Towns are for working people, not just tourists

HAVE you ever strolled down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile at one o’clock on a sunny Friday afternoon in the middle of August? Of course you haven’t. You’re not completely insane, after all.

I have, though, on many occasions, one of the many frustrations of spending eight long years commuting from Glasgow to the capital. Every inch of the Mile choc-a-bloc with dawdling tourists eyeing up the very latest in tartan tat, cameras poised as a wacky unicyclist wearing a hat made entirely out of cheese comes wobbling towards them, when all I wanted was a quick sandwich. God, it was hell.

Edinburgh, as anyone who lives there will tell you within the first two minutes of meeting you, has too many tourists. Along with cities such as Rome, Amsterdam, Venice and Barcelona it is suffering from an acute case of ‘overtourism’, which means it has become a victim of its own popularity and can no longer cope with the massive influx of visitors descending upon its cobbled roads, particularly during the summer months.

Such is the frustration in the capital that residents have taken to the city’s streets to stage peaceful protests against the property developers turning every spare flat into an Airbnb and what has been described as the ‘festivalisation’ of the city.

Meanwhile, a tourist tax of £2 per day per visitor seems to have done little to stem the flow.

When I spent my weekdays working in Edinburgh my ire went, perhaps predictably, towards the tourists themselves. How dare they pose for a picture in the middle of the street when I’m late for a meeting! Do they

have to walk five in a row up a narrow cobbled street at the speed of a snail?

But I had a sort of lightbulb moment last week while visiting the city of Bergen, during a magnificent tour of the Norwegian fjords. Walking along the ancient and stunningly picturesque seafront I was jostled and pushed from every angle by, you guessed it, other tourists. Americans, Italians, Australians, the French, all as keen as I was to soak up the beautiful landscape and the pretty houses and ergo, spoiling it for everyone else.

In fact, it was easy to spot the handful of Norwegians in the crowd: they were the ones walking at the speed of light, heads down, a ‘let’s just get through this’ grimace on their faces. I knew it well.

The thing about overtourism is, no one’s happy. Not the residents, whose homes and streets are besieged every minute of the day, and not the tourists, who, desperate for an authentic experience in a new country, find themselves hemmed in by 40,000 other tourists all hoping for the same thing.

So what is the answer? Goodness knows. Overtourism is not going to suddenly stop. The rise of social media and clickbait posts with headlines like ‘Why Edinburgh is the most beautiful city in the world you’ve never been to’ is only going to fuel the fire. The hordes are going to keep on coming.

It is up to the cities themselves then, City of Edinburgh Council included, to take matters into their own hands. They might start with some more stringent regulations on holiday rentals, and a greater understanding that our capital isn’t just a place to take pretty pictures in, but somewhere people live, too.

While in Norway I was shocked at the amount of whale meat – burgers, sausages and the like – being punted to tourists. In the local supermarkets, however, it was nowhere to be seen.

Last year Norway boosted its whaling quota by 28 per cent, while in Japan, commercial whaling has just restarted after a 30-year ban. But does anyone in these countries eat the stuff? Perhaps if tourists stopped buying it, then this disgusting and pointless practice might finally die out.