Tourist Go Home Season In Full Swing In Europe This Summer
The European tourist go home season is already in full swing, although summer has officially just started. Barcelona is once again using its weapon of choice, the super soaker water gun, to drench tourists.
The movement is more active and up in arms than ever, although the New York Times makes a joke out of it. 'Will there be water guns? Very likely, at least in Spain. Noting that 'these toys have become a popular symbol of resistance,' organizers have encouraged participants to bring their water guns.' Tourists might not find being attacked so amusing.
Admittedly, the hordes of foreigners can provoke long-suffering local people. A crescendo of resentment built up in Venice, as the long-awaited nuptials of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez finally took place there. All the good yacht parking was taken, and there was no room room at the inn at a 500 year old, $2000 to $10,000 per night Venetian hotel.
One activist said, 'We can't miss a chance to disrupt a $10 million wedding.' Nonetheless, the plan to block Bezos and bride from the wedding venue by lining the streets with protestors, or blocking the canals with boats, came to naught.
But the resentment is clear. Said one activist in Venice, 'They are treating this city like it's Disneyland.' This is a common theme in many heavily visited cities, from Barcelona to Lisbon, Athens, Mallorca, and Dubrovnik.
Kylie Jenner and Kendall Jenner sighting ahead of the Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez wedding on the ... More island of San Giorgio Maggiore on June 27, 2025 in Venice, Italy., Italy. (Photo by Luigi Iorio/GC Images)
As the NY Times puts it, the demonstrations are to draw attention to the negative impact of ''touristification,' the emphasis on tourism instead of local quality of life.' The idea is to keep pushing European governments on problems created by tourism, like rising rents and housing shortages, environmental damage and neighborhoods losing essential services for residents. No word on whether the protestors want the government to create alternate sources of employment to replace tourism jobs.
My Forbes story about similar protests last year was a finalist in this year's 67th Southern California Journalism Awards. Nonetheless, if anything the protests seem more intense than in 2024. This video shows anti-tourism protestors shooting water guns and setting flares, fireworks and smoke bombs , against hotel workers, who respond by cursing and spitting at the protestors.
Over-tourism suddenly stopped being an issue from 2020 to 2023, thanks to COVID-19. From spring 2020 to fall 2022, quarantines, airline and border shut downs, and fear of travel kept the streets of hot spots like Barcelona, Ibiza, Majorca, Dubrovnik and Venice empty. Lack of income replace over tourism as a major urban woe.
But by 2024 vaccinated, maskless tourists intent on 'revenge travel' had returned in force. In 2019, there were a total of 1.465 billion tourist arrivals worldwide according to Statista. In 2020,that number dropped to just 407.8 million. By 2024, the number had reached 1.465 billion.
In Barcelona, tourism is now 14% of the city's economy and provides 150,000 jobs, according to Mateu Hernández, director of that city's Tourism Consortium. Nonetheless, Hernández pointed to 'a perception that Barcelona doesn't want tourists. We are worried about Barcelona's image of over-tourism,' he told foreign correspondents in January.
A protester holds a placard that says, no tourist crowding during the demonstration. Neighbors of El ... More Born and Barceloneta, central neighborhoods of Barcelona, have demonstrated against mass tourism that affects them daily with parties, noise throughout the night, dirt and violence. (Photo by Thiago Prudencio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Most of the local resentment is economic. While a significant 12.3% of Spain's GDP was from the tourism industry in 2023, according to Statista, tourism jobs can be low end, such as waiter, driver, housekeeper, front desk, etc.
Another issue is anger at short-term rental platforms like Airbnb. While Brian Chesky is worth just a fraction of Jeff Bezos at $8 billion dollars, the Airbnb founder and CEO should probably not rent out the city of Barcelona or Venice should he follow Michelle Obama's advice and get married. Working people blame Airbnb for raising the rent in many world tourist cities.
In Venice, Bezos and celebrity friends were insulated from local resentment by their wealth and security. Not so middle-class tourists who have saved all their lives (or financed their vacations) for what they hope will be the trip of a lifetime.
According to Statista, 'As the demonstrations against overtourism were particularly well attended in Spain, it was no surprise that in a 2024 survey, Spaniards showed the most unfavorable attitude. Similarly, 54 percent of Spanish respondents supported introducing a tourist tax fee to enter popular cities, while less than half of surveyed Italians backed that idea.'
In Paris, employees at the world-famous Louvre staged a spontaneous strike to protest overtourism. The museum gets over 8 million visitors per year, more than twice what it was designed to accommodate. The situation is particularly bad at the Salle des États, where the Mona Lisa is housed;20,000 people a day squeeze in to gawk, push, shove and try to get in selfie range.
A crowd of visitors take photos of the iconic painting The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci as staff ... More held a general assembly to discuss the general strike. (Photo by)
Still the tourists come. The Barcelona airport handled a record 55 million passengers in 2024. Although it already serves 200 destinations, there's talk of expansion. Barcelona also has a new cruise port, with 800 ships arriving each year.
Most tourists come ashore when the ship docks in the morning, tour the town, and sail off in the afternoon. This makes Barcelona's famous La Ramblas pedestrian area and adjoining areas congested with tourists and low-end tourist shoppes. 'We feel quite invaded,' lifelong Barcelona resident Joan Albert Riu Fortuny told CNN.
And it is not just water guns that tourists should fear in Europe. Vile harassment of young female tourists (this sobbing young woman is afraid to see the city by herself) is a reality in certain European cities. Such harassment is not featured on bubbly TV shows like Emily In Paris, nor is it discussed in depth in the many stories on the growth in solo travel.
Big crowds and high prices can also drive tourists away. A union that won the nation's highest minimum wage for Los Angeles hotel and airport employees, hitting $30 an hour by 2028, is now seeking to win the same rate for all employees in the city. The American Hotel and Lodging Association estimates the $30 wage rate will cost 15,000 tourism jobs.
Meanwhile, tourists already look askance at a city torn by rioting and devastated by fire. According to the New York Sun, in L.A. 'International travel is down 13.5 percent, Canadian visitation is down 70 percent, and airlines have pulled more than 320,000 seats from LAX.' Los Angeles also has problems of crime and homelessness the city government seems uninterested in fixing.
A protester leaps off a burning Waymo taxi near the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los ... More Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025, following last night's immigration raid protest. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
So both locals and tourists have their grievances. I went to Paris for a few days this May, and I wasn't sure what to expect. I must say I was treated well at our hotel (Le Meurice), walking the city, or hanging out at the Rodin Museum.
On the other hand, I've been to Barcelona a couple of times. I loved it. But I have no desire to go back. It's hard to say if the crowds of tourists or the local protests are a bigger turn off.
My family loves Hawaii, but we have not returned to the islands since 2017. I have instead visited coastal Mexico five times since then. Hawaii's ambivalent attitude towards tourists, and the onerous restrictions placed on would-be visitors during COVID, like arresting honeymooners for violating the 14-day quarantine, does not encourage visitation.
Destinations that allow local residents to molest tourists, or refuse to protect travelers from crime and harassment, are at real risk of losing the visitors they mock and complain about. As Yogi Berra once put it, 'It's so crowded no one goes there anymore."
Tourists pose for selfies in front of the "Sagrada Familia" (Holy Family) basilica in Barcelona on ... More August 19, 2017,. (Photo credit should read LLUIS GENE/AFP via Getty Images)
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