Last year, around 52% of the UK population went on holiday abroad. A statistic that highlights how cemented the idea of a foreign holiday has become within the British psyche.
The top three destinations were Spain, France and Italy, and the top type of trip was a beach holiday. Which suggests that sun, relaxation and convenience were top of the list for British holidaymakers. And as ever, our foreign hosts welcomed us with open arms as they poured the pina coladas and ushered us towards the sun loungers. Didn’t they?
Not exactly. Each year, the bienvenida becomes a bit more conditional. These days certain tourists are more welcome than others. And the strength of the welcome is less related to our spending power, language skills or point of departure; and more to do with our behaviour when we’re there.
In a record-breaking year for world wide tourism, places are prioritising quality tourism over quantity. So we’re putting down the selfie stick for a few minutes to look at what it means to be a tourist in 2024.
When we visit
Most tourists are at the mercy of work schedules and school holidays. So we travel when we can, often within an 8 week window. In an ideal world however, tourist destinations would space their visitors out evenly with more off-peak footfall.
In April 2024, Venice introduced a €5 entrance fee into the city centre designed to limit the peak traffic. The initiative has so far raised €2.43m for the city, although initial findings suggest the fee is not sufficient to deter would-be tourists from coming to the centre, and so the local authority is already considering doubling it for next year.
Indeed, it is cheap in comparison with some other locations. Bhutan, for example, charges visitors $100 per day to remain in the country. This “Sustainable Development Fee” goes towards the natural environment, to provide free education and free health care for its citizens.
These taxes can have very different outcomes depending on their location. For major cities like Paris or Venice, tourists demand specific attractions and culture, so an extra tax usually has very little bearing on visitor numbers. Yet with destinations that are perceived as substitutable – e.g. beaches – tourist taxes can push holidaymakers to a new destination altogether and the country loses the revenue entirely. No one said policy was easy!
How we get around
A sudden influx of people puts extreme strain on local transport infrastructure. Ideally. cities want people travelling on foot, on bicycles or on off-peak public transport.
In Tokyo, the local residents were struggling to get onto public transport just to get to and from work, so the city rolled out a peak-hour pricing plan for trains in a bid to even out local train services. Meanwhile, Corfu residents are fed up with open-top buses crawling through the town and creating gridlocked roads and are demanding action from the local government.
Where we sleep
In some major cities, every available bed taken by a tourist is to the exclusion of the local residents.
Last June, Barcelona announced plans to ban short term rentals in the city starting in November 2028, a strategy designed to solve their ongoing housing crisis. Short term rentals can often do more damage to local areas than meets the eye. Aside from the expected inflation in house prices, holiday rentals force young people out of their towns, indirectly creating a shortage of workers where they are most needed to service the tourism industry. This problem reached boiling point in July as 3,000 people took to the streets spraying tourists with water and shouting “tourists go home”.
Hotels are no panacea either. Amsterdam faces similar housing problems to Barcelona, so has banned the construction of new hotels in an effort to keep the city liveable for residents and visitors.
What tourist activities we engage in
In 2024, the city of Copenhagen announced that it was to reward tourists who make a “positive change” to the city through their CopenPay program. Whereby if tourists engage in environmentally friendly actions such as cleaning up the city or cycling from location to location the city will thank them with free lunches, coffees, kayak tours and museum tickets.
Oslo also launched a viral video that encourages travellers to look beyond the well-worn tourist paths. Their campaign asks, with no little irony “if you don’t have to stand in line for a couple of hours, is it even worth seeing”? This movement is part of a trend for visitors to see the lesser sights, or life-see rather than sight see, in the search for a more authentic experience.
What we take pictures of
In 2019, the Vienna Tourist Board launched a brilliant campaign entitled “Enjoy Vienna, Not #Vienna”, whose goal was to encourage visitors to see the city with their eyes rather than their smartphones. Or as they put it, to “Unhashtag your vacation”.
More recently, Kyoto banned tourists from parts of their geisha district amid reports of bad behaviour and selfie-takers disrupting the performances of the traditional entertainers.
How we choose to enjoy ourselves
Some destinations have struggled against the weight of their own long standing reputations.
Since 2021, Amsterdam has been actively trying to shake its name as a destination for debauchery. The city has launched several digital campaigns targeting UK men aged 18 to 35 to discourage sex and drug tourism. The message for stag parties was typically blunt – “don’t come to Amsterdam”. More recently, it doubled down on this message by banning cruise ships from the city’s port.
Miami Beach in Florida has also been urging its more infamous visitor demographic to stay away. The city released a viral video “breaking up with Spring Break”, and promising to introduce curfews, security checkpoints, and arrests for drug possession and violence in an effort to dissuade unruly crowds.
How we respect the local culture
Locals once shrugged off tourist misadventures as the collateral damage of the tourism economy. However with each passing year there is less tolerance towards disrespect of local culture, landmarks or traditions.
Some examples? Well, don’t strip naked and gatecrash a temple ceremony. Don’t strip naked on a sacred mountain. Basically don’t strip naked anywhere except in your bedroom.
So stay at home next year?
Erm, have you seen our weather? Maybe just tweak the formula. Consider “destination dupes”, the alternatives to the more popular holiday spots, like Paros instead of Santorini or Palermo instead of Lisbon. Consider avoiding the peak times, the packed transport routes and the most popular sights. And consider how your trip pays back to your hosts. They will thank you for it.