T ourism has never had a great reputation, given that the very word “tourist” is pejorative. At best, it suggests someone whose interest is superficial and whose understanding of a place is nonexistent. What’s the first thing you think, when you hear the phrase, “They’re a bit of a tourist”? You think, that person is annoying .
But the word’s reputation has plummeted further in recent years. Anti-tourism movements are springing up across the world: that might look like a protest march, as in Barcelona, where one placard bluntly pleaded “Tourists go home; you are not welcome here”. It might look like a visitor fee , as Venice introduced this year, or it might look like the mayor of Amsterdam simply closing the cruise ship terminal , as he did last year.
Part of this is about sheer volume: the number of people crossing an international border as tourists (rather than displaced people or migrants) in 2023 was 1.3 billion , which is not only a complete bounceback post-Covid, but an almost 25-fold increase since the 1950s. Driven not only by flights becoming ever more affordable, but the online convenience of booking travel – from the launch of last-minute flight and hotel brokers in the late 90s, to Airbnb in the late 00s, followed by Google Flights and Trips – everything about travel has become easier and cheaper.
But the difficulties and costs still exist, they’re just paid elsewhere. Tourism accounts for just over 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissio.