Beyond Over Tourism

Scotland’s disastrous over tourism strategy is a sign of our political immaturity, our lack of insight and aspiration and our failure of imagination to diversify our economy. Elsewhere other countries are changing direction. We should take note.

In June this year Jaume Collboni, Barcelona’s left-wing mayor, announced they would bar apartment rentals to tourists by 2028, as he seeks to rein in soaring housing costs and make the city livable for residents. The aim is that by November 2028, Barcelona would scrap the licences of the 10,101 apartments currently approved as short-term rentals.

“We are confronting what we believe is Barcelona’s largest problem,” Collboni told a city government event. This meant that “from 2029”, if there were no setbacks, “tourist flats as we conceive of them today will disappear from the city of Barcelona”. Spain’s Socialist housing minister, Isabel Rodriguez, said she supported Barcelona’s decision.

After plummeting during Covid, tourism numbers are soaring again and set to exceed pre-pandemic ­levels this summer. The number of low-cost airline seats in Europe, which rose 10% annually from 2010 and hit 500m in 2019, could pass 800m in 2024.

This is a climate catastrophe.

Across Europe cities affected by massive over tourism are doing something about it.

In Norway they are taking action (‘Norway is shying away from tourism – and other countries could learn from it‘): “While other destinations have imposed measures on tourists once they arrive – such as Venice’s €5 “tourist tax” – Norway is highly unlikely to do any such thing. The Norwegian approach is to deter them from coming by slashing funding for tourism adverts, as the Western Norway tourist board has done, and quietly shelving campaigns.”

It’s instructive to think, as the author Shazia Majid does, that the driver for these changes are Norway’s love of the environment. She does not shy away from the irony of this environmental-loving nation being subsidised by its oil-wealth-fund. But what does it tell you about Scotland’s own relationship to nature?

The standard line – from such as Lesley Riddoch in books such as ‘Blossom’ and ‘Huts – a place beyond’ – is that we don’t care about our environment because we don’t own the land and we don’t have access to it. She asks: ‘Why have the inhabitants of one of Europes prime tourist destinations been elbowed off the land and exiled from nature for so long?’

It’s a good question. A recent example of the entirely extractive nature of the tourist sector is the closure of Achnasheen Village Hall, located just off the A832. Highland Council says the upkeep  is “unfeasible” – and that the “difficult decision” has been taken to end the lease. Hilariously the Press and Journal reported the situation as follows: “The news will come as a blow for NC500 tourists, for whom the toilets provided a convenient rest stop.” Residents frequently report the behaviour of users of the NC500 as ‘utterly disgusting’.

The same problem afflicts the residents of Skye, overrun with tourists to the point where the housing crisis is so acute people can’t get basic trades, or people to staff their hotels or businesses because there’s nowhere for anyone to live. They are going to have to close the C1237 road between Merkadale and Glenbrittle on Skye because the single-track roads are crumbling under the strain of the 200,000 visitors. RET, which should have been applied to residents only has made the same crisis visit much of our islands.

All across Europe (‘Entrance fees, visitor zones and taxes: how Europe’s biggest cities are tackling overtourism‘) countries are facing the same problems. Ironically, Scotland, like Norway will see increasing tourism as southern Europe is either on fire – or uncomfortably hot.

While the visitors levy – or tourism tax – will bring at least some income to theme-parks like Edinburgh – it is a case of too little too late. An alternative approach would be not just to tax tourists or cruise visitors or camper vans but to actually change the plan to just use them as a cash cow to the detriment of everything and anyone else. Change the metric from quantity to quality, design cities for people who live in them not just people who visit them, diversify the rural economy beyond the single business of tourism and have a real strategy for climate-friendly tourism. Where is the plan to reduce flights into (and out of) Scotland? Where is the plan to reduce traffic on the roads and discourage tourists from driving? There is none, instead we set up the NC500 as a race-course,