Blázquez-Salom and Cànoves, 2018), the overlapping and encroachment into the commons as demonstrated by the short-term accommodation sector (Pintassilgo and Silva, 2007), environmental impacts of international cruise tourism (Brida and Zapata-Aguirre, 2009), modern slavery and marginalization practices in the tourism supply chain (Cheer, 2018) and provision of decent work in tourism (Cañada, 2015; 2016; Walmsley, 2017), among others. Concurrently, overtourism is also associated with the rising discontent between host communities and tourists as emphasized by the emergence of urban social movements, organizations, and neighbourhood associations in European tourist destinations, all of whom have sounded alarm bells (Milano, 2018). Examples of the manifestation of 8 social movements against overtourism include: the Assembly of Neighbourhoods for Sustainable Tourism (ABTS - Assemblea de Barris per un Turisme Sostenible) in Barcelona; City for the People (Ciutat per a qui l'habita) in Majorca; No Big Ships Committee (Comitato No Grandi Navi) in Venice; and ‘Naplesland’ – rights in the age of tourism (Napolilandia - i diritti al tempo del turismo) in Naples. These have joined forces through the Network of Southern European Cities against Touristification (Red de ciudades del Sur de Europa ante la Turistización - generally referred to as SET Network). SET is ased on the synergic action of social movements from sixteen destinations - Venice, Valencia, Seville, Pamplona, Palma de Majorca, Malta, Málaga, Madrid, Lisbon, Florence, Ibiza, Girona, San Sebastian, Canary Islands, Camp de Tarragona and Barcelona, as well as several other social movements from Italy, Spain, Malta and Portugal. The SET Network’s main goal is to engage in joint actions of protest against the contemporary ‘growth centred model’ of urban tourism development and apply pressure on national governments to promote tourism degrowth in certain tourist destinations that are demonstrating extreme overtourism symptoms. Indeed, overtourism is also easily naturally associated with social unrest and the contemporary wave of politicization (of tourism) from below (Colomb and Novy, 2016). Hitherto, the phenomenon of excessive tourism growth has been described mostly in terms of volume, congestion and the exploitation of local resources and more recently other terms such as tourism massification and development of monocultures have emerged. The term touristification, often used in European languages and contexts (e.g. French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), and by Picard (1995) in relation to Bali (Indonesia), refers to an ongoing process composed of various drivers that are underlined by nuanced local political and economic processes. The assonance to and 9 resemblance of tourism growth with gentrification processes (Glass, 1964) may not be casual, and the use of the overtourism neologism suggests an underlying shared political responsibility by all stakeholders involved, especially policy makers. On a global scale, overtourism is linked to social unrest, gentrification and touristification processes as exemplified in Berlin (Füller & Michel, 2014; Novy, 2016; 2018), the birth of social movements against tourism gentrification and the tourism degrowth campaign as seem in Barcelona (Medrano and Pardo, 2016; Cócola-Gant and Pardo, 2017; Mansilla and Milano, 2018), the socio-spatial transformations in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Broudehoux, 2016), the social unrest spurred by dispossession of housing and the processes of real estate speculation in Palma de Mallorca (Garcia and Servera, 2003; Yrigoy, 2013; Vives-Miró and Rullan, 2017), the emergent discontent around overcrowding and socio-spatial transformations in Amsterdam (Gerritsma and Vork, 2017; Pinkster and Boterman, 2017), the emerging mobilizations related to the impacts of tourism in Paris, especially regarding the proliferation of tourist apartments (Gravari-Barbas and Jacquot, 2016; Freytag and Bauder, 2018), unregulated urban and tourism planning in Budapest (Smith et al., 2018), the so-called Airbnb syndrome in Reykjavik (Mermet, 2017), the urban crises and protests against cruise ships in Venice (Van Der Borg, 1992; Davis and Marvin, 2004; Vianello, 2016) and the Hong Kongers protests against the massive surge in Chinese tourists (Garrett, 2016). As for the proliferation of the term overtourism, the sensationalist and tandem use of ‘tourismphobia’ and ‘anti-tourism movement’ in mainstream media has undoubtedly emphasised the adverse impacts of tourism and placed it at the centre of contemporary 10 global debates. Alongside mass media attention and critical scholarly discourses, much attention is also given to the contemporary reputational crisis that is attributed to tourism, ensuring that is has become embedded in political and media spheres (Russo and Scarnato, 2018). The word tourismphobia appeared for the first time in the Spanish newspaper El País in 2008 in an article titled Turistofobia, written by the Catalan anthropologist Manuel Delgado and later advanced by the international press to embody the intensification of unsustainable mass tourism practices, as exemplified in the growing discontent between hosts and visitors in cities such as Barcelona (Milano, 2017a; 2017b). Since 2017, the debates and contentions surrounding overtourism have been popularised on the back of grey literature produced by research think tanks (Skift), governments and multilateral organizations (UNWTO; World Economic Forum), and co-opted by mainstream media (The Guardian, The Conversation, BBC). Far from undergoing a thorough examination, overtourism has assumed a new symbolic value as the tipping of contemporary tourism development and management beyond which adverse outcomes are assured. While an increasing number of studies on overtourism and overcrowding in tourism destinations have been published by institutions such as World Travel and Tourism Council (2017), the UN World Tourism Organization (2018), the European Parliament (Peeters et al., 2018), as well as proliferation at academic and industry conferences, and trade fairs (i.e. 2017 ITB Berlin, the 2017 World Travel Monitor Forum in Pisa, the 2017 World Travel Market in London, and the 2018 UNWTO Global Summit on Urban Tourism in Seoul), coming to terms with overtourism remains a work in progress. 11 As overtourism continues to be dissected, interrogated and critiqued, multifarious issues have emerged, with consensus as to how best to respond, plan and manage undergoing design, implementation and testing. While undoubtedly there isn’t a one size fits all solution in response to overtourism, it is clear that the need to understand the drivers of overtourism will become more pressing as global tourism continues its upward trajectory to 1.4 billion international travellers by the end of 2019. The drivers of overtourism are multifarious, and most apparent in the privatization of public spaces, the rise in visitation to fragile destinations beyond established hotspots (rural, mountainous and coastal periphery), increase of short-term visitors as underlined by international cruise tourism, escalation of housing prices driven by tourism-induced real estate speculation, the diminution of local resident purchasing power, imbalances in the number of visitors and residents sharing the same space, labour exploitation to meet the heightened demands for rapid development, precarity and outsourcing of employment in the tourism sector to meet seasonal patterns in visitation, the transformation of supply chains with implications for economic leakages, commercial gentrification especially in inner urban centres of popular cities, as well as environmental impacts linked to air pollution and waste management (Milano, 2018). Overtourism encompasses a plurality of sectors, all of whom having varying degrees of influence within the wider tourism system therefore making it challenging to pin down where the pressure points might be. Planning strategies to deal with overtourism or solutions tied to use of smart technology might help in the short-term but adequate longterms solutions require policy maker interventions rather than simply relying on technical and industry-driven approaches. As far as policymaker interventions are concerned, nothing less than a paradigm shift is needed to move from simply associating tourism success with simplistic appraisals of tourist arrivals and their 12 associated expenditure, and instead give host, and wider social-ecological concerns due consideration. Additionally, overtourism is sparked by unyielding hypermobility aided by stepped improvements in air transport and travel technology that have made global sojourns more affordable and convenient – consider the influence that low-cost carriers and online travel agents have had. The resultant democratization of travel and the effects of hypermobility are unparalleled, making the pursuit of harmony between tourism growth and destination sustainability a key prescription for overcoming the symptoms of overtourism. Rethinking overtourism beyond tourism intensification and instead as the result of uneven accumulation and concentration of resources and space, and as unbalanced or unequal patterns of consumption, linked to demand and supply disjuncture is pressing. This is because overtourism reflects uneven exploitation of the planet’s finite resources and very often embodied in the reproduction of inequalities. Additionally, where overtourism symptoms are rife, destinations are obliged to rethink destination promotion and allow more focus to be given to urgent strategic tourism planning that proactively deals with overtourism. Furthermore the causes, consequences, social responses and possible solutions to overtourism are the responsibility of a multiplicity of stakeholders that either directly or indirectly help shape the manifestations of tourism, and therefore must be linked to the new planning and management regimes required. Advancing Overtourism From a theoretical perspective, overtourism is a multifaceted phenomenon and one that is continually evolving insofar as academic elaborations are concerned and therefore, 13 related methodological and theoretical approaches have only started to emerge. This volume is concerned with the various contexts and dimensions of overtourism, and grounded in ongoing international ethnographic and empirical endeavours. The aim of this collection is to provide a platform for scholars from diverse academic traditions and geographical locations, enabling advances that transcend language and cultural barriers and most importantly moving beyond pre-existing strongholds in tourism studies, especially the dominant Anglo, European and American discourses (Milano, 2017c; Salazar, 2017). Consequently, the voices in the volume are discernibly international with most chapters originating in contexts where English is not the lingua franca, and showcasing destinations that stretch beyond the Anglo, European and American spheres of influence. This gives the discourse a decidedly nuanced tone, with Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Arctic, African and Latin American insights, among others underlining the volume’s linguistic expression, and accentuated in the tone and sensibility of the commentary provided. The chapters that follow contribute new knowledge to the overtourism discussion from diverse perspectives and contexts including urban, coastal and rural distinctions, and offers directions for future investigations. Chapter 1 offers particular insights into Venice, an iconic destination and the most emblematic case of how overtourism has affected historic cities. Here, over the last few years, in the poster child of overtourism, social movements against tourism have emerged as a reaction to vastly unsustainable tourist flows that have had a dramatic and transformational impact on the life of local communities. The authors argue that Venice is justifiably put forward as a benchmark of how a city has mishandled tourism and in so doing offers lessons if what not to do. However, having studied the finer dynamics of 14 Venice’s tourism problem, it is suggested that the city offers potential for use as a comparative benchmark that can be employed to monitor the performance of other destinations. While Venice’s unique geographical position as a historic city, located on an island and surrounded by a lagoon adds to the complexity of how tourism flows are managed effectively, this exposé offers an approach to impact analysis measuring the rate of touristification in the city’s districts. Furthermore, these measurements are translated into stress indicators associated with characteristics of tourism unsustainability, with implications on the lives of local residents and may serve as a useful tool for understanding the underlying causes of anti-tourism and as warning signs in benchmarking overtourism in other destinations. Chapter 2 deals with the case of Palma (Majorca), where overtourism is driven by urban entrepreneurialism that has restructured the city by displacing low-income inhabitants through gentrification. Among other expressions, the ‘retailscape’ refers to the landscape of retail stores as a physical expression of the built environment’s changing function in the everyday life that defines a city. Within this framework, authors undertake a geographical analysis of the changing ‘retailscape’ and consider this to be an expression of tourist gentrification in the city of Palma (Majorca). Findings show two different patterns: conversion of shops into boutique-style businesses offering products specifically for tourists on the main shopping streets and the decline and closure of stores on secondary streets. Future scenarios suggest further expansion of the gentrification frontier to side streets. In response to social concerns regarding the removal of shops that underline the cultural heritage of the city, the local government of Palma set about cataloguing remaining retail shops they consider to be important critical heritage. 15 Chapter 3 approaches overtourism as a means to analysing the impacts and limits of late capitalistic tourism development in and around wilderness protected areas of a Global South destination – the Galapagos Islands. While failing to determine what is an elusive tipping-point, a better interpretation of the socio historical processes rooting overtourism narratives in tourist spaces beyond urban western research contexts is achieved. This chapter is possibly the first scholarly attempt to conceptually situate the Galapagos archipelago’s social and ecological systems in relation to overtourism as a global phenomenon. Qualitative data and critical content analysis point towards three emergent themes: a rapid diversification of Galapagos’ land-based tourism economy; a political ambivalence towards the governance of tourism growth and conservation rationale; radical shifts in online representation patterns of Galapagos as a tourist destination occurring through branding and advertisement. From there, a discussion is entered into over the foreseeable outcomes of tourism saturation narratives imposed far beyond metropolitan localities and European urban tourism hotspots. Chapter 4 focuses on Iceland, a well-connected destination integrated into the international system of tourism mobilities, not the least, in its role as a gateway between Europe and the US to the Arctic. In recent years Iceland has experienced an exponential growth in international tourist arrivals to such a degree that the risk of overtourism is fast approaching. This chapter critically explores the notion of overtourism with a special focus on how tourism affects society and culture. Overtourism is argued to be too often based on static and oversimplified conceptualisations of hosts and guests, and culture and nature that fails to fully grasp the mobility of place and the multiple entanglements through which tourism emerges. Here, common notions of overtourism 16 are problematized following some of the relational dynamics that have shaped past and present Reykjavík as a destination for travellers. Chapter 5 explores overtourism in the rural context of Guanacaste (Costa Rica). The area has experienced intense development of residential tourism, and the ensuing ecological conflicts over water - between rural communities and residential tourism investments supported by the State is the focus. The question posed is whether these characteristics, in a rural context, crystallize discourse on the rejection of tourism, or social movements similar to those that have occurred in popular urban destinations elsewhere. Or rather, in the framework of intense conflicts and negotiations, whether the arguments of community social movements that react in rurality to confront overtourism are more related to demands for inclusive tourism. Chapter 6 deals with the overcrowding of Amsterdam, another of the globes foremost tourist cities. Deep insights are extended into how societal and economic changes have influenced the policies of public and private (tourism) sector organisations, city marketer practices, resident attitudes and, more recently, new ways of ‘city-making’. Amsterdam draws from a long history of trade and tolerance, where economic benefits tended to prevail amidst the flurry of activity that makes it one of the premier European destinations. At the same time, new waves of stakeholders have always come into the city and encountered groups that have tended to stir up governing powers into action. The chapter emphasises the application of co-creation and collaboration as the means for finding inclusive and sustainable tourism solutions for the city. 17 Chapter 7 places distinct attention on the formulation of public policies and ensuing tourist saturation in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The choice of Rio de Janeiro as host of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games led to a series of public policy proposals for urban renewal, public safety and strengthened national tourism promotion. The main target of urban renewal was the favelas of Rio, the city’s informal and unregulated (or “slum”) neighbourhoods of low-income housing. These emerged as strategically important urban areas for the demonstration of public power, for their potential as both tourist destinations and as economically productive areas in their own right. In the name of safety, newly created Pacifying Police Units (UPP) were deployed in some favelas of the city in 2008. The new notion of a “favela pacificada” (or “pacified slum”), associated with the urban renewal policies of these neighbourhoods triggered local processes of gentrification. This resulted in heightened visitation to the favelas and they rapidly became an essential feature of Rio’s official tourist itinerary. Faced with excessive visitation or overtourism, slum dwellers mobilized against the disruptive presence of tourists in these neighbourhoods. Drawing from research carried out in the favela of Santa Marta in particular, this chapter examines the effects of tourism in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the corresponding responses this evoked. Chapter 8 focuses on the role that short-term tourist accommodation has played in the emergence of overtourism in Portugal. By examining two major Portuguese cities – Lisbon and Porto, with a medium-sized one - Aveiro. The chapter examines the dynamics that have underlined the growth of short-term accommodation establishments over the last decade. The examined period coincides with when short-term accommodation rentals were legally separated from traditional accommodation establishments (hotels) in Portugal. Key findings suggest that there has been a paradigm 18 shift from emphasis on the beach/resort toward urban tourism where overtourism has come to predominate in central, historical neighbourhoods, for the time being. This study serves as a clarion call to address unsustainable tourism growth models that have been widely adopted in the country. Chapter 9 is centred on research conducted in Byron Bay, a small coastal town in eastern Australia, attracting nearly 2 million visitors annually. The unprecedented growth of visitors to the area over the last decade has created a number of problems for local residents, particularly during peak tourist times, including overcrowding, environmental pressures, loss of ambience, unregulated subletting and heightened alcohol and drug related issues. However, little is known about the lived experiences of young residents growing up in popular tourism ‘hot spots’ and by linking this issue to the evolving overtourism debate, this chapter explores how Byron Bay youth grapple with and negotiate the challenges of excessive visitation. Child-centred methodologies were deliberately employed to encourage the active participation of young people in this research process. Findings revealed a range of key issues for young people coping with overtourism, particularly how they negotiate a sense of belonging and identity, as well as how they assert their agency and voice. Chapter 10 advances reflections on the risks of overtourism in Greenland. Following the country’s declaration of self-rule in 2009, tourism – along with fishing and mining was recognized as one of the three key sectors for the future. A controversial tourism policy introduced to boost tourism’s significance was centred on substantially increasing visitor numbers and called for a drastic expansion of the existing airport infrastructure and modernizing harbour facilities to handle more cruise ships. There is discernible local-level stakeholder concern where these developments are considered ill- 19 advised, especially since the policy was developed and implemented with little regard for public participation. Indeed, the emphasis on generating growth in arrivals without anticipating the consequences such a move could have on local communities is regarded as a major drawback. The UNESCO World Heritage Site Ilulissat is already inundated with visitors during the peak season despite lacking adequate accommodation facilities and other visitor-related infrastructure. Currently, Greenland’s relatively constrained access to global markets protects it from overtourism. However, it is argued that without a clear planning approach, the aforementioned growth-oriented measures could prove to be catastrophic. Although, Greenland is hardly the destination one thinks of when it comes to overtourism, the warning signs are already there that things may turn sour if a more critical approach to tourism development is not urgently adopted. As an accompaniment to the detailed cases in the volume, several shorter exposés in the form of Boxes are presented. These are focused on shorter commentaries about the unfolding of overtourism, or at least the spectre of excessive tourism and the discontents that arise. The case of Japan’s foremost heritage city Kyoto (Box 1) is put forward to underline how dramatic increases in tourism over recent years is playing out. Like most destinations undergoing rapid growth, the development of supporting infrastructure and services has failed to keep pace with growing visitation. In Kyoto, the growth of shortterm accommodation rentals or, Holiday Rental Accommodation (HRAs) has occurred outside regulations and controls, while at the same time put pressure on housing availability and heightening real estate speculation - not an altogether surprising occurrence as seen in other popular destination cities around the globe. The question of what to do in response cries out for planning and management regimes that align with growth patterns. 20 It would also be remiss to not discuss the overtourism phenomenon without giving due consideration to the rapidly evolving tourism situation in the African continent. International visitation to Africa (Box 2) lags behind that of Europe and Asia especially, with recent trends detecting accelerated growth trajectories. Moreover, tourism as a driver for economic development is firmly embraced by governments across the continent keen to open up to the advances from international tourism. Yet, whether the capacity to deal with continued tourism growth is in place or not is questionable. Kenya is outlined as an example of this where the combined effects of international and domestic visitation are beginning to expose critical pain points at a local level. Indeed, the evident pattern of development are akin to that encountered in developing country contexts elsewhere, with the need to understand capacity constraints as much as the need to ensure that host communities are not marginalised, as seen in the rapid privatisation of beaches in Kenya. Another emerging region profiled is Latin America, through discussion about the case of Brazil (Box 3), where the compulsion to pursue economic development is a strong underlying driver, especially in the less economically developed regions. Overtourism as a phenomenon is rarely countenanced in Latin America media with much bullishness given to growing the underlying tourism base. The example of Brazilian media is presented highlighting that despite massive recent growth patterns, concerns over excessive tourism are scant and in destinations like the famed Fernando de Noronha, management regimes to ensure development and sustainability concerns are in balance have been successfully implemented. For now, Brazilian media appear to have any 21 concern regarding overtourism and shed light on the potential economic gains on offer and national destinations want more not less tourism. The final box presented is conceptual and argues that in order to deal with overtourism concerns effectively, different ways of dealing with the prevailing issues at work is vital. In a way, doing things the same way all of the time is put forward as a limitation while treating overtourism as ‘system failure’, then systematically unpacking variables at work is needed. Moreover, holistic thinking as opposed to tinkering with parts of the system and making ad hoc interventions is seen as counterproductive in the long run. Indeed, this is symptomatic of the way tourism administrators and policy makers around the globe around have been dealing with overtourism. References Bellini, N., Go, F. M., & Pasquinelli, C. (2016). 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