The dichotomy of different individuals’ experiences when a popular city surges with tourism is striking. For the vacationer, the experience is full of excitement: a chance to forget the tensions in their home city, visit the most scenic places in the world, meet the locals, and eat new foods. For the residents of the tourist city, recent sentiment suggests a completely different experience: a lack of housing, adequate infrastructure, and essential materials, as well as excessive pollution.
As a result, there has been a rise in protests across Europe by local residents of the most famous destinations in the world, including the Canary Islands, Malaga, Barcelona, Venice, and Amsterdam. Notably, in the midst of these protests and rising resentment towards tourists, data reveal that in the first quarter of 2024, international travel to Europe was 7.2 percent higher than it was before the pandemic, with a total of 120 million international visitors.
This situation presents an interesting crossroads: local residents want to decrease the volume of tourists traveling to their countries, but this volume is growing rapidly. Two stakeholders with conflicting incentives head towards an inevitable collision.
A Historical Perspective on Tourism
The history of tourism in Europe provides valuable insights into this phenomenon.
Historically, tourist cities wanted to incentivize as many tourists to visit as possible—after all, the more tourists, the more revenue. For example, Venice heavily promoted itself as a tourist destination, especially starting in the 1980s. Luxury hotels were developed and international festivals were held in the city to attract people from around the world. The same story is true for the Canary Islands. Dynamic digital ads disseminated across the United Kingdom, Germany, and other nations sought to attract more individuals to the Islands. Tourism was encouraged in European cities because it served as a major part of Europe’s economic activity, encompassing hotels, restaurants, guides, goods, and more.
In fact, for the Canary Islands, 35 percent of overall GDP and 40 percent of jobs in 2022 came directly from tourism and its related businesses, which contributed over 16.9 billion euros (about US$18.7 billion) in revenue that year. For the entirety of Spain, which has seen many “anti-tourism” protests, 12.8 percent of national GDP came from tourism in 2023. Similarly, tourism constituted 10.5 percent of Italy’s national GDP in 2023 and contributed 215 billion euros (about US$238 billion) to the economy. In Venice, 25,000 Venetians were employed in the tourism industry in 2020; for context, in 2020, only 51,208 Venetians lived in the historical heart of Venice, with 177,759 on the mainland.
If tourism bolsters the economies of many European countries, why are local residents protesting?
Protest Activity Before and After COVID-19
There are two different eras of protests with similar sentiments but different intensities: before and after COVID-19.
Before the pandemic, protests had already started in various regions in Europe, especially across Spain, as tourism flourished. One of the most notable protests took place in the Spanish island of Mallorca in August 2019 when a radical youth group called Arran vandalized rental cars by smashing windshields, cutting tires, and spray-painting the Catalan phrase “tourism massiu o veïnes” (“mass tourism or neighbors”) across cars. The rationale behind the protest was anger at tourists' complicity in pollution, as Arran blamed pollution problems on rental cars used by tourists. Prior to this protest, members of Arran chained themselves to the Gaudi sculpture in Barcelona to advocate for better conditions for local workers, who they believed were getting exploited and receiving extremely low pay.
Then, COVID-19 hit, momentarily halting tourist activity around the world. During the pandemic, European travel by non-European tourists decreased by around 70 percent. Many predicted that a lack of tourism during the pandemic would ruin the livelihood of many residents in tourist cities—World Travel and Tourism Council forecasted that millions of jobs would be lost. These predictions were not incorrect; from 2019 to 2020, 4.9 million jobs in tourism and travel were lost in Europe. However, an unexpected silver lining accompanied expected economic losses: the lack of tourism in Europe gave European residents the chance to experience their cities without constant tourism. In Venice, this pause allowed individuals to realize the benefits of a quieter life without mass tourism and its consequences, such as higher pollution. As one Venetian noted: “Here in Venice, of course, we felt it even more [than most places], because walking through the streets, through the squares, through Piazza San Marco without encountering a living soul…is certainly an extraordinary experience that has made us rediscover many things about this city and the dynamics of slowness.”
Since the world phased out isolationary measures, tourism in many European countries has not only recovered, but also surged past pre-pandemic levels. For example, Spain received 42.5 million tourists in the first six months of 2024, reflecting increases of 11.5 and 13.3 percent from the same six-month periods in 2019 and 2023, respectively. In Portugal, France, and Italy, international tourist arrivals in 2023 reflected increases of 12.1, 7.8, and 4.4 percent, respectively, from pre-pandemic 2019 levels.
In response, protests erupted again across Europe, most notably in Spain. Along with many other Spanish territories and regions, Cadiz and Lanzaraote joined in on the protests. In Cadiz, a new activist group called Cadiz Resiste even wrote a manifesto to explain its rationale and desires: “Cadiz Resiste was born from exhaustion, from contained rage in the face of a very palpable fact: [tourists] are stealing our city, our neighborhoods and businesses, the very possibility of making a life in Cadiz. What is at stake is our own identity.” Similarly, in Barcelona last month, members of the protest group Assemblea de Barris pel Decreixement Turístic (Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth) published a 13-point manifesto, which demanded restrictions on tourist hotels, cruise access, and tourism advertising. The highly organized, ideological nature of these protests suggest an increase in intensity from pre-pandemic examples.
Sources of Resentment
The overarching reasons behind the protests are similar across Europe: inaccessible housing, excessive pollution, scarce essential services and resources, and a general lack of adequate infrastructure.
On the housing front, two critical, complementary concerns have been voiced: the first is that housing is scarce and is slowly being converted to tourist accommodations, and the second is unaffordable rent. In Venice, reports indicate that there are now more tourist beds than local residents within the city. In Malaga, residents are being priced out of their long-term housing by their landlords, who seek to profit by converting the housing to short-term rentals; this situation has forced some local residents to begin living in their cars. Many of these individuals are essential workers—including teachers, healthcare providers, and police officers—who are responsible for the city operating efficiently. In Ibiza, one of the Balearic islands, the police force is struggling to retain enough officers because it is unable to attract new recruits due to a lack of housing. Even for individuals who are able to find housing, they often end up cramped with other roommates and having to pay rapidly growing rent.
In terms of pollution, residents have recently begun advocating for more sustainable practices that protect natural resources, the environment, local infrastructure, and historical sites. In Venice, demonstrators demanded a ban on the usage of loudspeakers to reduce noise pollution and stricter regulations of activity in the Grand Canal since large ships erode the foundations and cause pollution. These demands materialized, and the government implemented regulations to alleviate some of citizens’ concerns. However, these concerns persist throughout Europe. For example, for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, at least 9.5 million individuals purchased tickets to attend the Games in a city with only 11.3 million residents. Many local residents even planned to defecate in the Seine in protest of the river’s pollution, which has repeatedly been proven by bacterial tests. This protest was ultimately canceled after the announcement of snap elections, but it still evidences widespread anti-tourism grievances among locals.
Protestors have also argued that they are unable to sustain their livelihoods because of a lack of necessary stores and resources. In addition to a lack of essential services because of unaffordable housing for workers, residents often struggle to find stores that serve their needs. For example, in Malaga, locals cannot find hardware stores because these stores do not profit from tourism. Similarly, in Lanzarote, there is concern about the lack of water available for agriculture and, more importantly, consumption. The influx of tourists has incentivized the prioritization of tourist attractions and goods over the provision of necessary resources for permanent residents.
Protestors’ Desires and the Future
Many residents’ concerns are not a product of tourism, but rather of over-tourism. From a lack of housing to inaccessible services and resources, the issues do not seem to stem from the direct actions of individual tourists, but rather from locals’ objections to systematic changes to their communities designed to accommodate and profit from tourism. This sentiment has been expressed throughout the protests as residents in various cities argue for a more “sustainable model” of tourism and attempt to clarify that they are against the concept of “deregulated mass tourism,” not tourism in general.
Though there are clear economic benefits from the tourism industry—as evidenced by the share of GDP for which tourism accounts in many regions and cities across Europe—protestors believe there is a level at which it becomes unsustainable, both in terms of depletion of critical resources and degradation of local residents’ standard of living. To many, that level has been reached.
In the face of growing demands, governments in Europe have attempted to curtail the discontent by implementing regulations. However, these policies sometimes do not yield the intended effects. In Venice, the government put a daily tax on visitors to limit over-tourism and to earn revenue. However, the residents collectively began to oppose the tax, claiming that the city tax converts Venice into an “amusement park” and arguing that the tax does not disincentivize anyone from visiting. More importantly, protestors are worried about the usage of the tax revenue and fear that it will be used to market the city and attract even more tourists instead of being used to alleviate the pressures plaguing residents on a daily basis.
The protestors want to implement effective changes to the government management style. Instead of their needs and preferences being considered after the wants of tourists, residents emphasize that their livelihoods should take priority in policymaking. Locals want tourism to benefit their own lives as well. In certain places, such change is gradually developing. Cities like Barcelona have begun cracking down on illegal short-term rentals, restricting large groups in certain areas, and removing some bus routes in order to protect elderly individuals. However, the process of effective change is slow: regulations change short-term actions, but shifting the culture of tourism is a long-term endeavor.
Given that tourists are increasingly fearful of traveling to certain cities because of the threat posed by protestors, governments are facing increased pressures to enact changes that consider residents’ needs.
Ultimately, locals’ grievances reflect not anti-tourism sentiment, but rather anti-management sentiment.
