Disaggregating the Causes of Overtourism - A New Photo
Every week I see and read a new article about the problems of overtourism in the world and how different places are trying to combat it. And the problem tends to be boiled down to “there are too many tourists and that’s bad.” Which is far too simplistic of an answer to be useful, or even accurate. As I wrote a few months ago, there are a lot more people who are able to travel than there used to be. And that heavy foot-traffic by its very nature places wear and tear on sites. But many of the other complaints are not just a function of “too many people,” but come from some significant, and arguably destructive, changes in modern society. So rather than treat “overtourism” as a single monolithic issue, we need to disaggregate the different problems we are talking about when we complain about overtourism. But that would be a very, very long article, so I am going to break this into parts. Starting with Instagram.
People have always wanted to take and share pictures of their travels. I still have a CD-ROM of pictures from a trip to Europe I took with my family well over a decade ago. What we haven’t always had, was Instagram. We have access to amazing pictures not just that our friend took on that trip last year, but that millions of people have taken travelling literally all over the world. And when one of those pictures goes viral, or a celebrity travels to a particular spot, then everyone has to go. And not just because they want to, but because it’s the cool place to go. And you need to get your Instagram shot and show everyone you’re cool too.
Social Media, as a million internet think pieces have written ad infinitum, is performative. It’s not just the experience, but showing the universe your experience in the best possible light (or filter as the case may be). This has objectively changed the way people, my generation at least, travels. One of the major travel advice websites I use, The Culture Trip, has article after article of the best Instagram spots in a given city. Not cultural spots (like the name would suggests), not experiences, but where to take the best pictures specifically to post on the internet. Vox wrote a piece on how after pictures of Antelope Canyon blew up on the internet, so did the droves of travelers coming for their own pictures. According to the writer of the piece, now guides time tours for the best light and discuss with their groups the best filter to use.
This kind of tourism creates surge spots – places where everyone surges to in order to get the best picture. Surge spots are not new. I live in DC and every spring like clockwork literally over a million people descend on the city to see the cherry blossoms. They’ve been doing that since well before there was Instagram – the Cherry Blossom Festival dates back to the 1930s. The difference is that the cherry blossoms in DC are a known quantity. Everyone knows it’s a thing, and have the expectations and the infrastructure to handle it. Several local breweries make annual cherry blossom beer. Those of us who live here shrug, avoid the major areas, and maybe complain about the number of people on the Metro.
DC’s beautiful cherry trees and accompanying tourists. It really is worth checking out at least once.
Places that become Instagram-famous often don’t have that luxury. Especially since so much travel advice and cache is about going to the hidden gem before everyone else gets there. Hidden gems don’t have the infrastructure to handle droves of tourists, because, by definition, they don’t have droves of tourists. And Instagram, or really just something going viral on the internet in general, doesn’t give a place the chance to ramp that infrastructure up. It’s like going from zero to 100 on the tourism scale. Yes, even in the internet age it takes a while for tourists to descend en masse, but so does building infrastructure.
Going viral means that people will descend on places that are not equipped to handle them. If a place is used to getting a thousand tourists a month and suddenly gets 10,000 a month, it will not be able to cope. It can’t be expected to. It’s not just the number of tourists, but the ability of a location to handle them. France got roughly 90 million tourists in 2018, and San Francisco, a city of less than a million people, had more than 25 million tourists. These places, however, are used to having millions of tourists, and can, to an extent, handle it. And I have yet to read articles declaring say Provence or the Golden Gate Bridge are being ruined overtourism. Because while they are certainly Instagram-worthy locations, they are not viral locations made popular because of Instagram and the internet.
The Instagram-tourism problem isn’t one with much of a solution to be honest. Even if you eschew social media, you can’t entirely remove yourself from the equation. Instagram influences what ends up on top 10 travel lists and how we travelers and travel-media consumers decide where to visit. The only suggestion I have is to just avoid band-wagoning for the sake of likes or shares when you decide where to go next. You might still want to go to the cool new place with viral posts of stunning scenery, or you might not. But be thoughtful about it. Don’t rush a place that might not be able to handle it, and maybe only go places that are more than just a photo op. Photo-ops are great, sharing pictures is totally reasonable and understandable, but if the only reason you are going somewhere is to perform for the internet, maybe chose someplace else. There are so many amazing places in the world, and beautiful locations perfect for beautiful pictures. Skipping the place everyone is posting about doesn’t mean you’ll miss out.
