World view Europe Over it? Overtourism is an increasingly pressing problem in the worlds most popular destinations. As the global travel industry recovers, a fine balance is needed to ensure tourism stays sustainable. By Katie McQuater control room on the island of Tronchetto, using mobile phone data to monitor the gathering information about visitors whereabouts and where they come from the authorities hope to use the data to tackle overtourism in the City of Bridges, million visitors annually and a shrinking increase in demand from Scots to take holidays within the country, with particularly high levels of demand to visit In early 2020, the countrys tourist board, VisitScotland, published a guide to ecofriendly tourism, suggesting that visitors skip popular sites such as Edinburgh Castle altogether, and later launched a campaign urging visitors to be responsible, restrictions resulted in increased visitor Recovery mode destination, or parts thereof, that The thought of overcrowding may seem jarring at a time when visions of last years empty streets still linger in the memory, sustainable, according to Caroline Bremner, head of travel research at Overtourism was very much an issue pre-Covid-19 and for now has been is a high risk that visitor demand levels snap back to pre-crisis levels if destination marketing organisations and tourism boards dont implement the right kinds of Many destinations are working with Sustainable Tourism Council, Future of Tourism Coalition, and the Travel Foundation to make the necessary New Zealands tourism minister has outlined plans to reset tourism postpandemic, including planning for fewer international visitors to the country and attempting to diversify the economies of on regulation, such as restricting life of citizens and/or quality of visitors industry rebounds, now is the time to consider how to make destinations more contributor to national and local economies, but unsustainable tourism has become an international issue in recent years, not just in urban areas such as Venice, Barcelona and Edinburgh but also in destinations such as Perus Machu Picchu, the Isle of Skye and Icelands destinations leads to overcrowding and a strain on local infrastructure, and many countries and tourist boards are focusing With international travel suppressed over the past year because of pandemic restrictions, many people have holidayed in their home countries, boosting the local The Scottish Tourism Index, compiled by 56 Degree Insight, measures the views and opinions of the Scottish population in wave of the survey found an overall International tourists have increased from 25 million international arrivals in 1950, to more than International tourist arrivals quarter of 2021 as travel restrictions remained in Amsterdams visitor numbers passed 20 million in 2018, doubling in 20 years to remove Dubrovniks where the number of visitors is growing every year, a project by d-Lab, a programme of Mobile World Capital Barcelona, used mobile phone data and the internet of things to understand more about the activities and behaviour of tourists in the city, including at Berlin-based startup GetYourGuide aims to address the issue of congestion at popular attractions including the Louvre in Paris and New Yorks Top of the Rock, measure waiting times and occupancy to predict waiting times for visitors and for the attractions themselves through a Green credentials Early in 2020, before the pandemic took hold, Sweden experienced a 4% drop in 10 Impact ISSUE 34 2021_pp10-11_WV.indd 10 18/06/2021 12:54