Despite being some of England’s most beautiful areas, the city of Bath and the Lake District are now two of our most over-touristed areas. This means that in high season, they are grid-locked with traffic, litter and noise. Same happens obviously in London. And also in the second-most visited place of Stratford-upon-Avon (thanks to Mr Shakespeare!)
Overtourism is now an issue, with certain destinations being visited by way too many people. This in turn puts pressure on the planet (climate change from fossil fuels say for families being encouraged to visit Florida’s Disneyworld for a bucket list) or en-masse tourists causing danger to coral reefs from cruise ships, or disturbance to whales in Boston. Of course, animals suffer too for both food and ‘entertainment’.
What the pandemic taught is that staying close to home can be nice, and some of the best holidays you can have are often right on your doorstep. Who hasn’t got wonderful memories of slurping a knickerbocker glory at a seaside cafe, and then taking a family walk in the rain along a pier?
Modern holidays these days are more about traffic jams, over-priced car parks, long waits at airports, chain-store hotels (and some western tour operators still promote bullfights etc to their customers).
The main areas suffering with over-tourism in England are the Lake District and the city of Bath (two of our most naturally beautiful areas that end up swarmed with litter at the end of the holiday season).
Residents in the nearby Cotswolds are not happy about the huge influx of coaches in the main towns, during summer. In Newquay, London second-home owners are pushing prices up, so locals can’t afford to buy their own homes.
How Venice is Preventing Overtourism
Although Venice is a beautiful and unique city, it also has issues with overtourism (like Barcelona in Spain, which is now making limits on numbers of tourists to protect local nature and people). Venice does have its own urban area where most people live, but canals are littered with trash and pollution, and this has led to interesting ideas brought into practice by the city.
During the pandemic, people in Italy were shocked to see that the normally murky waters of Venice canals became so clear that you could for the first time in years, see fish swimming underneath. Of course everything went back to normal when normal tourism resumed.
But recently the tourism boards have put limits on numbers of tourists arriving at one time, have installed bans on loud-speakers and also banned large ships from entering the harbour (after a crash a few years before). The city is even intending to add a day-tripper ‘tourist tax’ to help pay for all the litter clean-ups, after visitors go home.
