Barcelona and Amsterdam: Overtourism vs Touristification
- Greg Richards
- Mar 3
- 4 min read
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 certainly true that the development of urban tourism in recent decades has seen visitor numbers to many cities soar. Significant growth was already seen in the 1990s, with a 38% increase in city visits between 1993 and 2000. Growth continued in the new Millennium, with a further 20% added between 2004 and 2012. The tendency for tourists to flock to the same cities meant that particular hotspots were soon overflowing with ‘new urban tourists’. Barcelona increased tourist arrivals by over 50% from 2004 to 2021, and Amsterdam saw tourism double between 2008 and 2024.
In 2004, Barcelona received 4.4 million tourists, with a resident population of 1.6 million. By 2019, tourist arrivals had grown to 20 million for a population of 1.7 million, resulting in an increase in the ratio of tourist arrivals to residents from 2.75 to 11.8 – more than a fourfold increase. The result has been declining support for tourism development among residents in Barcelona and Amsterdam, and growing calls for curbs on numbers and measures to control behaviour. The number of Barcelona residents in favour of tourism development fell from over 90% in 2004 to only 40% by 2016. Against this background, there has been a growing clamour against ‘overtourism’ in many places.
Arguably, a more accurate term for the challenges facing many cities today is touristification – or the growing orientation of urban economies towards serving the needs of tourists. This is evident in the growth of hotels, but also in other areas. Both Amsterdam and Barcelona have taken up the battle against the growth of ‘tourist shops’ – those selling souvenirs, waffles, ice cream, and in the case of Amsterdam, Cheese. There have always been plenty of cheese shops in Amsterdam, but most recent growth has been accounted for by those catering to tourists. There has also been a significant increase in bars and restaurants (+64% between 2009 and 2019), many if which cater largely to tourists. The growth in tourist-orientated retailing often leaves locals with less shopping options. There was a 16% decline in non-daily shops – those catering primarily to local residents’ needs.
Similar processes of touristification are evident in housing. In particular, the transformation of houses rented to locals into short term rentals for tourists is seen as a threat. Airbnb in particular has been singled out as a major problem, with over 19,000 short term rentals still operating in Barcelona, for example.
Barcelona now plans to ban short term rentals entirely by 2029, although whether this will have the desired effect is doubtful. A host of legal challenges against such a measure lie ahead. Other, more direct controls on tourist behaviour are evident in Amsterdam, where there are fines for drinking or smoking in public in the Red Light District, and limits on the number of people in guided tours. These measures seem to have little real impact on levels of crowding in the city, however, as the growing ‘TikTok queues’ in the centre attest.
Grass roots measures to engage with tourists have also emerged, particularly in Amsterdam. There you can take an alternative cruise around the canals in a former refugee boat that crossed the Mediterranean. Crewed by former refugees, you get a different view of the impact of global mobility. In the Red Light District there are also efforts to give tourists a glimpse of everyday life in the epicentre of tourist nightlife. A case study developed by the Cultsense Project examines the development of this ‘sexualised neighbourhood’ and the experiences of local residents. It highlights the ‘We live here’ campaign, which aims to make visitors aware that the Red Light District is also home for many, and to take account of this in their behaviour.
In Barcelona the reaction of some locals to the growth of tourism has been more direct, with attacks on tourist busses and spraying tourists with water pistols on the Ramblas. Graffiti proclaiming ‘tourists go home’ is a regular sight around the city. Such protests seem to do little to stem the flow of tourists, with arrivals now back up to pre-pandemic levels.
In fact, blaming the tourists is an oversimplification of complex urban problems. Many other factors are helping to make the streets overcrowded and the rents unaffordable. In Amsterdam, for example, one of the biggest causes of crowding in the centre is population growth. The number of residents in the city has grown by almost a quarter since 2008 as a result of both national and international migration. More than 150000 extra residents means almost 55 million extra ‘bednights’ (365 nights x 150000 people), dwarfing the 9 million additional bednights resulting from a doubling in tourism over the same period.
The conclusion should be that the residents of Amsterdam are largely to blame for the crowded streets and the rising price of housing. But tourists make an easier, external target. In fact, there is a whole raft of trends driving change in the city. These include gentrification (or ‘pacification by cappuccino’, as Sharon Zukin labelled it), increased liberalisation of the economy, including removal of rent controls, and changes in the style of tourism. The arrival of Airbnb and other short term rental platforms enabled visitors to break out of their hotel enclaves and penetrate the everyday spaces of residents. This form of ‘interstitial tourism’ now means that residents are more directly affected by noisy, drunken tourists, who are now staying right next door.
Sad footnote
The Tourism Society Consultants Network webinar was originally organised by Mike Hitchcock, who sadly passed away before it happened. We decided to go ahead with the event anyway, and Peter Robinson from Leeds Beckett University stepped in as Chair and Tom Buncle of Yellow Railroad made additional input based on his experience of tourism planning issues around the globe. Hopefully this served as an appropriate small memorial for Mike as well.
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