Too many tourists
Overtourism is a problem particularly in cities
In the past year, 355 building permits were issued for hotels – “for a small province like South Tyrol, that is a huge number,” says Manuel Benedikter, an architect in Bolzano. But it is not just in South Tyrol that hotels are shooting up like mushrooms. And yet there are still too few in Europe as a whole. “In many cities, hotels have an annual occupancy rate of more than 80 per cent,” says Martin Schaffer, partner at MRP Hotels.
Tourism is booming in particular in European cities, for example Barcelona, Dubrovnik, Amsterdam and Venice. There is constant talk of “overtourism,” in other words of tourists becoming a nuisance factor. According to Jürgen Schmude of the Chair for Economic Geography and Tourism Research at Munich University, tourism will grow by 50 per cent by 2030.
But what was there first? It is just like the question of the chicken and the egg. Do tourists come because there are hotels, or are there hotels because the tourists come? It’s a bit of both, says Schaf- fer: “New hotels generate new guests. If an Asian hotel chain were to come to Vienna, it would establish a new market.”
So new hotels can fuel tourism. Schmude says: “Investors want to generate as much tourism as possible.” Nevertheless, overtourism affects them too. “As a hotel developer, you rely on intact destinations and nature.”
Possible solutions to alleviate the problem come from politics. Control and bans are an option. Schaffer explains: “In Amsterdam, Barcelona and also Salzburg there are bans that prevent the construction of new hotels in the inner city.”
Besides classic tourist cities, regions such as South Tyrol and B and C destinations in Germany, such as Würzburg and Augsburg, are becoming increasingly popular with tourists and therefore also with hotel developers, he said. However, the experts agree that there is no fear of overtourism there. The phenomenon only occurs at certain places and times and always affects only hot spots and never the entire city. (red)