It's time for snobs to stop whingeing about over-tourism

Telegraph

01-03-2025

The packed beaches of Spain, the £30 cocktails of the Riviera, the body-surfing required to move through a central thoroughfare in Venice or Lisbon and the crush in central London when tourist season is in full swing, which feels like always, is enough to make anyone feel murderous.
Does it then follow that the tsunami of tourist taxes in Europe and here in Britain, following out-and-out Continental rebellion with Catalans and Mallorcans on the streets screaming anti-tourist slogans, the introduction of draconian curbs on Britons buying Spanish second homes, and the kind of anti-Airbnb protests in Portugal that would have made Karl Marx proud, is justified?
Of course not. Controlling footfall and destruction of beautiful old places is one thing – obviously landscapes and cities must be preserved for future generations to enjoy, while also preserving enough of their working identity for residents to feel like it's still home.
But what seems to be taking precedence instead is an attitude that cheap travel for the masses is terrible and must be stopped because a) cheapness is horrible and b) the masses are horrible and don't deserve to visit Barcelona or Venice.
This is certainly the way that Spain seems to see things. Last week, legislation for an eyewateringly mean-spirited tourist tax was signed that will hike overnight premiums by €15 (£12.30) per night for tourists visiting Catalonia – which includes Barcelona. That is enough to make visiting the area too expensive for all but a fly-by visit for those travelling on a budget.
At least a quarter of the money gained from this levy will be used for 'housing policy' – namely, to patch up holes created by incompetent economic governance. Anti-tourist tax 'is the trend at the European level,' sniffed David Cid, a parliamentary spokesperson, defending the measures.
This follows months of anti-tourism activity in a country a third of whose population – despite having record rates of unemployment, dysfunctional government and a broken, low-growth economy – think there are too many tourists splashing cash in their country.
In July 2024, protesters marauded through the streets of Barcelona spraying dining tourists with water. Given that Barcelona is a rip-off-prone city best of times (it's got to be my least favourite conurbation in Europe), I don't know why anyone would go in the first place, let alone in the face of such hostility.
Increasingly the UK is introducing tourist taxes – Manchester already has a City Visitor Charge and Edinburgh has introduced a 5 per cent visitor levy on overnight stays. London is considering tourist tax too, plus possible charges introduced to our world-class national museum collections. But the magic of London – alluring to people in their millions from all over the world – is the free access to the likes of the British Museum and National Gallery permanent collections. And as hospitality chiefs point out, we already have higher VAT than most other countries; why make visitors suffer further?
Tourist taxes are nothing new; India has long had particularly punitive ones (some of which border on the frankly insulting). Places as far afield as Bali, Okinawa (Japan), Seoul, Penang (Malaysia) and French Polynesia have a variety of measures in place to curb numbers for the sake of sustainability. The difference between these and the European ones are that they seem don't come with all those performative lashings of anti-gentrification, anti-capitalist, anti-modernity vitriol.
Indeed, European anti-tourism rhetoric seems to be mostly a race to squeeze back affordable travel so that seeing Europe once again becomes the preserve of the well-to-do only.
Cheap travel for the proletariat – package holidays, cruises, packed Ryanair and EasyJet flights commuting between the continent and London, to say nothing of the American circuit round Europe – is easy to turn one's nose up at.
But it is arguably one of the greatest features of the post-war era. Life was so terribly dull before for most people. It had to be eked out between the familiar buildings and frustrations of whatever the town or suburb or neighbourhood one happened to be born in.
Then, suddenly, those same people could get on a plane and see the world. For some of them, it was, and is, just a matter of sunshine and sangria. But for others, it was – and remains – a crucial way of opening the mind, seeing other cultures, seeing history and art preserved in castles, palaces, temples, palazzi, villas, and the great museums of the world.
Then there's the fact that accessible travel has massively boosted the coffers of poor and dysfunctional countries. The way the Spanish carry on you'd think they were hosting tourists as a charity when in fact, in 2023 alone, Spain made €184bn from tourism – a whopping 12.3 per cent of GDP. Tens of thousands would be out of a job if tourism dried up - as happened during Covid when a tourist-deprived Europe yowled in pain. Here in Blighty, in 2023, tourism generated £239bn - 7 per cent of GDP. In Japan the figure is 7.1 per cent of GDP. And so on. Tourism is really, really important for both the traveller and the destination.
Affordable travel – aka mass tourism – is not without problems, but its enormous benefits outweigh the challenges. As we consider slapping more pain on visitors, we should remember that the Continent's toxic mix of snootiness and anti-capitalistic ill-will can make nobody happy – and everyone poorer, financially and otherwise.