Strategies for controlling and shaping tourism
[ A&B 9'2019 original material]
Krakow is one of the most visited cities in Poland by tourists. It has just hosted the annual meeting of the Organization of World Heritage Cities OWHC (June 1-5 this year), at the end of which delegates elected the mayor of Krakow as chairman of the board of directors for the upcoming term. This is another prestigious event for the city after the 41st Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (2017). More recognition. More tourists? Ironically, the keyword of the June session was "overtourism."
May Day, long weekends, vacations, vacations are reasons for some to stay at home or hole up in the "wilderness"; for others, it's a time to visit or relax in tourist hot spots. Folders, guidebooks, websites tempt with wonderful photos of monuments, landscapes, events. Hotels, restaurants, bars, museums, historic sites, attractions, carriers count... customers and visitors. Cities around the world are counting tourists, but the number of tourists in many places is a problem that local authorities have been trying to deal with for years.
Overtourism, or tourism beyond measure
Responsible and sustainable tourism. Mechanisms to control and shape tourism. Limiting tourist traffic. There seems to be a growing understanding of these slogans. The number of good practices is growing. Although often still quantity, with which the economic bill grows, is more important than quality - the comfort of visitors and residents. A visual symbol of the problem for years has been Venice, which is flooded with crowds of tourists every year. The problem also affects Split, Dubrovnik, Barcelona, Amsterdam and very many other cities - large, medium and small - to no small degree.
A street leading to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in France
photo: Kazimierz Bardzik
This phenomenon has been called overtourism. There is no good Polish equivalent - "over(mediocre) tourism" does not sound the best, but it captures the meaning. The WP Tourism portal recently used the term "overtourism" (cf: Przemysław Bociąga, "Cities are collapsing under the onslaught of tourists. Low-cost airlines and Airbnb have opened Pandora's box," WP Tourism, May 24, 2019). The term was coined in 2016 by Skift magazine, although that doesn't at all mean the problem didn't exist earlier - it was noticed as early as the mid-20th century. According to the definition developed by the Responsible Tourism Partnership, it means "destinations where hosts or guests, locals or tourists believe that there are too many visitors and that the quality of life in the area or the quality of experience has unacceptably deteriorated." Moderating the OWHC congress, Doug Lansky - a travel journalist who has worked for National Geographic Traveler, The Guardian or Skift, as well as a consultant in tourism development, image-building and marketing - argues that a better term is "unbalanced tourism," because it points to the positive aspect of the phenomenon - that it can be fixed.
The problem has been noticed not only by researchers, but by everyone affected by the phenomenon: tourists, whose comfort of visiting a place is diminishing, locals, for whom the presence of tourists is becoming increasingly inconvenient, and decision-makers, who take actions forced by both necessity (for example, the inefficiency of urban infrastructure or declining security) and residents' dissatisfaction (increasingly by protests, as in Barcelona). Overtourism is looked at by experts in various fields, and they point out that it needs to be analyzed as part of the entire urban ecosystem, not just a component of tourism. It appears at the interface between tourists - residents - local authorities - entrepreneurs, and concerns numbers: exceeding the thresholds of technical capacity related to the capacity of tourist facilities and equipment, and the threshold of sociopsychological capacity related to the level of satisfaction of residents and tourists (cf.statement by Agnieszka Niezgoda, Gniezno Cultural Tourism Expert Forum [in:] Jacek Borzyszkowski, "Overtourism in cultural tourism, Question 77," Cultural Tourism, No. 2/2018, p. 144).
The queue to the Colosseum and the crowds of visitors inside
Photo: Kazimierz Bardzik
more and more discussions
The OWHC forum is one of the more important ones where this issue is discussed. OWHC was established in 1993 and deals with various management issues in cities that have UNESCO World Heritage sites on their territory. There are more than three hundred of them today.
Substantively, the Krakow congress did not bring much new. The issues raised here in recent years have been constantly appearing at meetings related to tourism and cultural heritage, not only in the world, but also in Poland. The OWHC congress, on the other hand, was important primarily from an image point of view, with the event including not only closed workshops for mayors and city experts and (high-paying) plenary sessions, but also a program for residents held in the Market Square and streets of the historic center.
what can be done?
Awareness of the problem has led cities to increasingly employ various types of corrective measures. They are sharing experiences and good practices. To remedy the problem is one thing. But it is no less important to show others that the problem can (and probably will) arise elsewhere as well, and - as in textbook crisis management - the city should counter it even before it occurs (cf.: interview with Ko Koens).
There is no effective recipe for everything, but a World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) report published in 2018 titled "'Overtourism'? Understanding and Managing Urban Tourism Growth beyond Perceptions" offers a set of guidelines on what can be done to balance the needs, expectations and opportunities of all city users. Key is the following summary covering eleven strategies and measures for urban visitor growth.
strategies for increasing visitor numbers in cities
[source: World Tourism Organization (UNWTO); Center of Expertise Leisure, Tourism & Hospitality; NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences and NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, "'Overtourism'? - Understanding and Managing Urban Tourism Growth beyond Perceptions, Executive Summary," UNWTO, Madrid, 2018, pp. 8-9]
- Promote the dispersion of visitors in and out of the city.
- Promote the dispersion of visitors over time.
- Stimulate new tours and attractions.
- Review and adjust regulations.
- Improve user segmentation.
- Ensure community benefits from tourism.
- Create ways to experience the city that benefit both residents and visitors.
- Improve the city's infrastructure.
- Communicate with and engage local stakeholders.
- Communicate with and engage visitors.
- Establish monitoring and response measures.
Is this our problem?
Every city is potentially at risk. Krakow, with more than thirteen million tourists in 2018, is at the top of the list.
Krakow is threatened by too many visitors and too rapid development, which could prove unsustainable in the long run, says Ko Koens, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Breda and co-author of the aforementioned report for UNWTO.
Krakow authorities assure that they are aware of the dangers of overtourism. Robert Piaskowski, the Krakow mayor's plenipotentiary for culture, admits:
We don't have research to confirm that the residents of Krakow feel overtourism, that is, that they have a clear sense that there are too many tourists in Krakow. [...] We have surveys that confirm that tourism is still viewed extremely positively, and as many as 59 percent of Cracovians believe that Krakow is capable of welcoming more tourists. [The problem of Krakow is not [...] overtourism, but the gentrification of the historic center of the city. Unfortunately, in the case of the Market Square area, this is an irreversible process.
Interior of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
photo: Katarzyna Biecuszek
Is new architecture a problem?
It can be.
In the case of overtourism, there is a big change in the rapid development of tourism, when residents do not have time to adapt. This is happening more and more often with regard to significant buildings and photogenic sites. If you have a very architecturally interesting, modern building, and its photo becomes a hit on Instagram or other social media, you can suddenly have a huge influx of tourists. The city authorities probably don't reckon with that. [...] I think this is going to happen more and more often, because a lot of very interesting, unfamiliar buildings are in places that are not particularly suited to tourism," Koens says.
According to Doug Lansky, however, contemporary architecture rarely has as much impact. Asked to point it out, he lists the obvious: The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The Pompidou Center and the Sydney Opera House are historic examples. But the list of sites attracting tourists certainly includes London's Tate Modern on one side of the globe and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania, on the other. All iconic edifices have this potential, and in many places local authorities are counting on image success through new architecture (a high-profile example is the long history of architectural competitions and the design of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw), especially for major public developments like philharmonics and opera houses.
{AuthorAiB}
photo: author's archive
Comments by speakers at the 15th OWHC World Congress in Krakow are available in the A&B 9'2019 issue , pp.42-43
