“The Overwhelmed City”: Physical and Social Over-Capacities of Global Tourism in Venice

Abstract

Venice is one of the most famous iconic destinations and one of the most emblematic cases of overtourism affecting a historic city. Here, social movements against tourism have emerged as a reaction to vastly unsustainable tourist flows that have had dramatic and transformational impacts on Venetians’ lives. The aim of this paper is to investigate how tourism transforms the social, cultural, and everyday geographies of the city. The effects of tourism on the historic city are conceived as a process of continuous transformation and repositioning. Taking into consideration the most tangible daily practices of tourists (eating, sleeping, and buying) and the finer dynamics of Venice’s tourism problem, we translate data on these practices into a temporal and spatial analysis to better understand how dynamic the texture of the city is in relation to the tourism subsystem. A comparison between 2008 and 2019 is conducted to evaluate the impact of tourism on residential uses of the city and measure the sustainability of growth of the tourism facilities. The investigation highlighted an impressive accommodation’s growth, from 8.249 in 2008 to 49.260 in 2019 of bed places (497% growth) in the entire historical city, a similar expansion is also evident in the total number of restaurants that has increased by 160% in all districts and a variations of 4% in shops instead of a population decline of −13% in the same period. In addition, a residents’ survey in spring 2019 was conducted to better understand the intensity of these impacts and the motives for depopulation and the anti-tourism movements. We focus on how tourism, if not managed and planned, radically changes the social and urban structures of the city and the lives of local residents. We conclude by presenting some local theoretical and practical insights into the touristic pressure, provided by citizens’ associations on one side and policymakers on the other.

Deconstructing the Overtourism-Related Social Conflicts

“…Moreover, the way it evolves reminds us of the paradoxical position of a boiled frog, which is not aware of being boiled until it is too late. That is why the cases of the destinations affected by the overtourism syndrome [18,70,79,138] tell stories of violent reactions and disruptive changes, although the experts are convinced that its enablers and symptoms could be visible much earlier. However, the dynamics of a conflict situation is determined by the content of the conflict [139].…”

“…The constant development, liberalism, and boosterism, supported by associated optimism have been the dominant logic within the industry and among its advocates [76][77][78]. The overtourism phenomenon currently observed, particularly in European cities, is the harmful consequence of these policies to the sector's evolution [16,69,[79][80][81][82][83].…”

‘Kill Venice’: a systems thinking conceptualisation of urban life, economy, and resilience in tourist cities

“…In 2017, 274 hotels were present, in the sole insular Old Town (or Historic City), plus 4,808 registered tourist apartments, 377 room rentals, and 291 bed-and-breakfast structures. Altogether, they were offering over 43,000 beds at the end of 2017, increased to 49,260 in 2019, i.e., +500% compared to 2008 (Bertocchi and Visentin, 2019). On the other hand, the most recent statistic figures report 52,143 inhabitants at the end of 2019 (Città di Venezia, 2020): -21.5% in 20 years.…”

A digital response system to mitigate overtourism. The case of Dubrovnik

“…Some indicators related to overtourism at a macro level were developed by Peeters et al (2018) in a report for the European Parliament; other indicators refer to lower levels, such as the European Tourism Indicators System (ETIS) or those developed by Bertocchi and Visentin (2019) for Venice. During this process, technologies, big data, realtime data, and ICT can support monitoring.…”