Overtourism Federation of Portugal and Venezuela – Opinion – SAPO.pt

Last week, Panos Kavallaris, a councillor on the famous Greek island of Santorini, issued an urgent announcement to the public on his Facebook account: “With the arrival of 17,000 cruise ship tourists, our city and island are facing another difficult day. We ask you to pay attention: limit your activities as much as possible.”

The public reaction was swift and so violent that the MPs deleted the publication. This is the report from the Greek newspaper Livermore Of the incident, he wrote: “Even assuming that this request was well-intentioned, it is clear that the situation in Santorini has gotten out of control.”

Mass tourism and its overtourism during peak seasons can lead to the most absurd reactions from policymakers, authorities and politicians. Suppose, for example, that the law allows the enactment of a blockade Based on this argument, this communication will come in the form of orders, to be executed and followed by the population. For tourism entrepreneurs, such orders are not worrying – they are often far away from their headquarters and have no connection with the destinations where they have hotels, restaurants or activities; for them, the cancellation of specific routes or visits due to lack of passes, authorizations or because the maximum number of tourists has been reached becomes very complicated and sometimes impossible to manage. But the mayor of the island, Niko Zorzos, is working on the implementation of such controls. Zorzos feels that “his” island is on the road to success and therefore intends to cap the number of cruise ship passengers at 8,000 per day starting in 2025.

The measure chosen for 2024 – reducing the number of cruise ship arrivals from 63 last year to 48 this year – turned out to be a real failure. The question then arises: what was the goal of politicians thinking and building infrastructure – ports, airports and other routes – to accommodate an “infinite” number of tourists and passengers? In reality, this public investment has created several problems – from water consumption, scarcity of permanent housing to irreparable damage to the environment and the destruction of the socio-economic and cultural fabric – which are now being solved by artificially limiting the capacity of these infrastructures, which are, underutilized – to…

This raises a new question: So what is this huge investment for? Are there any politicians in these destinations who advocate the construction of a new port or a new airport to welcome more tourists today? Did he defend it 20 or 30 years ago? In the case of Santorini, the mayor himself said: “The landscape of Santorini is unique and should no longer be damaged by new infrastructure.”

The problem is not limited to a few Greek islands, but affects the entire Mediterranean region and, to some extent, large cities such as Amsterdam, Venice or Barcelona, ​​and even Iceland, Lapland and Antarctica. In some cities, people have protested against tourists by spraying them with streams of water from pipes or putting feces in the outer boxes of tourist apartment keys.

And what about in Portugal? Just as Biden withdrew from the race so that the Democrats have a chance to win the next election, tourism as an economic sector will only suffer if it continues to maintain leaders who use their members’ money to conduct and disseminate research “and mislead society and decision-makers. As long as we have a president of the Portuguese Tourism Federation who regrets that we will lose a million tourists this year due to the current restrictions at Lisbon airport, or as long as we have a president of the Portuguese Hotel Association who defends the tourist tax as unfriendly, we will institutionally make Portugal closer to the Venezuela of Europe than to California if we want to be attractive.