Mass tourism suffocating Europe: Standard Time talk show S2E03
Move up, people! Move up! We have seven minutes to experience the Sagrada Família of Barcelona, then 15 more for the Notre Dame of Paris. And then we have butter cookies to eat in Copenhagen, gulyás in Budapest, and this all has to happen within the hour, so you'll have the rest of the evening to go to the casino or get wasted and puke on street corners. Chop, chop! When I was a boy, which was quite a few weeks ago… - Two, three? - At least! We had problems with the Welsh because people were buying cottages and properties in Wales. People that lived in Birmingham and Manchester and particularly the industrial cities of the North. And when they bought those houses, the locals would burn them down. All the houses or former houses are turning into Airbnbs or other short-term rentals.
We are seeing how we have less housing, but also how rental costs are increasing. The two most under-regulated fields are the property market and mass tourism. Where the two meet, it ends in disaster. The tourist decides, "Okay, I want to spend less money." "So, maybe if I take the bike, I will get a discount." "Then I will use the bike instead of renting a car."
This has a direct, great impact on our community. This is the carrot, not the stick. Júlia, you're going to have to put down the stick because the tourists are not going to go away if you beat them.
We get the tourists we deserve. Hello, and welcome to Standard Time, our talk show exploring European matters and why Europe matters. I'm your host, Réka Kinga Papp, and we release new episodes every second Thursday. So, don't miss out, hit the subscribe button, and set at least 12 alarms, so you always know when an episode drops. Also, don't forget to turn the subtitles on in one of the 15 languages that we offer, because we've got you covered! Let us know in the comments what your mother tongue is.
Today, we are going to talk about mass tourism. When consumers swarm like cicadas, or sometimes like locusts, all over Europe, mostly in summer, to experience life in places that their presence makes unliveable. Because boy, when we love a place, we love it to death! Most of us love to travel.
Well, I only travel if somebody else pays for it. That's usually a conference or project meeting, sometimes a particularly illustrious funeral. Most Europeans, however, do love to travel, especially those who can afford it.
But popular cities across Europe cannot seem to afford to receive these many tourists. Let's start with Venice, which has a population of 55,000 people and an influx of 20 million tourists every year. Venice is a fantastic feat of medieval architecture, and a unique place to behold, but most who come to behold it arrive by cruise ship and spend only a few hours there. Yes, only a few hours. How? Why?
I usually need two working days to assess a small farmer's market, and then weeks and weeks to see all the libraries. Yes, the factory libraries too. These rapid visits leave Venice with little income or benefit for the local economy, but great strain on traffic, public spaces and of course, infrastructure. This time span does not allow for meaningful cultural exchange. It's barely enough to put a tick on your arbitrary bucket list. Venice offers few job opportunities besides tourism, and housing prices are through the roof.
Owners convert what could be family homes and lower income rentals into lucrative short-term holiday accommodations, which is leading to depopulation. The city's permanent residents have decreased from 120,000 to 55,000 over the last three decades, which means it has almost halved. According to Jonathan Keats, chairman of Venice in Peril, if the population falls lower than 40,000, Venice will not be a viable, living city any longer because despite all the Disney dreams, it's not particularly fun to live in a theme park, which is exactly what Venice is turning into. Amsterdam has recently become the Venice of the North, with its own 20 million tourists a year.
Party tourism has centred the famous red-light district as well as the coffee shops selling weed legally, but visitors populate most of the historical old town streets for any old attraction. And let me tell you, some of them have left their good manners back at home. Typical offensive behaviour includes public urination, vomiting, littering, general drunkenness, and, of course, noise.
And you wouldn't guess… But, somehow, British male tourists are the most notorious offenders. Come on, people! There's an incredible invention called the toilet where you can urinate, vomit, and text your ex while drunk, all in one place. This disruptive party tourism has led the government to create an ad that specifically targets 18- to 35-year-old English men to stay away from Amsterdam, showing a drunk guy being handcuffed by police, fingerprinted, and having their mugshot taken. But I'm afraid this just makes this destination potentially more "epic" for some dumdums.
These problems also aren't restricted to the routes of 19th century English gentry Grand Tours. The European wage vacuum creates wildly different prices across the continent, and many people travel to cheaper countries to kick back and feel wealthy for once. Even though Southern and Eastern European countries realise a lot of income from this, it also disrupts their local economies, especially when it comes to housing markets, public transport and cultural life. This is as true in Prague and Budapest as it is in Mallorca or Barcelona, where residents have started protesting the effects of a lopsided economy. And some of them even want to cap the number of incoming tourists.
This brings me to today's guests. Júlia Isern is a Mallorcan lawyer and EU Climate Pact Ambassador. She is the spokesperson for Less Tourism, More Life. This platform has successfully brought the issue of overtourism to the forefront of public discourse. Bálint Kádár is an architect, curator, and urbanism scholar from Budapest.
He has researched urban tourism for decades now, including in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, but also in Mallorca. Alan Godsave is a Londoner, who has lived and worked in Central and Eastern Europe for the past 25 years. He is a member of the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing and is the programme director at the Budapest International Business School. Thank you so much for joining us and taking the time. I'd like to start with you, Júlia.
You guys have been protesting tourism and mass tourism quite fiercely recently and for quite some time as well, but it has got much fiercer recently. So, please tell us about the general situation on Mallorca, and why you have chosen this very explicit path, as opposed to mild recommendations. Okay. Thank you for inviting us. So, Mallorca has had a tourist industry since the 1960s, but over these last 10 to 20 years the situation has actually got worse. Last year, we received 18 million tourists on an island with 1.2 million inhabitants.
As a result, the entire infrastructure and all systems are unable to cope with this increase in population. We don't have enough houses to welcome all the people, and at the same time, all the workers and all the locals that we have there. We are seeing how the local population is increasing because of the import of workers, but tourists are also increasing. There is also the issue of urbanisation, where all the houses or former houses are turning into Airbnbs or other short-term rentals. We are seeing how we have less housing, but also how rental costs are increasing in such a way that the Balearic Islands are the area with the highest rent in the whole of Spain. Not only for renting, but also for buying houses.
We see how one out of four houses in the Balearic Islands is purchased by foreigners. Actually, the entire land, the whole infrastructure, everything is transforming into a tourism industry. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that local businesses are geared towards tourism.
The Balearic Islands are islands. So, land space is very limited. This is why the situation is more extreme on the islands than in the rest of continental Europe, because we don't have space to build more. So, we are seeing how this is impacting the land on an environmental level, and we are no longer investing in agriculture because we are prioritising tourism over that. So, what we are asking, is to diversify our economy. To, for example, invest in manufacturing companies which also makes us sovereign.
To have our own products, to invest in agriculture, to prioritise agricultural land over land for tourism. Some villages on Mallorca are already suffering cuts to the water supply because we don't have enough water, so we locals have to limit the water that we consume. But these limits are not seen in the tourism industry. This means that the climate in the Balearic Islands is turning into a climate more similar to that of the Sahara. It's way hotter. Consequently, it is only going to get hotter for us, but also for tourists.
So, obviously, tourists won't be prioritising Mallorca due to that. Maybe they will go to other areas in Spain, which are going to be a bit less hot. What then? We are again left without any plan B.
I think there is a separate universe of arguments that we could go into regarding the whole phenomenon of private pools, and especially my favourite private pools in the close vicinity of beaches. Which makes very little sense to me, personally, to be honest. I would understand if there were no water around that you would want to go for a swim.
Not necessarily private, either, but I'm this commie who grew up in libraries and likes to borrow and share. Phew, peasants! But, let me now come back to Alan. I want you guys to butt heads or maybe agree with each other because you are on a very different platform. You don't really oppose mass tourism. I wouldn't subscribe to the idea of mass tourism. - That's a starter. - Oh, come on!
- I was hoping! - Sorry about that. No, no, no. In fact, I don't subscribe to the idea. Júlia, I'm sorry. The whole concept of overtourism, I think, is a mistake. It's not overtourism.
All the things that you've described, and I have absolute agreement and sympathy for all the things you talked about… There are things that are in evidence in many other parts of the world as well, it's not just you. It's happening everywhere with Airbnb and all of the other things, the budget airlines and all the underlying causes. But they are planning issues. Now, if you go on and on about overtourism, what you're actually doing, is shifting the blame to the tourist. And it's not the tourist's fault.
It's the fault of the regulation. If the regulations have been in place to control the number of Airbnb units, if the regulations were in place to limit the number of incoming tourists… You have a good basis, you are islands. You can limit the number of people that come there, the number of flights.
You have the tools in your hand. It's just that they have simply not been used. So, I stand my ground on the fact that it's not the fault of the tourists. We get the tourists we deserve if you provide the facilities.
I mean, would you agree? Yes. If you provide the facilities, if you provide the cheap beer and the cheap flights. I mean, it used to be that you had a choice between fight or flight. Now you can have both. You can get a flight, and you can go somewhere and have a good fight.
We don't want those kinds of tourists, but the fact that we allow them to come in, it's all regulation, I'm sorry. It's not the fault of the tourists. I think you're attacking the wrong people and it's not working. Because ever since you've started the campaign, the number of tourists has continued to rise. And that's the same as in your other results.
And the great risk, I believe, in what you're doing… You have my absolute sympathy as to why you're doing it, but I think you're going about it the wrong way. Because you're not going to frighten away what we call in English the yobbers, the drinkers, the lager louts, and such people, who are the ones you really want to get rid of. You're going to frighten away the families, but the others will continue to come.
Right now, this mass tourism leads to a very interesting phenomenon that everybody, especially in Western societies, has the right to spend an overseas vacation at least once a year. Before, it was a once in a lifetime. Once in a lifetime, I went to Paris… OK, we're now talking upper middle class, or upwards of lower middle class.
Of course, but that's the message that society gets… - …from TV, from Instagram. So, now… - Sure, that's the aspiration. This is the aspiration of even the lowest wageworker. And they strive for that. - I understand. - They do everything to get it. I remember the first time I saw the sea at Rijeka, I was jumping out of the car.
So, in the end, this is a social issue. That's why I think the term overtourism is correct because somehow, humanity got itself into this spiral, this vicious circle of, "No, we cannot live without tourism." So, we cause overtourism. And I think it's important to say that in order to understand your argument of planning. Because that's how Júlia can understand that it's impossible to fight because it's a social phenomenon.
It's a bad social phenomenon, but it's a social phenomenon. And it's not about fighting it, but regulating it. 35% of the GDP in Mallorca is from tourism, 30% of the employment. And I'm with you entirely, Júlia, I think that balance is wrong. I think you have an overdependence on tourism and there should be a greater balance.
But then, this is a matter of regulation. There is such a thing as carrying capacity that we teach in tourism. One of the fundamental mistakes that is made with carrying capacity is, we don't measure it properly. We look at the international tourists, who at one time were considered to be the only tourists on the planet. Then after COVID-19, we discovered the domestic tourists because, all of a sudden, we needed them to keep our tourism running. But there's a third bunch of tourists, people like us, who live in a tourist place like Budapest.
And, in Mallorca, you do touristy things. I do touristy things in Budapest. - I sometimes behave like a tourist. - Me too. - I'm from… - Yes, right. Yes. You see? So, you've got to count those people into the numbers when you're calculating the carrying capacity. Most tourism authorities don't do that.
Have you heard of our friends over at Talk Eastern Europe Podcast? If you haven't, well, you should. Because this is a fantastic podcast with the editors and contributors of our partner journal, New Eastern Europe, who talk all things regional, including politics, culture, culture wars included, and is just fantastic to listen to. So, if you have the time, or even if you don't, give them a listen, and you'll be thankful you did. Here, very soon, we arrive at the biggest and most pervasive problem that many of these settlements struggle with, and which Júlia also opened with: housing.
There's a continent-wide housing crisis all across Europe. So, somehow, when unplanned and unmitigated tourism, or let's just say, commodified trash tourism, as I call it… - The lowest added-value tourism. - Yes. When it floods your settlements and intervenes in housing markets and in the local economy, you have a catastrophe on your hands. In many places, municipalities are trying to regulate short-term rentals like Airbnb, Booking.com, whatever, you can have at it. And of course, there are people, especially real-estate owners who make slightly less-taxed income from these sources, who are very much against this kind of regulation.
But at the same time, living prices or housing prices have exceeded expectable income in most places. In Ljubljana, you can't live on local wages. - Right, yes. - Even if you're mid middle class. Where do we intervene here? What's the first point of intervention? Júlia, what would be your suggestion for the housing market? Two years ago, the government put a cap on the number of houses that could be bought by foreigners. It was accepted by the courts in the Balearic Islands. When the government changes, it will be seen as limiting the market, and the cap will disappear.
Or we will continue to encourage foreigners to buy houses. We do believe we need to cap that, and we need to limit it. We need to prioritise young people that can… I mean, you see the numbers in Spain.
We are 30 years old when we are able to leave our parents' home because our salaries don't provide enough money to buy a house. Oh my God, where does that leave me with three teenagers? Oh my God! - Just be careful with those! - Right, yes. Right, okay. But the two most under-regulated fields are the property market and mass tourism. Where the two meet, it ends in disaster. But the solution is never there because it's always too complicated.
Politically, nobody dares to realise a simple and effective solution. One example: There is no property tax saying that if somebody is living in a property – in Hungary, we have a residency clause – then you don't pay anything. If not, you pay a lot of tax. For empty property, that would resolve many things. For tourism rentals, yes, you can rent it out, but you need to pay a lot more taxes.
That one percentage of tax, just one simple thing would resolve it all. Nobody wants to do it. This brings in a major aspect which is not talked about as often as I think it should be. And that's the fact that if you don't have permanent residence somewhere, the electorate goes extinct.
If you only have the property owners, who don't live there, then they are going to inform political decisions, which we see very acutely in the UK, for example. Where, basically, your voting expectations are completely defined by whether you own property. But in Hungary, this is working more or less because in the districts of Budapest, mayors of districts have imposed laws against Airbnb, and against bars open after midnight. Because they rely on their voting residents, and they don't really care about tourists at all because they have no votes. Réka, you mentioned the UK, and I realised that when I was a boy, which was quite a few weeks ago… - Two, three? - At least! We had problems with the Welsh, that lot that live over on the left-hand side of the British Isles, because people were buying cottages and properties in Wales.
People that lived in Birmingham and Manchester and particularly the industrial cities of the North. And when they bought those houses, the locals would burn them down. Yes. I mean…
I'm glad you haven't reached that stage, Júlia, at the moment. Please don't you copy this as a play book, but the reason that I'm making the point is, this has been around for 50 or 60 years. In a sense, the whole housing crisis right now does, if not completely repeat, rhyme with the housing crises of the early 20th century. So, let's say 100 years ago… between 150 and 100 years ago, when Europe was very rapidly urbanising, these populations were flooding to the cities. With an urban population that was under-serviced, that lived in horrific conditions and was often simply seen as a problem.
But it's a problem with a population that the wealth of the city depends on as well. So, it's not like they're not contributing. They're the primary cornerstone of these settlements growing up. So, I'm very much looking to you, Bálint, whether you think there can be some kind of a point of intervention for a longer-term type of planning.
Every city is different. I want to give you an example, which, of course, I researched: The difference between Prague and Budapest. In the 1990s, they had a big problem in Prague because tourism discovered these cities very suddenly, while they were simultaneously privatising the property market and undergoing a restitution process to return to their original owners all the palaces and historical buildings in the city centre. Who were the prior owners? Well, they were the nephews… People who never had anything to do with the property market.
So, they said, "Okay, I have this." "What do I do with it?" "I have people renting it." "I cannot maintain the building, so I just sell it." "To whom? Who has capital?" All the countries from other parts of the world who had investors. So, in the end, in the centre of Prague, these investors had the power to displace the local population and create a void in the centre with only hotels, tourist services, etc. The locals were moved, not to the outskirts, but around the centre.
In Budapest, this never happened, as we didn't have the restitution. So, everyone in Budapest simply owned the apartment they had lived in previously after 1990. There were no big investors buying historic buildings.
Now, what did it mean that in the 1990s and 2000s, Budapest did not have the concentrated tourism of Prague? The city centre was empty, the locals lived around the ring. Airbnb changed everything. In Prague, Airbnb finally made it easy for all private individuals to rent out their apartments. So, the centrality actually became more dispersed, and Prague could become a better experience for tourists and not too bad for locals.
Because, since 2010, tourists have been moving away from the centre to Airbnbs in nice neighbourhoods together with locals, to explore each other's culture. In Budapest, on the other hand, Airbnb bought the new Prague, so all apartment owners in the centre rented them out to tourists. So, this concentration never happened. And the carrying capacity is something that we teach, but as you said, it's very difficult to back it with exact numbers. Because which carrying capacity do we mean? Of a port? Okay, that we can have.
Of an airport? Okay, we can have that. But for a city, yes, you have to count the number of locals, how they live there and how the streets are used… And can you make little changes or big policies? The economic carrying capacity, social carrying capacity. It's not just a question of counting the inhabitants. There's a lot more to carrying capacity than that.
And they all have to be looked at. I think as a smaller, but to me, personally, important addition: In the noughties and 2010s, inner-city districts in Budapest and in other big cities in Hungary very systematically started to filtrate their own population, get rid of the old tenants, and try to call in this kind of investment money. Yes, but look at what Budapest succeeded in doing.
They created additional areas. Look at Városliget. I remember when Városliget was a place that nobody would dare go. It was full of drug addicts. It was like a bomb site.
Now, it's a major resort area with a concert hall, a museum, and a decent park. So, in Budapest, we are expanding the number of areas and, therefore, we are spreading the load. The problem that cities like Barcelona have, is that they are not spreading the load, the tourists. The same is true for Venice. It's the second and third street syndrome, which I'm sure you know about.
You've got the main street, which is absolutely heaving with bodies. You've got one street back with a little bit going on, and then the second and third streets are totally empty. - Yes? - Of course. That's what we've got to develop, and see where it can be planned. But can you learn from Budapest? You cannot, it's a different city.
Why can't you? Because it's not one city. - Right. - These are 22 cities. All districts are totally independent and they are competing for better people, as you say. And you're right about that. But they actually didn't forcibly displace any population. So, it was not a centralised thing.
The centralised aspect was that the different districts were all setting up their own thinking of how to do it. The problem is, most tourism areas, – unless you're talking about creating Disney World – most tourism areas exist, and we try and shoehorn tourism onto them. But whereas with Disney, they create the site, they've got the transportation, they've got the accommodation, they've got the catering. Everything is planned, everything is limited. That doesn't happen with tourism.
Tourism comes to these places. The streets are already there, they're already narrow. The accommodation, the facilities and everything, are already there. So, the challenge is to retrofit sustainable tourism policies into areas that were, frankly, never designed for tourism. No, because they became sought after because they were interesting places where people lived… Yes, for either education, or commerce, or… Most tourism is a shared thing. That's why, I am adamant that we have to count the locals in our equation when we're looking at those carrying capacities.
That's where I believe we've made the fundamental error. What it brings to my mind is the kind of tourist infrastructure that has been built throughout the past 60 years or 80 years very vigorously. And that's countryside tourism all across Europe.
There's a lot of money being poured into it by the EU. I don't recognise that there is as much interest as there is development money poured into it. The Ruhr region in Germany is a great success story. The mining and heavy industries, of course, closed in the 1970s and 80s.
The area was made European capital of culture, which was not based in one city, but in a region, and opened all the old mines and old industries for tourists. They even put swimming pools in mines, and so on. That became a really successful rural destination. The other thing is bicycle tourism in Austria, - Like in Krems, in the Wachau area. - Yes. 25 years ago, nobody believed that bicycle tourists would do any good, but they strategically developed that.
They made bicycle routes on both sides of the Danube, bridges and little ferries, and many little industries. Today, more than half of the tourist income of the Wachau region, which is a World Heritage region now, comes from bicycle tourism. They can make a good living from it because they live off their own products like wine and apricots, and they sell that, and so on. And they're very happy. So, that's something we could recommend for Mallorca. Yes, local agriculture can serve as a base for tourism.
It's not about cruise ships quickly going to Palma to see the cathedral. It's about dispersing tourism and using local resources. And when it comes to bicycle tourism, this country for the most part is criminally flat. But I want to come back to you, Júlia, because you mentioned agriculture. I think in European development discourse, even though the EU invests most of its budget into agriculture, from the development side, it's always large-scale agriculture, or for the most part, it's large-scale, industrial agriculture.
But I doubt that in the case of Mallorca, you guys want to grow corn as an alternative. So, can you tell us about the local heritage agriculture that could develop, or you are proposing to develop to diversify the island's income and economy? Well, agriculture is a very specific and unique topic. What we're asking is, to identify the needs of the population and improve the well-being of the local population. Because we also ask ourselves the question: Tourism, for what? And tourism for whom? Because what we're now seeing is that since everyone is focusing on the tourism industry, we are losing many traditional jobs in the agricultural sector. And with that, we also lose our culture because aligned with agriculture, there was a tradition, there was music, there were ways of living. What we need is to diversify.
We cannot have an economy where 45% of our economy derives from tourism. So, yes, we need a plan. We need to plan with a government that understands that it cannot simply let things continue as they are organically because then the big lobby industries have the power. They obviously have their individual interests, which are nowhere near prioritising the interest, the well-being, and the economic interests of the local population. If you like what you see, and if we've managed to make you laugh at least once, please support our work and go to patreon.com/Eurozine.
That's the magazine presenting this show. You can pledge as little as €5 a month, or whatever you can afford, and you'll get access to bonus materials, early access, and even get to suggest topics and questions. Now, back to the show. You take us back to an issue that is very close to my heart: The question of the culture of tourism and both the role of culture and local culture in tourism because supposedly we're going there for this in the first place. If I go to Copenhagen, I don't go there to see the same old H&M that I see in every main street. I go there because I want to smell cooking butter on all the streets.
How does the culture of tourism then change? How do you intervene in this field? Because it's not just one singular regulation. And if you just go by pricing up, that means that from the incoming people, you're going to lose a gigantic proportion of those, who can't afford to go for luxury. Tourism is not as price-sensitive as many people think. Really, the price elasticity of tourism is very limited indeed.
I think that radical solutions are missing from politics. And one of the radical solutions for Mallorca, let's use this example… - Because I've been there. - Because you've already been there. I had this idea there because I didn't only see overtourism, I also saw the rural landscape struggling, like in Hungary or in all Europe, on getting people work in agriculture. In Mallorca, there's nobody to take care of plantations because it's manual work. And who would want that kind of work? Correct me if I'm wrong, but young people definitely want a desk job or a superior job, or even to be a waiter at a café, but not to pick the olives and to care for the land. Why don't we turn it around, saying that we have to limit the number of tourists going to Mallorca? What if we give a green card to every tourist who spends five days on an olive farm, visiting something else by night, and then spends the weekend on the beach? That's the entry.
That has a package and a cost. - And then… - Wait, wait, wait! Spend five days on an olive farm… - Working! Working on the farm. - Tasting and spending money… - You want to get unskilled labour… - Yes! Yes! - …onto these plantations. - And I would… Have you ever been to a harvest? - Of course! I'm a winegrower, so… - I don't want to be crass, but… - I'm a winegrower, that's why… - Oh my God! It's not a new idea. - I know that's added work. - It happened in England.
In the early 20th century, even at the end of the 19th century, the poor families from London would go out to the hop fields in Kent and pick the hops. - Until summer! - Yes. They would work during the day, and then they would have a big party in the evening.
Of course, because the breweries were running it, the beer was free, and they laid on entertainment. So, they worked during the day, and they partied, they had the fresh air. They had the exposure to the countryside, and everybody was a winner. What I'm trying to say is to treat tourists and tourism as a resource. It is an economic resource, everyone knows that.
But is it enough as a resource? No. Because for me, overtourism exists because people want too badly to go and see new things. That's a social issue. It exists.
So why not use that and say, "Okay, you can go, but…" "You can only go, if…" "You can only go if you contribute to local society in some way." Picking olives is one way, but there are other ways. Picking up rubbish off the beach. - Okay. - Yes. - Alright. Yes. - I can imagine that stay too. - In real life. - Teaching English to the locals.
- That's what I want to say. - Right. - Thank you. - Okay. There we are. Sorry, Júlia.
What you're talking about is a great solution. It's what is called regenerative tourism. It's a new model, a generative model of tourism, where the local not only doesn't add something negative, but it adds something positive.
If you want to promote certain behaviours, for example, the use of bicycles instead of cars, or using less water or prioritising going to a local restaurant, then you would get a discount on your final account in the hotel. So, this would be a way, not only picking olives – I would love to see that, to be honest. It's much harder labour than people imagine. It would be easier, right? If a local tourist decides, "Okay, I want to spend less money." "So, maybe if I take the bike, I will get a discount."
"Then I will use the bike instead of renting a car." This has a direct, great impact on our community. This is the carrot, not the stick.
Júlia, you're going to have to put down the stick because the tourists are not going to go away if you beat them and throw things at them and spray "TOURISTS, GO HOME!" on the walls. They might come specifically for the steak, though. That depends on the tourist, yes. But, honestly, that kind of strategy is not going to work because as we know, tourism is incredibly resilient. With all the things that go on in the world, the tourists just keep coming back. Obviously, we are not asking tourists not to come.
Everyone travels, we understand that. We need to reset our mindset. And, as a basis for that, we believe that we need to claim that tourism is not a right, it's a luxury. Maybe we need to rethink, perhaps we cannot travel as much.
Maybe we cannot go visit Germany for a weekend. Maybe we would love to, but perhaps we need to change our mindset. I'm very much in favour of shorter-distance tourism as well. Like, whenever somebody here tells me that they want to go somewhere exotic, I tell them, "Why not go to Košice or Zrenjanin?" Who knows? Maybe Brașov, that's very different. So, I think the perspective also with what you want to see, and what you actually see when you go there, is somewhat amiss, at least in popular culture, for sure. I hop on a plane, as if distance didn't matter, and land somewhere for a weekend, where I don't really see the place.
I don't really engage with the place. I think it's all about the offers that these places have, and it's about people's mindsets. To take a photo at the seaside or in Paris, that's meaningful. To take a photo in the countryside, here, it's not meaningful for them. But that's about education, media, policies, and politics on how to change that.
And saying no, what is meaningful is when you have a great time, and you experience something authentic. Once society and people in society will find peace in consuming less, less travel, less air, fewer miles, less whatever, and living more experiences, living more authentic… - …and healthy and good things… - Yes! Yes. …then they will not need to travel more than what they can travel on their own without aeroplanes.
Maybe we all need to read a bit more Goethe and know that once you actually make it to Rome, you're going to be so disappointed in the Colosseum. - It's not going to be massive. - Actually, I have good news. Because all the research that we're doing shows that people are moving towards experiences. It's the experiential side of tourism. Initially, tourism during the Industrial Revolution, when people could get on a train and go to the seaside, was all about laying on the beach and chilling out.
But change is as good as a rest. Then we started to focus on going to destinations. But most people, certainly by the time they reach my age, they've completed their bucket list. So, then we move towards experiences.
Júlia, I want to ask you a closing question. For you as a Mallorcan, what would be something that you really want to see as a tourist, and with what attitude would you go there? At this point, I've also become very critical of tourism. That's why I try to engage in as little tourism as possible. What I prioritise, is going to places where I have friends, or where I know people.
They show you their perception of the city and the island. I love to receive friends on Mallorca, for example, and show them the island because it's so beautiful. I love it so much that I love to share this with others. So, I believe it's the same when, even if you travel to the other side of the world, if you do it with a local, then you can be sure that you are not a product.
You're not sold an experience because someone at a desk decided what was good to take money from you. So, this would be more than a place. I would say that this would be my top experience for tourism. Alan, I understand that your bucket list might have many ticks, but maybe there's something left… - …that you'd really want to see. - Actually, there is one. We are going to achieve this in November.
We are going to Africa for a wedding of some friends of ours. So, we get the chance to experience the real culture of Uganda. We will fly into Entebbe. We will go to a local village. There will be three different wedding ceremonies that they go through, and we are so much looking forward to that.
- Oh, weddings are really the best. - Yes! - It's going to be amazing. - Even bad weddings are good. Yes, I'm told I have to wear a long white dress, sort of like a night shirt.
Also, as a climate control. - Yes. Yes. - The reflection is going to work. So, that's me, that's the last tick in the box. - Bálint? - My dream vacation is… …in a place where I've already been, and I know it. So, I can really immerse myself. And be with people that are not my people, but we know each other, and we reconnect.
So, it's also a community. But, of course, if it has to be something new, it's still the same. I have to know the language because then I can understand the place. And I have to be able to move freely, which is quite difficult in certain parts of the world. So, it's best to have somebody local to visit.
If we fulfil these things… In a country, where maybe Spanish, Italian and, of course, English are spoken, and I can move freely, and have a few locals to wander around with, then it's my preferred destination. Yes, that's Disneyland. Who's local there? Well, they do speak English, Italian, and French. Thank you so much! If somebody is in desperate need of a tourist destination and wants to plan without the locals in place, I highly recommend touring the grand libraries of Helsinki and all the Baltic countries. The National Library in Riga is fantastic.
It's spectacular and looks like a ziggurat – it's amazing! And there's a piano left in every second corner for some reason. So, I would encourage everyone to check out these libraries because they are not the conventionally touristy places. But there's local life as well, and sometimes a really nice canteen. Thank you so much! I believe we have very effectively explained to Júlia everything she already knew. Now we want to know, would you consider travelling off-season? Have you tried it already? Do you want to ban Airbnbs, or maybe encourage them? And what's your favourite kind of vacation? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below and give us a like and subscribe while you're already rummaging down there! This talk show is presented by Eurozine.
If you haven't heard of it, you should check it out right now! Because this online magazine trades in a scarcity item, and that's insight. Eurozine publishes thoughtful long-form articles from more than a hundred partner journals across dozens of European languages. And you have access to it, all for free. Display Europe is the force behind this project. It's a content-sharing platform that offers you articles, podcasts, and videos about European politics and culture in 15 different languages. And yes, they don't abuse your user data.
I know it's unbelievable, but possible. Go check them out at DisplayEurope.eu. This programme is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the European Cultural Foundation. Importantly, the views and opinions expressed here are those of the speakers and the authors only.
They do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them. Not that we would mind them taking advice from us, though. Subtitles: Julia Sobota © 2024 Eurozine GmbH
2024-10-24 10:01
